Trendspotting: Waiting to Exhale

“We will never be the same,” ran the popular refrain after 9/11, and as we continue to unpack that sentiment in the various parts of our lives, it seems a fitting enough epigram for the state of book publishing nearly four months into the post-terror twilight. Something has changed, all right. But across the industry no one is quite sure yet how far gone they really are, and faced with massive market uncertainties made more volatile by the southbound economy, this business like many others is effectively holding its breath. “The worst thing anyone can do is to actually think and make decisions,” says one publisher when asked about sales prospects for the near future. Too much thinking, of course, leads to panic, and panic leads to bare bookshelves in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: publishers cut print runs, afraid that stores won’t reorder, hence books aren’t available where and when they should be, and so on. “It’s best to leave inventory issues up to the computer models that trigger the orders,” this publisher advises, “so that there will at least be some books on the shelves.” Bearing this caveat in mind, PT has culled the following year-end impressions from our conversations with a wide spectrum of industry executives. We hope they offer some welcome food for thought — when you feel it’s safe to think again, that is.

Am I solvent? Ask me in six months.

Those who are thinking about sales forecasts for the near term say — no surprise here — that the barometer reads “unsettled.” Sales managers tell us they glimpse a ray of light at the end of the tunnel, but editors seem more wary of further downward pressure. One publisher reports frantically shipping titles two weeks before Christmas, as Ingram and others had let inventories slide after 9/11. Meanwhile, most anyone with a backlist is probably kneeling in gratitude before it, especially if it is modelled and orders are kicking in automatically. Conventional wisdom is that all bets are off until six months from now, when final results are in and returns have been accounted for. One bright spot in the gloom, incidentally, may be for book packagers, several of whom report gung-ho forecasts for 2002, as ongoing book contracts have softened the brunt of the general downturn. “I would imagine that our backlist sales and royalties will reflect the weakness in the marketplace this quarter,” says one packager. “But otherwise, I’m cautiously optimistic for 2002. Am I nuts?”

Ad spending and review space: a negative dialectic.


The continuing shrinkage of review space in newspapers and magazines has had what an industry marketing guru calls an “obvious impact on sales.” And it’s a downward cycle, as fewer ads lead to fewer review pages, which lead to fewer ads. Expected cutbacks coming down the pipeline, say publicists, are only going to make matters worse. Advertising spending in all industries is projected to fall by up to 7% this year (it would be the biggest decline since 1938), with a further, though less drastic, drop expected next year. Many in publishing may still hew to the belief that ads don’t sell books, but some marketers point out that come what may, advertising dollars make a vital contribution to the promotional machine: “They support the review pages that do sell books,” says a marketing director, “and that may have to be the new justification for book advertising.”

Picture not so perfect for illustrated books.


“Illustrated book syndrome” is the grim diagnosis one illustrated book publisher offers for this troubled segment, which has been wracked by layoffs of more than 25 from Abrams, the displacement of Abbeville’s entire staff due to the office’s proximity to the World Trade Center (some are still working from home), and the closure of Viking Studio at the end of the year (with all staff including Christopher Sweet headed out the door). Publishers cite heavy production costs, slow earn-out, competition from proprietary publishers, and retail discounting, which was accelerated by the Taschen/ Könemann rivalry (and led to the latter’s financial troubles). Those houses escaping the brunt of the scourge (at least for now) include Clarkson Potter, where sell-through has been healthy across the list, Watson Guptill (despite the recent departure of President and Publisher Glenn Heffernan), and Chronicle. Thames & Hudson, which had its best year ever in 2000, expects to sail on an even keel this year, and is now cheerily shipping titles for the 30% to 40% of its list that’s in the college market. Meanwhile, distributors such as Antique Collectors Club have cut back staff, and DAP reports that sales are down from last year, but are up in niche areas and limited editions, where quantities are slimmer but prices higher. Other distributors are warily monitoring sticker shock, as the segment clings to the $30 mark — the top price that consumers seem willing to pay.

Giacometti catalog, anyone?

In a related segment, museum publications departments are getting particularly hammered by post-terror declines in attendance, and the guillotine has already been hoisted in many a sculpture garden. The MoMA store had already powered down in anticipation of its hiatus next June, but a quick sales reforecast after 9/11 and the stealth actions of what’s been called a “brilliant marketing department” revamped the operation in a week so that attendance numbers were only down 6% — compared to the Met’s publicly announced 40% and the Guggenheim’s 50% drop. MoMA is on track to sell its complete run of the Giacometti exhibition catalogue, but even with that morale boost, sales will still be weak without the usual tourist trade. As museums batten down the hatches, will the German- and US-based house Prestel — and others of its ilk which compete with museum publishing divisions — take home the spoils?

When all else fails, Harry Potter prevails.


Shuffle the numbers any way you like, kids’ books still seem to outpace adult sales. Moreover, Harry and company have staying power, with anticipation hot and heavy for HPV (which is due in next year). Our sources tell us the children’s business is “steady, solid, and somewhat heartening” given the teeth-gnashing and breast-beating from other retail sectors. That said, what seems to be selling are the tried and true (the familiar is obviously a special comfort these days), as well as the fantastic and all things holiday related. And sales are strong for Lord of the Rings, Lemony Snicket, and Olivia, with a number of other children’s properties buoyantly described to us as “just a dream to the bottom line.”

The smaller the store, the better the sales.


As chain retailers continue to drive up their direct purchasing percentage, and cash-strapped independent booksellers resort to just-in-time buying via wholesale, you might think the Goliaths have finally prevailed. But as one sales executive noted, with all their markdowns, chains may be having a tough go of it, provoking an audacious few to put them on credit hold. This predicament has in fact given rise to a tentative new mantra: “It seems like the smaller the store, the better the sales.” The indies are still in the game, despite reports that their share of the business has dropped from 33% in 1993 to 15% today. One large independent operation tells us they checked their Nov. 2000 figures against last year, and found comparable sales for each month. And get this: Saturday, December 15th was this store’s best sales day ever. For its part, Book Sense is said to be modestly moving the needle, and making a more notable difference in establishing smaller books. On the other hand, indies are keeping tabs on reports that online sales are going gangbusters, with Amazon ordering heavily from wholesale. (A Consumer Reports feature on book retailing notes that online stores account for 7% of book sales — and in a survey of 25,000 readers, Amazon was ranked a close second behind independent booksellers in terms of reader satisfaction.) In other retail tips, don’t forget those impulse buys. “Point-of-sale is dramatically up over last year,” says an executive at a major publishing house. “It’s a real bright spot.”

Too pricey? Check that page count.

