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[Distributor] Publishers Group West

Atomic Bear

the Bruin of Tomorrow™
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I am not sure if this would be the right section to post this, but since it is about issues in the publishing world that might effect writers, I thought it would be appropriate.

PGW is a distributor for small presses "The bankruptcy hit these small presses at the worst possible time -- when Publishers Group West was holding onto its sales revenues from the three months before Christmas, its most profitable time of the year."

(from the SF chronicle)

"Bay Area small publishers like McSweeney's, Berrett-Koehler and Parallax Press don't typically print melodramatic cliff-hangers. But this month, they've been living one.
More than 130 independent publishers across the country were hurled into financial crisis on Dec. 29 with the bankruptcy of the parent company of Publishers Group West, the Berkeley firm that distributes books from much of the small press world."


It is an interesting article about the business side of small publishers. The article in the paper had a chart that showed how the buinsess operated, but I can't find it on the website.
 

Susan B

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Yes, I just read that. Really a shame, since it impacts some good people--this distributer, the small publishers that depended on them for distribution, readers--and probably aspiring writers.

I was surprised at the number of publishers affected. Some of them pretty well known, and not all of them regional or "small" either, like the Avalon Group.

The article noted that some of the smaller publishers, in order to survive, will have to offer more limited advances to writers, and presumably may be publishing fewer books for awhile. So it sounds like one tradtional route for us new writers, contacting a small publisher directly, may be less of an option.

(Actually, my book just got turned down--via agent submission--by one of these independent publishers. I'm now thinking that may have been just as well, given the timing and uncertainty.)