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Headline relaunches Welbeck Fiction as Mountain Leopard Press with Wickington as editorial director
Headline is relaunching Welbeck Fiction as Mountain Leopard Press with Bethany Wickington appointed as editorial director, joining from Hodder & Stoughton.
The newly rebranded imprint, which comprises the former Welbeck Fiction and Mountain Leopard Press publishing, will sit under the Headline Fiction banner, overseen by fiction publishing director Jennifer Doyle. Editor Elena Torres will continue to manage the translated fiction and non-fiction titles while assistant editor Jennifer Edgecombe will continue to work on the core fiction list, while also acquiring her own titles.
Hachette bought Welbeck in November 2022. In March this year Hachette confirmed it was in consultation with Welbeck Publishing Group staff following the acquisition of the business, with jobs at risk. Torres and Edgecombe are existing members of the Welbeck editorial team, continuing in their current roles. Hachette said: "No roles were made redundant in Welbeck fiction editorial during the integration of Welbeck into Hachette."
Headline said Mountain Leopard Press “will be a vibrant home for commercial fiction, looking for exciting new voices that elevate genre and capture the zeitgeist, including uniquely hooky thrillers, conversation-starting women’s fiction and genre-bending book club novels”.
Doyle said: “I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Beth to Headline and I am so looking forward to seeing her put into practice the amazing vision and energy she showed when we were talking about the role. She understands what readers want from commercial fiction and has demonstrated not only great taste but real creativity and precision in her publishing. It has been great to get to know the brilliant existing authors on the list and I can’t wait for the team to take the revitalised Mountain Leopard Press list from strength to strength.”
Wickington added: “I have hugely enjoyed my time at Hodder and will miss my brilliant authors and colleagues immensely, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to join Headline at such an exciting time of growth for the revamped Mountain Leopard Press list. I can’t wait to work with Jen, Jenni and the rest of the team to find exciting new voices that push the boundaries of commercial publishing and become the bestsellers of tomorrow.’
The new Mountain Leopard Press logo was designed by Tim Lane at Lane+Co design. It was designed “to capture elegance and agility of the mountain leopard in a contemporary and stylish new way”.