As the industry rubbed its collective chin over the recent New York Times article on steep retail prices for books, we note a logical response might be a more aggressive approach to pruning today’s monster tomes. (The ever-fattening size of volumes has been chalked up to the advent of the computer.) Despite arguments that printing and binding costs have declined significantly over the last decade, paper costs are still going up for many publishers, and account for a big chunk of any book’s cost. The industry might tamp down prices by trimming page counts, and — who knows? — you might even get buzz over brevity, like Ken Lipper’s and James Atlas’s Penguin Lives series.

Paradigm shift: Linear out, cyclical in.

On the bright side, one agent points out, the industry as a whole appeared to turn a corner after Thanksgiving, when the phones gingerly began to ring again and we collectively exhaled. (Given the pessimism still voiced by the likes of Random’s Peter Olson, however, it remains to be seen how far that next breath of air will take us.) Another upbeat reading of post-September events is that they mark a healthy return to a cyclical view of the business, which had been tossed in the dumpster during those heady boom years, when the damn-the-torpedoes linear business model ruled.

Once more to the steaming altar.

Covering your bases never hurts, either. “We’re looking OK, or damn close,” says an upscale academic publisher, who offered a few comparative thoughts on the mega-hit-driven trade business. “I think this is in part because we’re more diversified than echt Trade houses, so we have something else to fall back on besides the great and insatiable god of bestsellerdom, upon whose steaming altar virgins must regularly be offered up.”

Pockets of Potential for Trade Sales

By now the rise of books about the Mideast and the fall of just about everything else has been well documented by The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. Many reasons have been cited: the abrupt cancellation of tours; the general lack of promotion and concurrent lack of reader attention; the economy; and fear, any which way you take it: of shopping, the future, malls, and now, even mail. Earlier this month, the Times claimed that certain categories such as fiction are off by 25% to 40% from last year’s bestsellers. In a memorable line, Carolyn Reidy told the paper, “I have seen softness in the market for books, but always the bigger books still sold — that is why the falloff in name fiction is so horrifying.” To drive home the point, in the press release welcoming her, Peter Olson hailed Phyllis Grann as an “invaluable addition to our company at anytime [sic], but never more so than now as we must apply even greater ingenuity to overcome the ongoing book marketplace downturn.”

Curious about the numbers behind the numbers, this month Publishing Trends took a sharp look at sales in a variety of categories, pricepoints, channels of distribution, and geographic regions. Though we can’t report that the news is any rosier when parsed, at least the picture is certainly getting clearer.

Not surprisingly, almost every category has seen an incremental rise in sales during the last several weeks. Current title sales have increased 23% even in the last two weeks (through November 24), and backlist is up by 15%. Increased sales were evenly spread out over the country, with the West Coast registering a slight edge over other regions. Unfortunately, when compared with last year’s sales, the landscape is looking bleak. The current Wall Street Journal, which indexes its bestseller list to sales of the top fiction title in 2000 (which is indexed at 100), shows only one title — John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas — selling more than any title last year, and that’s in part because, as the Journal itself noted in an article this summer, fiction had been underselling throughout much of the year. But the trend is reversing itself once again, with several books, notably business titles, indexing in the single digits.

Pity, then, the publisher of business books, or travel books, or romances, whose numbers have fallen even since September, and continued their nosedive over these last weeks. On the other hand, sales of calendars and humor books are skyrocketing as buyers turn their minds to stocking stuffers. Meanwhile, children’s publishing is looking up, helped by three major movie tie-ins (Harry Potter, Monsters Inc. and Lord of the Rings), each bolstering a different publisher. But children’s picture books are also doing well, as are certain series. It seems that, where current events have dampened adult reading, they have had the converse effect on children — or their parents. Certain other areas such as spirituality, books on the Mideast, and atlases saw a bump in sales in September and October, but have receded in recent weeks. All’s well on the home front, however, as cooking and crafts books continue to show strength.

Direct mail publishers haven’t fared any better than their trade counterparts. In fact, though they haven’t been hurt by people shunning the mall, and their returns problems are minimal (the clubs have returns primarily on selections), direct response has been difficult for many sectors this year — even before September — and massive layoffs are already under way. Rodale announced layoffs of 148 jobs (most of them in the direct mail books division) in October, while Reader’s Digest saw its revenues on both General Books and Select Editions fall in 2001, even before September’s “disastrous” decline. Bookspan has laid off editorial and marketing personnel, though many of the latter were related to the merging of Doubleday and BOMC operations. Still, some companies, like International Masters Publishers (IMP), which have been struggling for the past several years, did surprisingly well in their fall solicitations — which began mailing on September 11. Marketing execs from the company chalk that up to the subject matter, which includes cooking, crafts, and a religious program. But even as the mails began to rebound, anthrax spores made their way into many facilities, causing enormous problems for many companies, especially those with return addresses in some of the worst-hit areas, like New York and DC. The mails haven’t recovered, and some marketers are turning to the dread telemarketing to keep their numbers up.

What conclusions can be drawn from sales patterns over the last several months? One factor intermittently mentioned in reports has been pricing. In the Journal article this summer, Geoffrey Fowler notes that some of the bestselling nonfiction books were priced in the modest $10 to $20 range. The Popular Group’s first titles (also priced in this range) are reportedly flying off Wal-Mart’s shelves, and IMP’s continuity series cost as little as $4.95 a shipment. True, the megaseller John Adams had a hefty $35 price tag but it was, as Carl Lennertz was quoted as saying, a book that could “keep you busy all summer long.” Initial Bookscan figures suggest that there is a dearth of titles with list prices in the $20 to $22.50 range — the price bracket where discounted hardcovers could be bought with a twenty dollar bill, even including tax. Is it coincidence that Grisham’s new offering has taken off? Can we still call ourselves an industry in which, as the Times’ David Kirkpatrick put it, sales of books were always considered to be “resilient during hard times as an inexpensive source of hours of entertainment”? If sales are no longer “resilient,” is it the subject matter, the venue, or the price? Regardless of that conundrum, it’s obvious that the loss of sales has proven catastrophic for publishers and their authors.

Modestly Proposed

Publishing Trends has a modest proposal that might benefit all: Were each publisher to delay the spring publication of a handful of books, and instead each republish a handful of those worthy fall books that never glimpsed their potential, in early 2002 it might give readers and authors the chance they deserve to read and be read. When Harry Evans was at Random House, he republished Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action four months after the first publication, because he was so disappointed in its initial reception, despite tremendous review attention. He got a second round of sales, and helped pave the way for the paperback, too. What would happen if the industry were to go it again, perhaps prevailing upon the publicity-wise Pat Schroeder to fight this good fight? Desperate measures for desperate times?

