Kensington Publishing has announced plans to add two digital-first romance lines to Lyrical Press, its romance genre umbrella imprint.
In the fall of 2017 Kensington will debut Caress, a contemporary romance line, and Liaison, a romantic suspense line. Together, Caress and Liaison will release a combined 50 titles this year.
The new imprints, which will accept agented and un-agented proposals, will be directed by Kensington director of social media and digital sales Alexandra Nicolaijsen. Noting that Kensington’s digital publishing program has been growing “exponentially,” Nicolaijsen estimated that the house is currently releasing about 20 commercial fiction titles a month under the Lyrical imprint.
"We’re very excited to expand even further," Nicolaijsen said. "Having these books available as digital releases ensures that readers will always have a wonderful variety of new books at their finger tips."
Kensington editor Martin Biro will manage editorial aspects of the two new imprints. He said Kensington has studied the digital romance marketplace to identify “genres where we feel readers are currently underserved.”
Biro added: "Publishing these new category lines in a digital-first format allows for faster release schedules and is the perfect way to build debut authors. [It also lets us] provide veteran authors a place to try new things and expand their audiences.”
