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Brooklyn-based publisher Melville House will open a British publishing company in London called Melville House UK.

Founders Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians announced the news, hiring 4th Estate marketing executive Zeljka Marosevic as director of marketing. The company will begin with the publisher’s U.S. books, but should be acquiring new books by the end of the year. Here’s more from Johnson:

Our classics line, The Art of the Novella, has always done well in Britain, but sales of our other U.S. titles have grown explosively there over the last few years, some of the best writing we’ve published lately has been by British writers, such as Lars Iyer and Lee Rourke; we’re winning British book awards, I hear more and more from British booksellers and media about our books … And so rather than simply expand our US company’s operations here, we wanted to form a distinctly British company that would respond more particularly to that kind of welcome. It’s not a branch, nor an office. It’s a distinct, British company.

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St. Martin’s Press defended novelist Lenore Hart against plagiarism charges this week. A blogger who runs a Edgar Allen Poe fan website initially denounced The Raven’s Bride as “a virtual cut-and-paste job” from Cothburn O’Neal‘s 1956 novel, The Very Young Mrs. Poe.

Since then, members of the literary community (including spy novelist Jeremy Duns and Melville House co-publisher Dennis Johnson) have supported the allegations. The New York Times reported on the debate, including a statement from St. Martin’s Press in response to the accusations.

Here’s more from the statement: “Ms. Hart supplied a detailed response, which cited her research into biographical and historical sources, and explained why her novel and Cothburn O’Neal’s The Very Young Mrs. Poe contain certain details of place, description and incident. As Ms. Hart explained in her response, of course two novels about the same historical figure necessarily reliant on the same limited historical record will have similarities.”

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Yesterday on the Morning Media Menu, we interviewed Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson, getting his candid views on Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, enhanced eBook content and the publisher’s popular adopt-a-penguin program.

To support the release of Viktor Zolotaryov‘s crime novel, Death and the Penguin, Melville House will adopt a penguin in the name of any bookstore that sells more than 25 copies of the books from the series about a writer who rescues a penguin.

Johnson explained in the interview: “We have several stores that look like they are getting multiple penguins and have their own pod. For example, the Barnes & Noble in Union Square are well over the first 25 books so far, there may be pods of penguins in Union Square soon.”

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The winners of the first annual Indie Booksellers Choice Awards have been announced.

The following five books were selected by independent booksellers: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books), The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney’s), The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel (Unbridled), Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Grove/Atlantic), and Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr (Akashic).

The five winning titles will be displayed in participating independent bookstores throughout the country. Comedian David Rees hosted the awards ceremony at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City.

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Citing the “predatory and thuggish practices” of Amazon, Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson has withdrawn his press from future participation in the Best Translated Book Awards. Last year the independent press won the fiction award for The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven.

Last week news broke that Amazon.com will underwrite the Best Translated Book Awards, giving a $25,000 grant to the University of Rochester/Three Percent website to help fund the annual prize. “We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately,” explained Johnson in a passionate post about the award. What do you think?

Here’s more from the post: “[I]t’s clear to us that Amazon’s interests, and those of a healthy book culture, whether electronic or not, are antithetical. As most of us here at Melville House have also worked at indie bookstores — including such biggies as Booksoup, Shaman Drum, Brookline Booksmith and others — we feel this especially keenly: Taking money from Amazon is akin to the medical researchers who take money from cigarette companies.” (Via Publishers Lunch)

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