More Pain for Book Publishing; EContent's 100 Companies that Matter

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 12/18/2008

This Week’s Library Journal Academic Newswire Marketplace Notes.

There’s more pain to end 2008 for book publishers. Following Random House’s recent reorganization, which saw the dismissal of two top veteran execs and many unnamed rank and filers, additional publishing stalwarts also have announced staff reductions, wage freezes, and other belt-tightening tactics. The holiday season started hard for 275 and perhaps more Houghton Mifflin Harcourt employees who received pink slips the first week of December. The layoffs followed an earlier announcement that the publisher temporarily had stopped purchasing new manuscripts, and the resignation of publisher Becky Saletan.

Macmillan also is feeling the pinch and terminated 64 staffers throughout its imprints as well as putting a hold on raises for employees with annual salaries of more than $50,000. The company additionally merged all its children’s imprints under the single umbrella of Macmillan’s Children’s Publishing Group, Publishers Weekly reported yesterday.

West Coast publishers apparently aren’t faring any better than their eastern counterparts in the current economic fallout: PW previously revealed that San Francisco-based Chronicle Books is laying off under five percent of its staff and reducing its 2010 adult list, which currently runs about 200 volumes annually. Chronicle president Jack Jensen cited a drop-off in backlist sales as the cause of the reductions—no doubt a similar story at other houses…

EBSCO, ProQuest, OCLC, and a cadre of other vendors serving the library market were listed on EContent magazine’s annual compilation of 100 “Companies that Matter Most in the Digital Content Industry.” Contending companies were judged by content and its management and other criteria and divided into categories (Classification & Taxonomy, Content Commerce, Content Delivery, etc.).

This year marks EBSCO’s eighth consecutive inclusion on the list, which launched in 2001. EContent editor-in-chief Michele Manafy said that “having earned a position on each of the eight EContent 100 lists, EBSCO demonstrates its long-term leadership of the digital information industry.” Similar sentiments could be extended to ProQuest and OCLC, also veterans that have placed consistently in the top 100 since the list's inception. Others in the library realm that made the grade are Ingram Digital, O’Reilly Media, Reed Elsevier, Springer Science, and Swets. Winners were selected by a panel of 12 judges, including former LITA president Walt Crawford…

Read more Newswire stories:

ARL: OCLC Review a Chance To Be Heard on Policy Change

At Last! Supreme Court Decision on Tasini Settlement Expected—in 2009

The Library Journal Academic Newswire Newsmaker Interview: Tim Mack, President of the World Future Society

Editor’s Note: The Library Journal Academic Newswire Will Return January 6, 2009