This report was compiled from various sources, including interviews with industry leaders, in addition to bestseller lists and articles from PW, WSJ, and NYT. Special thanks to Bookscan, which provided access to its category data.

Steal This Image

Museum and Art Book Publishers Wander in Copyright’s Wild West

If every picture tells a story, Mitch Tuchman has heard them all. As head of publications at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for 13 years, Tuchman produced 68 volumes for copublication or trade distribution, wrangling permission to print thousands of images from artists and their heirs. Groping through the byzantine legalese of contracts for the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec and David Hockney, on the one hand, and noting certain of his colleagues’ cavalier duplication of transparencies on the other, Tuchman stumbled onto an unsettling truth: “The atmosphere of ignorance with regard to picture rights is pretty alarming at some major institutions.” In the jaunty 1980s, to take just one instance, a group representing artists’ rights wrote to Tuchman demanding fees for images used in a LACMA exhibition catalog. Uncertain of his obligations, Tuchman queried his trade copublisher. “Wait and see if they send another letter,” the reply came back. “We’re in the habit of ignoring these people, and they usually just go away.”

Today, Tuchman says, this advice would be viewed at best as quaint. “Everybody is more wary about claims of copyright,” he explains. Yet even though much has changed, perplexity over copyright law persists, resulting in Medusa-like indemnity clauses that sprout from copublishing contracts everywhere. These paragraphs are “a little battle or minuet where each side is trying to allocate the risk of publishing these images to the other side. Neither one is taking the responsibility of knowing about these issues.” Tuchman, now in the intellectual property practice group at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, has vowed to meet copyright law head-on. What’s at stake for both museums and publishers, say others familiar with licensing issues, is not merely legal peace of mind. As the costs of permissions can soar into the tens of thousands of dollars, and even seasoned publishers refer to licensing as “a morass,” the livelihood of big chunks of the art book business is on the table.

“The costs have gone up for everyone,” says Peter Warner, US President of illustrated publisher Thames & Hudson. “If you’re producing a large book with hundreds of images, keeping the overall budget at a rational level can be difficult. And there are times when, because of its cost, you do feel you are leaving out a picture you would have put in otherwise. You have to make those tough choices more often than not.” Others in the industry are worried about both their bottom lines and the larger consequences, too. “Some estates and artists are making it too difficult to publish their work,” says a book packager. “If Picasso and Matisse had been as restrictive as some artists and estates are today, they’d never be as famous or as influential.”

Indeed, the road to publish images is veritably paved with tollbooths. A celebrity photo may require separate clearances from both the photographer and the celebrity. Then you might get dinged for cropping an image, putting it up on a website, or putting it on a postcard. Museums, which must seek permission to publish images they do not control, even as they exploit licenses for work in their own collections, are acutely feeling copyright pains. “Even into the ’90s, museums felt that if they owned a work of art, they could do whatever they wanted to with the image of it,” says Garrett White, Director of Publications and New Media at the Whitney. “Now, everyone knows that’s not true. Ownership of the object and copyright are separate. And that has driven the price of books up very substantially. It means certain types of books are no longer possible to create.”

‘Strip Mining the Obituaries’

In another tale from the trenches, Tuchman once faced clearing rights to hundreds of works by scores of known and anonymous artists for the LACMA exhibition catalog Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler. Copyrights held by the estates of 14 of the artists were administered in the US by Artists Rights Society (ARS). For nonexclusive, worldwide, English-language publication rights, says Tuchman, ARS quoted a fee of $18,000. But when he protested that sum, “the price, which I suspected was arbitrary, dropped to $9,000 in a heartbeat.” Other contingencies crop up, as well. When LACMA sought to reproduce a work by the late Swiss artist Jean Crotti on the cover of an exhibition catalogue, a rights group claiming to represent Crotti came knocking. Yet Crotti’s sole heirs “claimed never to have heard of that society and certainly not to have engaged its services. Incidents like this lead publishers to accuse the clearinghouses of strip mining the obituaries.”

Theodore Feder, President of ARS, replies that while he was unfamiliar with the details of Tuchman’s transaction, the fee for worldwide use is typically double that for North American use, and a distinction between territorial rights could account for the $18,000 being halved. He also notes that ARS will negotiate a volume discount when large numbers of images are involved, and that fees are reduced drastically for truly academic publishing. “I can’t think of any case where we’ve demanded a fee which blocked the publication of an image,” he adds. “We prefer to make it workable for both us and the publishing house.” Other groups representing artists’ rights acknowledge that the business has its quirks. “This industry has some unique problems,” says Bob Panzer, Executive Director of the Visual Artists and Galleries Association. “Publishers are willing to pay for images. But when they’re forced to pay twice — when the source of the image charges them a fee equal to the fee they would normally pay for standard stock photography — it gets very expensive.”

And even with rights groups going to bat for them, some artists are still getting a raw deal, says Peter Howe, a longtime photo editor formerly with stock agency Corbis. Photographers in particular remain vulnerable under current law. “Unless you have registered a copyright on a picture, you do not have the ability to sue a violator of your copyright for anything other than actual damages,” Howe explains. “If your licensing fee is $75, and your photo is unregistered, that means you can only recoup that amount of money. There aren’t a lot of people who will pursue a lawsuit for $75.” Fortunately, he finds book publishers to be among the most scrupulous traffickers in images. “I am now producing a book for Workman, and we go through everything in detail,” he says. “We work out the licensing budget for the photography before we even start the project.”

The devil, of course, is in those very same details. “I’m amazed that books dealing with 20th-century artists get published at all,” says Susan Bielstein, Senior Editor at the University of Chicago Press, citing the travails of working with living artists. But even the so-called “good and dead” artists can prove meddlesome. Bielstein licensed a book with drawings from the 18th and early 19th century from a French publisher, which provided film for the images. Since the works were in the public domain under every applicable country’s copyright laws, Bielstein assumed they were good to go. “Not five minutes after the book was published,” she says, “we hear from a major museum in New York City which claims that one of the drawings is in its collection.” The museum demanded a fee, upon penalty of suspending business relations with the entire University of Chicago. Bielstein paid the fee.

Museums are themselves in a double bind. Technically, images of art in a museum catalog would qualify as educational fair use, says Mikki Carpenter, Director of Imaging Services at the Museum of Modern Art. “At the same time, we have to negotiate to use these images and pay considerable amounts of money because we want to maintain good relationships with artists.” Complicating matters further are digital databases of images such as the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) or the Mellon’s ArtSTOR initiative, which is digitizing images of fine art for scholarly and research uses. ArtSTOR Executive Director James Shulman observes that anyone treading into the realm of digital reproductions needs to keep a wary eye on the teetering terrain. “It’s definitely a wild west territory, and the legal decisions haven’t clarified very much.”

