Canadian distributor HB Fenn confirmed its February 3 bankruptcy announcement in a statement of affairs filed with the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada. In it Fenn lists $25 million (CA) in liabilities against $14.8 million in assets. Fenn owes $21.8 million to unsecured creditors, with Macmillan the largest by far (owed $10 million, with an additional $600,000 owed to its UK arm.) Other notable unsecured creditors, according to Quill & Quire, include four H.B. Fenn-affiliated companies comprising Fenn Publishing, Fenn Technologies, and two numbered corporations bearing H.B. Fenn’s Bolton address who together are owed $4.1 million, HarperCollins ($3.3 million, […]
Distribution
McEvoy Adds to Group with Princeton Architectural Press Purchase
Founder and owner of New York-based Princeton Architectural Press Kevin Lippert has sold the company to Nion McEvoy’s The McEvoy Group as of January 1, announced today. Lippert is staying on as president and publisher. Chronicle has been the publisher’s distributor since 1995, and will operate the press “as a stand-alone operation.” McEvoy Group president Jack Jensen says “we look forward to helping Princeton consolidate its position as one of the preeminent publishers of books on architecture and design in the world, and to expand its offerings in both academic and electronic publishing. Lippert had repurchased shares in the publisher […]
The Potential Costs of Borders’ Unpaid Bills
With Wiley’s $9 million writedown last Friday of money owed to them by Borders that they do not expect to collect, it’s clear that the bookseller’s troubles are going to hit balance sheets even before the possibility of hitting bankruptcy court. Most of the coverage since we first reported in late December that Borders was not paying major creditors has focused on the largest publishing companies, but with a second month of non-payment we wanted to look at how the impact of Borders current inability to pay their bills might be felt across a much wider group of publishers. Since […]
Grove/Atlantic Turns Digital Distribution Over to Constellation
As part of the renewal of their physical book distribution relationship, Grove/Atlantic will now use Perseus’s Constellation for digital distribution services as well. At one point Grove had come close to working with Open Road, though that deal was never completed and the publisher has been managing its own digital publishing until now. Company head Morgan Entrekin said he concluded that “our strength is to focus on the editorial, marketing and publishing side rather than the distribution side” in the digital space, as they already do with physical distribution. “You have to figure out how to allocate your resources in […]
People, Etc.
Pete Bohan will join Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s as senior marketing manager, retail on January 24, based in New York. He previously worked as marketing manager at Chronicle. Children’s publisher Blue Apple Books will move distribution to Random House Publisher Services from Chronicle Books, effective July 1, 2011. Accenture chairman and former ceo William (Bill) D. Green is joining the board of directors of McGraw-Hill. Peter Costanzo is joining F+W Media as director of digital content. He was previously director of online marketing at the Perseus Books Group. Author and critic Wilfrid Sheed, 80, “the wittily satirical man of letters […]
People, Costa Winners, and More
Mary Ellen O’Neill is joining Workman Publishing as a senior editor. Most recently she was publisher of Collins Lifestyle and editorial director of cookbooks/executive editor at Morrow. Cynthia Zigmund is now representing authors exclusively through her own company, Second City Publishing Services. Tamson Weston has left Disney-Hyperion to found Tamson Weston Books, an editorial consultancy. She will be working with agents and publishers to develop book projects and help new authors fine-tune manuscripts, proposals and picture book dummies. As of February Susan Sandérus will join Bruna in the Netherlands as commissioning editor. She has been at Fontein Publishers and worked […]