On the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Acquisition Freeze

It's the news heard 'round the publishing world (so of course, it happened while I was traveling.) There's lots of panic and teeth-gnashing, but Colleen Lindsay also advises some necessary caution on the whole Chicken Little atmosphere, since this sort of thing has been happening all the time, just without the fanfare:

Look, when two large publishers like Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin merge, it only makes sense that they'd put a temporary hold on further acquisitions until they've had a chance to assess all of the properties they already own. After all, they've just doubled their editorial inventory. One thing a newly-merged publisher is going to try very hard not to do is to cancel contracts; canceling contracts leads to a lack of confidence in the publishing company and that's never a good thing.

So if canceling a lot of contracts isn't an option, then what?

A smart solution might be to just slow down or stop buying for a while. Take a fiscal breather, as it were. Because the truth is that - right now - there's probably no room for new manuscripts in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's inventory.

And if the rumor's true that this moratorium will be lifted after the first of the year, perhaps panicking is overrated.

Except that let's be honest: if there was an acquisition freeze on at, say, Wiley or Rodale, there wouldn't be nearly as much chatter (consider that Rodale's layoffs hardly registered on the book front, more as a footnote to the ongoing magazine die-off.) But Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt merging meant squashing together two houses of literary merit with authors whose names are recognized by common people and literati alike. They already went through some brutal rounds of layoffs and presented a cheery face just last month, both publicly and in private conversation. So the freeze sends a bad symbolic signal, even if it probably only means taking stock of what's already in play for the next year.

So no, we're not in panic mode, not yet. But as long as Riverdeep, HMH's parent company, continues to take a bath and the economy stays moribund (or worsens in the first quarter of '09), the gloom feels rather warranted, even if it's only a metaphorical sign of what may well come in other places.

Comments

[Scott Phillips]

Sarah,

Speak for yourself. A am in full panic mode.

xox

Scott

[Scott Phillips]

I meant to type that "I" was in full panic mode--a statement evidenced by my inability to copyedit myself before posting.

SP

[Declan Burke]

I'm with Scott. This is tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. Maybe all the big publishing houses will implode and we'll see a whole lot of small indie houses. Or else Amazon will buy up everything and publish three novels a year. 2009 for Year Zero, anyone?

[John Dishon]

Bring on the small indie houses, I say.

[Naomi]

I think it'll be tougher for small indie presses who publish exclusively in print. There might be some interesting possibilities with e-books.

[Charles Ardai]

I agree that it'll be tough for indie presses -- at least as much so as for the big guys. But anyone who looks to e-books as the (or even a) source of succor is fooling himself. The possibilities with e-books are, indeed, interesting, but for the foreseeable future, they're not remunerative. Especially for fiction.

[GFS3]

There's always TV.