Indeed, a federal court hearing the 1998 Bridgeman Art Library case found that transparencies of public domain art were not protected by copyright, directly contradicting museums’ claims of control over images of objects from their collections. But museums are standing their ground. “Museum publishers tend to apply an extralegal standard,” says Susan Chun, General Manager for Electronic Information Planning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “We assume that when reproductions are made of works of art, those reproductions are copyrighted works themselves.” As for the grumbling by trade publishers about museum reproduction charges, Chun says: “Believe me, museums are not getting rich off of this. Permissions costs may appear to be rising because when fewer art books sell, the per-unit permissions costs are higher.”

However you slice it, the spiraling costs of publishing art books have spurred a sort of grassroots demand for an alliance of museums and publishers that would swap information about licensing fees and draw its own lines in the sand. Though such an entity would surely spawn more reams of case law, there’s no hiding from the fact that licensing transactions in today’s trademarked world are only going to get more, well, unseemly. “You can license a building, and you can probably license your children to Coca-Cola,” says Garrett White. “It has more to do with the gradual commodification of everything.”

NCTE: No Phonics, Please

Eyeing the plethora of titles from publishers large and small at the 91st National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention, one relatively new educational publisher was heard to marvel, “How can so many books sell?” Indeed, that was the question furrowing many publishers’ brows during the weekend of Nov. 17, as an estimated 6,000 teachers and English professors converged upon the Baltimore Convention Center for their annual meeting. Though nobody could muster much by way of an answer, all reports indicate that NCTE still remains a signal opportunity to market new books and mingle with teachers — an educational publisher’s best sales force bar none.

Attendance seemed down from previous years (perhaps due to the less than glamorous location and the reluctance of many to travel), but that did nothing to stem the long lines of patient teachers who snapped up author-signed copies of their favorite titles. Many books on display reflected this year’s convention theme, “Recreating the Classroom,” which inspired a wide range of symposia on democratizing the classroom, integrating technology, teacher development, and, of course, basic literacy. Amid hot topics such as “Classroom As Think Tank” and the incendiary “Phonics Exposed: Understanding And Resisting Systematic Direct Intense Phonics Instruction,” the convention embraced a multi-dimensional approach to teaching language arts that targets a wide range of student abilities and interests. When not drubbing phonics, teachers bashed “neo-liberal politics” and the government’s rigidly prescribed reading programs, arguing for more inclusive syllabi across the board. Compared to years gone by, in fact, this season’s NCTE felt fresh and up-to-date, a mood undoubtedly aided by a roster of speakers that included filmmaker Ken Burns, director John Waters, author Lucille Clifton, and last year’s Newbery winner, Christopher Paul Curtis.

From a publishing perspective, the emphasis on teaching through literature — known as the “whole language” approach — seemed as strong, if not stronger than in previous years, with themes of multi-culturalism, feminism, and cultural sensitivity readily apparent in publishers’ lists. (For its part, Scholastic was noted for offering a $15,000 grant enabling 55 teachers to attend the conference.) In the end, hot-button subjects such as standardized testing took a welcome back seat to making the classroom relevant for a diverse and digitally aware population.

We thank Dan Weiss of book packager Weiss Associates for his contribution to this article.

International Fiction Bestsellers

Parisian Pandemonium
Vargas Plagues Paris, Orsenna’s French Lessons, And Brouwers Skewers Dutch Boomers

The specter of bubonic plague coming down the mail chute rattles all of Paris in an uncannily topical work by the French archaeologist and crime writer Fred Vargas. In the author’s latest novel, Leave Quickly and Return Late (which, incidentally, was written over a year ago), hundreds of doors are found painted with a symbol last used during the Middle Ages to protect households from the Black Death. Then pandemonium ensues when the postman comes calling with suspicious missives allegedly infected with the deadly disease, and things get grimmer a few days later, when strangled corpses turn up looking like they’d contracted the plague. The book’s title, by the way, is the advice that sages once imparted to citizens whenever the plague reared its head: leave quickly, flee far away, and take the slow boat back. Vargas has been praised for “exceptionally well-made and well-written contributions to the roman policier,” and her other titles have sold more than 100,000 copies. She mines her archaeological research (specialty: animal bones) for forensic subplots. Her earlier novel Waking the Dead was published in seven countries, including Germany (Aufbau), Italy (Einaudi), Greece (Diamantis), and Japan (Tokyo Sogensha). The new one sold 31,000 copies in two weeks, and both US and UK rights are available, says Frédéric Martin, rights manager at Viviane Hamy.

Also raising a ruckus in France this month is Goncourt winner and Académie Française member Erik Orsenna’s “lighthanded, dreamlike” new work that takes playful aim at that most hallowed of French obsessions: grammar. Said to be an homage to literary lion Saint-Exupéry, Grammar Is a Sweet Song is a tale told with “supreme elegance” that follows the adventures of a brother and sister who are shipwrecked on a desert island, as the sea empties their heads of language. Happily for Francophiles everywhere, they’ve landed on a treasure island inhabited by millions of words, which flit about like butterflies. The book has sold 110,000 copies in France, with rights deals soon to be completed in Germany, Italy, and Korea. English rights are available; see Fabienne Roussel at Stock. And finally in France, Algiers: White Town by Régine Deforges is one of eight volumes in the series known as The Blue Bicycle, which kicked off in 1981. In the latest installment, intrepid heroine Lea wends her way back to France 15 years after World War II, as the Algerian War rages on. She and lover Francois take up spying on behalf of Algerian militants — even as Francois serves the Gaullist cause. Though it has slipped off this month’s list, the book has a first print run of 130,000 copies, plus 100,000 for book clubs, and world rights are being negotiated, according to Martine Bertea at Fayard.

In Holland, bestselling author Jeroen Brouwers is back in action after a lengthy furlough with Secret Rooms, a “wide panorama of intrigues, backbiting and adultery” said to be “blowing apart the baby-boomer generation’s belief in themselves.” The book handily skewers what one critic calls “the generation that wanted to better the world, but above all better their bank accounts,” and questions the wisdom of keeping “secret chambers” in our lives that we shield from others. Protagonist Jelmer is besieged by repressed emotions after his daughter gets locked up in an asylum and his estranged wife turns out to have a few secrets of her own. As one critic explained: “This is a book full of sucking, plopping mud, torrential rains, and no less ominous storms.” Brouwers’ earlier hit Sunken Red won the Prix Fémina for best foreign novel in 1995, and to date 60,000 copies of the new one are in print. Rights have been sold to Germany (DVA). See Laura Susijn at the Susijn Agency in London.

