This seems like an important article to post a link to here - it's about the bankruptcy of Publisher's Group West's parent company and how it has affected over 130 small press publishers. This is really bad news, folks. Here's the link:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/27/MNG9DNQ8TM1.DTLAnd here's the first few paragraphs:
A financial thriller in the publishing world
- Ilana DeBare, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, January 27, 2007
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.
Among them are more than two dozen Bay Area publishers whose works range from Dave Eggers' novels and Deepak Chopra's inspirational writings to business books, Buddhist books and the "Here Comes the Guide" wedding planning book.
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.
At the time of the bankruptcy filing, the company owed nearly $1 million to Amber-Allen, a San Rafael publisher of personal growth books such as the best-selling "The Four Agreements," by Don Miguel Ruiz. It owed $600,000 to McSweeney's Books, the San Francisco press started by Eggers.