Also in Holland, the perennially popular Geert Mak is getting raves for the “instant classic” My Fathers’ Century, which is a nonfiction chronicle of three generations in the intriguing Mak lineage. Grandfather Mak was a sailmaker with a stalwart faith in tradition, and his son was a Calvinist clergyman who worked amid the decolonization of Indonesia. Making his familial saga a parable of modern times, Mak fils endeavors to show that his father’s generation “marked the pivot on which our century tipped over.” The author’s earlier work Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City (“highly readable,” sayeth the Financial Times) was published in the UK by Harvill in 1999, and is reportedly forthcoming in the US from Harvard, in addition to rights sales in Germany (Siedler), the Czech Republic (Cinemax), and Russia (Ves Mir). More than 180,000 copies of the new one have been sold since the book’s publication in 1999, and rights have been sold thus far to Hungary (Osiris). See publisher Atlas for rights.

Meanwhile, divine intervention gets a sly political spin as Argentina wakes up to A Day in the Life of God, a sort of theological farce from journalist and historian Martín Caoparrós. In this irreverent story, God, in her feminine incarnation, can never understand the beings she has created. Following a sojourn on Earth (in the various guises of a Theban fighter, a spy in Rome, and Voltaire’s confessor), she takes matters into her own hands, with much metaphysical fallout. The 44-year-old Caoparrós was co-author of the acclaimed three-volume work The Will, which roiled the debate over Argentina’s “dark years” during the military regime of the 1970s. Caoparrós has lived in Paris, Madrid, and New York, and is now filming his cosmopolitan capers for Argentine television. Though the new book has slipped off the list this month, it has about 7,000 copies in print, which our source assures us “is very promising given the present economic circumstances of our country.” Rights have been sold only in Spain (Seix Barral). See Mónica Herrero at the Guillermo Schavelzon agency in Buenos Aires.

Lastly, a note from Germany, where the journalist Ildikó von Kürthy is back with a vengeance in her second novel, Fluttering Heart. A seemingly carefree couple of two years ram the shoals of disaster when Amelie hears a voicemail message meant for Philipp’s ears only. The jilted gal-pal douses philandering Philipp’s silk suits with red wine and promptly hits the road: “She is out for revenge. Maybe even sex.” Look out, Hamburg. The author’s first book, Moonshine Duty, sold 240,000 copies and was published in Norway, the Netherlands, Korea, and Hungary. The new one has 50,000 copies in print, and no foreign rights have been sold as yet. See Ariane Fink at the Greenburger agency for rights.

Croatia’s Comeback

Though much battered in the last decade, Croatia’s 4.5 million inhabitants are citizens of the most developed and richest former Yugoslav republic — and one eager to traffic in the world of books. The Zagreb-based publisher Hrvoje Bozicevic of Editions Bozicevic profiles the nation’s evolving publishing business.

The wartime atrocities that befell Croatia and Slovenia just before the first democratic elections of 1990 opened a new, grim chapter in the region’s history. But as this tumultuous decade sees its epilogue at the International Tribunal in the Hague, Croatia’s long-awaited recognition has brought a glimmer of light as well. Moving toward European integration, and boasting a high-quality education system, Croatia makes a worthy business partner for publishers in Europe and beyond. Though it is a small market (comparable to Finland), the nation’s growing economy and expected rise in standard-of-living may turn it into one of the most profitable areas of Central and Eastern Europe.

Admittedly, recent years have been hard for Croatia’s publishers. According to the National University Library, 3,600 titles were published in 1997. But by 1999, after the introduction of a 22% value-added tax on books, that number fell to 2,940. As the price of books soared, sales dropped significantly. The situation stabilized after the VAT on books was abolished at the end of 1999, however, and last year, 3,200 titles were published, with this year’s forecast more than optimistic.

About 200 publishing houses operate in Croatia, the most prominent including Skolska Knjiga, which publishes 300 titles annually and specializes in textbooks, scientific, and professional literature; Leksikografski Zavod Miroslav Krleza, with encyclopedias and monographs; and Matica Hrvatska, an interdisciplinary institution with its own publishing house. Though there is no reliable list of bestselling books in Croatia, eagerly sought titles include The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, and all titles by Milan Kundera (one of the most popular writers in Croatia). History titles and memoirs sell well, too, and in fact Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by F.W. Engdahl was one of the bestselling books of 2000. Of course, Grisham, Cornwell, and Clancy are hits here as everywhere, owing their popularity to movie rights sold.

In a hopeful sign, several young Croatian writers have stepped onto the scene. Among their much-translated colleagues are Miljenko Jergovic (Sarajevki Marlboro, Penguin); Slavenka Drakulic (Marble Skin, Norton); and Dubravka Ugresic (Fording the Stream of Consciousness, Northwestern). Still, many important authors remain to be translated or even reprinted. These include the great poet Nikola Sop (he was translated by Auden), and Janko Polic Kamov, whose short stories were published in Grand Street and Partisan Review.

A key challenge remaining to Croatian publishers is the lack of a suitable distribution network. Books are not sufficiently available in smaller towns, and marketing and media support are lacking. Moreover, print runs can be as small as 1,500 copies for serious literature, or 4,000 copies for J.K. Rowling. Meanwhile, book prices run from $6.50 to $25, relatively costly due to short print runs, hefty taxes, and large discounts to distributors (up to 50%). Since most people cannot afford to buy books, many are borrowed from libraries.

On the bright side, the Croatian Association of Publishers and Booksellers is laying the groundwork for a national book distribution network, and Internet sales are growing through sites such as www.sveznadar.com. More hearteningly, Minister of Culture Antun Vujic has made publishing a priority, buying books for libraries and subsidizing titles that do not have a large market potential. Vujic recently said that though the number of new titles was growing (thanks to stronger government support), the goal must be a completely market-oriented publishing industry. As the economy matures, Croatia’s publishers are hopeful that they can meet this challenge profitably.

Book View, December 2001

PEOPLE


Congrats to Phyllis Grann — and Random House — who have finally tied the knot in what is perhaps the last good news of ’01? Word is that not all publishers there are equally excited, leading to speculation about whether the last card has yet been played.

Back at Penguin Putnam, Adrian Zackheim has hired Bill Brazell as Senior Editor of his new imprint, Portfolio Books. Brazell had worked at Industry Standard, and before that at Wired. . . . Following Vivendi Publishing CEO Agnes Touraine’s announcement of Bertil Hessel’s “sabbatical” as the head of LKC in London, Houghton’s Wendy Strothman will assume all Kingfisher responsibilities. Meanwhile, Director of Special Markets and US Rights Penelope Chaplin has been named VP, Publisher N. America for Kingfisher. Layoffs at Kingfisher include CFO Tim Gelatt, Marketing Manager Joyce Stein, and Sales and Marketing’s Lesley Moseley. . . . Layoffs continue around town, though some more publicly than others: Abrams’ cutbacks have been ongoing since the announced departures of Mark Magowan and Alan Rutsky (now up to twenty-five, including PR Director Liz Robbins, longtime Rights Director Pam Harwood, Production Director Shun Yamamoto, the entire contracts, as well as photographic rights departments, plus members of the foreign rights, editorial, design and marketing departments). Meanwhile, recruiters are searching for a new CEO for the company. Back to other cutbacks: Questia has shrunk from 280 at its height, to 68 (though Linda Cunningham, Joana Jebsen, and Justin Wolske remain in New York, and a major direct mail and TV campaign has just been launched), and Andrews McMeel is closing a warehouse and terminating 110 positions, because it will outsource its distribution. These follow layoffs at DK (US and UK), Random Reference and Children’s, Rodale, and Tuttle. Then, of course, there are the closings — of Zoland Books, a 15-year-old company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts (and publisher of Ha Jin’s collection of stories, which won the Pen/Faulkner award for First Fiction), and of Reciprocal, as well as the bankruptcy of netLibrary.

Bobbi Mark has been named Chief Marketing and Development Officer for Acumen Fund, a not-for-profit with an innovative model for international philanthropy. Seed funding is from the Rockefeller and Cisco Foundations. Mark was formerly at RR Donnelley and before that, at BOMC and Bantam. . . . Suzanne Oaks, last member of the original Broadway team, has left the company. . . . Longtime club editor Ruth Kogan is one of those laid off at Bookspan. . . . Larry Hughes, who remained at Morrow following the sale to HarperCollins, will retire at the end of the year. . . . Variety (via publisherslunch) reports that Joe Veltre has joined Talk Miramax Books as an editor at large while also working for Miramax as director of development. Veltre was briefly at HarperCollins, and before that, at St. Martin’s. . . . Colin Robinson, longtime MD of Verso until recently, has been named publisher of The New Press.

In museum publications news: After 14 years, Ann Lucke is leaving the Metropolitan Museum’s Publications department to join The Getty in the same managing editorial position. She is filling the position recently vacated by Mark Greenberg, who has been named Editor-in-Chief. In the meantime the Getty is looking to fill a newly created operations position, and the Met has hired Susan Bresnan, also in the new position of Image Acquisitions Manager.

Promotions: Seth Radwell was promoted to President of Bookspan’s newly created Marketing and Editorial Group. He had been President and Chief Executive Officer of booksonline, the Internet division of Bookspan. . . . Carole Baron was appointed President of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. . . . Liate Stehlik was promoted to Associate Publisher at Pocket Books. She was previously Publishing Director. Warner Bros. Consumer Products announced that Michael Harkavy was promoted to SVP, international content and creative affairs. He was previously VP, Publisher, Kids! WB Music and Interactive Entertainment.

DULY NOTED


A colloquium co-sponsored by the Folger Library was held in Washington, DC on Nov. 8-10 to discuss the “impact of the digital medium on libraries, publishers, and society.” By 2020, the 40 participants (from Bertelsmann, Library of Congress, etc.) predicted, printed books and journals would not disappear but would co-exist with the newer electronic forms of publishing, though the roles and functions of publishers and libraries will change radically by that time. Meanwhile, as universal access to knowledge would become theoretically possible, “Host-country infrastructure and intellectual property rights will be critical to the worldwide adoption of electronic publishing as the de-facto communication standard.” Glad we got that straight.

Books for a Better Life announces the lineup for its Feb. 12 Awards Ceremony, when Deepak Chopra will be inducted in the BBL Hall of Fame. ABC’s Meredith Vieira and HBO’s Karen Duffy will be on hand to help emcee. Hats off to publishing veteran Scott Manning, who founded the awards, and continues his pro bono leadership of them.

“Publishing Predictions — Past and Present Visions of the Future,” presented by Small Press Center and Publishers Weekly, which was originally scheduled for Monday, Nov. 12, has been postponed until Small Press Month, March 2002. Email info@smallpress.org for details.

In the November 19 edition of iMarketing News, Al Ries and Laura Ries, marketing strategists, make a case for Amazon to scale back its business to the core — books, music, and videos, which account for 58% of its business and all of its profit. And if it doesn’t? “Make no mistake about it, Amazon is headed for history’s scrap heap.” They argue, however, that Jeff Bezos would have a hard time retrenching, after positioning himself as an online department store. What the Ries’ really argue for, though, is brand segmentation. Amazon should move its other categories under other brand names, like Levi’s did with Dockers, and Black & Decker did with its professional line of tools. Otherwise, they warn, Amazon could end up the Polaroid of the web.

• Bloomsbury is publishing a “Celebratory Edition” of Philosopher’s Stone, to mark the sales of 113+ million Harry Potter books worldwide. And that’s before taking into account sales from the movie tie-ins.

DECEMBER DATES


There isn’t much going on this month, other than the big ones: Hannukah (begins December 9), Christmas, Kwanzaa (begins December 26), and New Year’s (start whenever you wish).

• Harry Evans will take on Jerome Charyn, author of Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive, in a game of — you guessed — ping pong, on December 6 at 6:30 pm at the Manhattan Table Tennis Club, 2628 Broadway. Contact rmorse@morse-partners.com for details.

Michael Cader’s next December 11 Live Lunch event takes place December 11. The topic is LOOKING TO 2002, and panelists include David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times, Larry Kirshbaum of AOL Time Warner Trade Publishing, Carl Lennertz of BookSense, and New York Magazine’s Michael Wolff.

PARTIES


November was the big party month. First there was Book-of-the-Month’s 75th anniversary party at the Waldorf Astoria on November 7. Then the Mercantile Library hosted the second annual Clifton Fadiman Awards at its gala on November 13. Shirley Hazzard’s Transit of Venus won the $5000 award, which is sponsored by Bookspan. On November 14 the National Book Awards took place, with Steve Martin hosting. Then, on November 15 NBF Executive Director Neil Baldwin was the guest of honor at a party celebrating his new book, Henry Ford and the Jews, published by Peter OsnosPublic Affairs.

MAZELTOV


To Context BooksBeau Friedlander and Melissa Breyer on November 8th on the arrival of Ella Beatrice Friedlander.

IN MEMORIAM


Michael Hoffman, Publisher and Executive Director of Aperture, died on November 23. He had been at Aperture for 35 years.

The Zooba Zeitgeist

As jitters over snail mail consume the media, email marketers have been keen to whisper what amounts to the new gospel in direct-to-consumer marketing: opting-in. Wary of their mailboxes, the theory goes, customers are much more likely to agree to receive promotional messages via email. Whether or not this is actually the case, sagging response rates to traditional mail and the prospect of cheap bulk emailings have made “permission-based sales opportunities” look better than ever.

One company working in the book realm is Zooba.com, a direct marketer that sends email newsletters on a variety of topics to its 2.8 million subscribers. Income is based primarily on advertising (mostly of books and videos that complement the newsletter topics) and branded sites. One of Zooba’s more liberating aspects is a chary attitude toward its own services: “We recommend you select no more than three topics,” the site warns, apparently warding off email overload. The user is also told how many emails will arrive on a particular topic, so that the fear of an unending avalanche of newsletters — like an electronic Time-Life continuity series — can be put to rest.

As of the beginning of 2001, Zooba also has some staying power amid failing dot-coms, namely the advantage of being owned by Bertelsmann (50% by the DirectGroup, and the other 50% by Bookspan). Forty-five is the magic number in this respect: Zooba has 45 employees, sends out newsletters in 45 content areas, and now has access to Bookspan’s 45 book clubs, which it makes no bones about plugging in pop-up ads (“Get 3 great cookbooks for only $3!”). But it has also provided publishers, including Cambridge U. Press, Henry Holt, St. Martin’s and Simon & Schuster, with access to lists on focused topics — everything from “Great Minds” to “Golf” — as well as advertising opportunities tied to the topic (in some cases a bit loosely: a sample newsletter advertises Dreamcatcher to readers interested in Pilates exercises). When they’re roused by the ads in their emails, readers can click on over to B&N.com and other e-tailers to purchase books posthaste.

More than 20 book publishers have availed themselves of the site’s “microcast transactive content technology,” and some of them, like Harvard Business School Press, have their own branded channel offering subscribers branded content (Harvard’s is mostly taken from Harvard Business Review articles). “We tap into an electronic universe that they’ve aggregated,” says George Pratt, Director of Web Marketing for Harvard Business School Publishing. Still, while Pratt reports “some success” throughout the company using outside email lists, they aren’t a silver bullet, at least not yet, for driving sales. “It’s fair to say that we’ve been successful in terms of getting additional reach,” he says. “The question is whether that has translated into enough actual business to continue doing it. That remains to be seen.”

According to Gwen Seznec, Zooba Director of Client Services, advertising fees range from $25 to $40 per thousand, depending on the use of original content, logos, and other customized items. To date, however, the major drawback for many e-marketers may simply be the paucity of known targets: only about 20 million email names are said to be traded in direct-email lists, compared to hundreds of millions of names available the old fashioned way.

Pirates of New Delhi

Talk of international piracy may make some American publishers nod off at the conference table, but at a forum held in Frankfurt last month, the Indian anti-piracy daredevil Akash Chittranshi told tales that had even the most narcoleptic among us wide-eyed with suspense. An intellectual property lawyer based in New Delhi by day — and apparently an avid reader of cloak-and-dagger novels by night — Chittranshi has helped pull off nine daring raids on 40 different pirate publishers in India, rounding up 70,000 copies of pirated books to date.

One of the most celebrated Indian missions, reports PT’s correspondent, came last July, when a phalanx of 22 cops and 11 investigators swooped down on a Delhi warehouse after Chittranshi’s spies, posing as manual laborers, confirmed the whereabouts of a major pirate operation. The intricate 45-hour bust turned up scores of volumes from Grisham, Ludlum, and J.K. Rowling, and ended up being the biggest pirate haul in India’s history — more than 27,000 copies.

Unfortunately, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to copyright piracy, which AAP estimates put at an $8 billion loss last year for American publishers. For its part, the AAP hiked funding this year more than 100 percent to battle international copyright piracy. The $400,000 is hoped to bolster efforts such as those in India, which have also been aided by the British Publishers’ Association and the Indian Association of Publishers. Piracy experts note that even modest busts can be of paramount importance to medical and scientific publishers, as a hefty $300 engineering textbook can be pirated and sold for a fraction of the price. Moreover, sources say that in India, education programs have paid off: 90% of booksellers there now refuse to stock pirated copies. On the other hand, rogue traders still blithely take orders for illegal editions at open markets around New Delhi, and the police force has only a few officers to track what is said to be a sophisticated network of offenders.

In nearby Pakistan, half of the book market reportedly consists of pirated material, much of which is thought to find its way into Indian hands. And in Malaysia, copy shops happily take orders from schools, delivering photocopied texts to classrooms. But there’s hope. In Singapore, a new police division is targeting bulk photocopying, and last February, Korean agents nabbed 600,000 counterfeit English-language books worth $14.5 million. About 2,000 titles of bestsellers, textbooks, and other works were seized in a warehouse belonging to venerable distributor Han Shin. As officials complained, foreign publishers aren’t the only ones feeling the pain: “Korean students have been paying [the] full imported book retail price for Han Shin’s shoddy counterfeits.”

On the Block?

Sales of Book Businesses Plummet, But the Big Keep Getting Bigger

In the third quarter of this year, merger and acquisition activity in trade book and other consumer publishing segments plummeted more than 40%, according to industry figures tracked by investment banking firm Whitestone Communications. Despite a flurry of speculation over sales — for example, both Merriam-Webster and North-South were whispered to be making the rounds — we are told neither of these companies is currently on the block. Chalk it up to the rumor mill. But the on-again, off-again nature of sales across the entire publishing and information sector can be seen as a telling sign of the economic times. With smaller buyers sidelined by the economic downturn — and larger buyers skittish on deals as their market caps turn south — the result is less competition among bidders and hence sinking prices. “It’s a tough market to be selling into,” says one investment advisor. “Financial buyers can’t pay what they used to. And many of the mid-size companies up for sale don’t even raise the eyebrows of today’s big publishing conglomerates.”

It almost makes one nostalgic for the go-go ’80s, when junk bonds ruled the day and staid Boston banks were throwing cash to the wind as big companies of all stripes clamored to get book businesses under their belts. “Publishing was seen as a sexy industry,” recalls Bill Hammond, President of Publishing Strategy International. “Having a media property in your portfolio was highly desirable. But the sexiness seemed to fade away as the financial reality dawned.” Flash forward to September 11, and that dawn looks even grimmer as recent events put downward pressure on an already glum economy. “To tell the truth,” The Daily Deal moaned this week, “it’s been a wretched year for M&A as a whole.”

Wake Up and Smell the Margins

Perversely, such deal-deprivation for the book industry may mean more business as usual. “Generally, the large companies are going to continue to do acquisitions,” says Baran Rosen, Whitestone’s President. “They’re always looking to fill holes in their line, and they have the resources to do acquisitions year in and year out.” In other words, the big get bigger while the marginal get, well, more marginal. It’s a familiar story, especially for those who have weathered the boom-and-bust cycle of book-biz demand. In the early 1990s, for example, publishing companies lost their luster as free-wheeling financiers woke up to smell the profit margins. “The banks retrenched, and the debt component really went away,” Hammond says. “The deal flow for many years dried up.” But eventually, as the non-media conglomerates shed their suddenly unglamorous book assets, deals began to flow again when today’s book behemoths swallowed up the little fish in the pond. Ironically, the spigot has now run dry partly because all the deals have been done. “Due to the work of the previous decades, there simply aren’t a lot of acquisition targets,” says Hammond. “Norton is about the only one of any significant size that is left.”

There are still a few items on the block, though, including book distributor Consortium, which Hammond is helping to find a buyer. In Consortium’s case, 86-year-old owner Bill Brinton is selling the company “strictly for estate planning purposes.” The company remains sound, says Hammond, with first quarter fiscal year 2002 sales “considerably above” sales for the previous year. Others rumored to be for sale include Prentice Hall Direct, which like many in the direct mail business is facing a difficult climate. In fact, Prentice Hall corporate parent Pearson had planned to sell the company along with reference and business units to Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, a deal that fell through in 1998. (Other units were eventually sold, such as Macmillan General Reference, which went to IDG for $83 million.)

Some observers point out that such businesses are like the industry’s latchkey kids, orphaned by their unloving parents. Prentice Hall was acquired when Pearson bought Simon & Schuster’s business and professional operations, and was never a full-fledged family member. Many divisions “have been badly mismanaged by their parent companies for years,” says one industry observer. “Larger conglomerates are constantly manipulating these businesses for short-term profit. All these guys are waking up to the fact that it’s not as easy as it sounded.” (A Pearson spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.) On the other hand, analysts point out that some of these same companies, when well cared for, are not as subject to recessionary pressures as trade publishers. The professional segments of book publishing — including legal, medical, and educational publishers — are supposedly sitting prettiest. “They’re hardly impacted at all,” says Rosen. “That’s why those businesses always sell for the higher range of prices. They’re solid and reliable.”

Maybe the reference world has been spared, too. Reports that Merriam-Webster was on the block have now been quelled, despite a Wall Street Journal column in August announcing that parent company Encyclopaedia Britannica, “after stumbling in ambitious online efforts,” had sought buyers to raise fresh capital. Merriam-Webster, which has been owned by Britannica since the 1960s, was expected to sell for between $20 and $40 million. But we hear the sale was put off amid bidding from Random House, HarperCollins, and McGraw Hill, after executives decided the dictionary business wasn’t losing so much cash, after all. “Encyclopaedia Britannica has officially halted all activities relating to the possible sale of Merriam-Webster,” according to Arthur Bicknell, Merriam-Webster publicist. “It’s not true,” adds Britannica spokesman Tom Panelas, when asked about the possibility of a sale. He emphasized that Britannica is retooling in the wake of the Internet bust, hinting that the dictionary lines may prove a key asset in this regard. “Britannica is in a back-to-basics mode after several years of concentrating almost entirely on the Internet,” Panelas says. “We are diversifying our product line and going back to print, CD-ROM, and DVD. We’re also diversifying our product offerings and revenue streams on the Internet.”

Gorging on Growth

Despite such retrenchment, several investment advisors report that a variety of deals are still on the table. “We have more deals now than we’ve had in the last five years,” says Martin Levin of law firm Cowan, Liebowitz. The company’s last deal was selling Lyons Press to Globe Pequot, which is owned by Morris Communications. Unlike the larger players, Levin and colleagues are somewhat unusual in that they focus only on one deal at a time, and don’t take on a seller unless they feel they can close a deal. The firm turns down five opportunities for every one taken on. As for the boom in business, Levin notes that publishers who came of age after World War II are realizing that they’ve got to either pass the business baton to the next generation, or sell it. (In the case of Lyons Press, however, Nick Lyons’ son Tony is still with the company, under the new ownership.) Also boosting merger and acquisition vital signs is the fact that today’s conglomerates prefer to grow by gorging on other companies, which is “cheaper and faster” than internal growth.

Others agree that the downward trajectory of macro economic trends hasn’t necessarily harmed the book biz as a whole. “There clearly is a difference as you move from one sector to another,” says Kit van Tulleken of the eponymous M&A firm. “I don’t think you can look at general fiction with the same eye as you look at STM, or legal, or professional, or childrens. They all have different cycles.” Certainly, there are big deals to be consummated, at least in Europe: Cinven recently grabbed Vivendi’s business and health publications for $1.8 billion, and Finland’s Sanoma WSOY snapped up VNU’s Consumer Information Group for just over $1 billion. Even the trade side shows signs of life. “Hachette has just bought Octopus over here,” van Tulleken says of the recent UK purchase. “I suspect that the price wasn’t dramatically affected by September 11. I think it was a top price anyway.” In that transaction, the French publisher picked up the UK illustrated book group as “a new step in Hachette Livre’s international development in the anglophone arena,” the company said in a statement. (Hachette is itself owned by French media powerhouse Lagardère.) Yet in one sense, Hachette’s cross-border deal is the exception to the recessionary rule. In boom times, companies gunning for growth reach beyond their borders for new markets. But in tough times, says van Tulleken, contraction forces deal activity much closer to home.

And magazines? Don’t even go there. “This is a tough environment in terms of the outlook for the remainder of the year,” says David Libowitz, Managing Director at private equity firm Warburg Pincus. “Anything that’s advertising-related is difficult. We tend to focus on subscription-type businesses.” Another no-brainer is a glance at the share price of the media behemoths — who are now either unable or unlikely to cut big deals. “That absolutely will have an effect,” van Tulleken adds. Yet there’s still plenty of money around, and some bargains to be had. “Even in the good times, travel publishers are always for sale,” says Mark Pattis, partner in Next Chapter Holdings and former CEO of NTC/Contemporary, “and especially now.” In the end, though deals may be depressed, you can bet the market won’t lie fallow for long. “It’s like a crop,” sighs Martin Levin. “It keeps blooming, each and every year.”