As if the economic downturn in an already soft publishing environment wasn’t trouble enough. GalleyCat offers some insider reaction on the heels of publisher Rebecca Saletan’s resignation and the earlier bizarre announcement of an acquisitions freeze:
This observer went on to express the opinion that Saletan should receive none of the blame for HMH’s downward spiral over the last two weeks—praising the way in which she was able to distill the combined resources of Hougton Mifflin and Harcourt into an effective publishing house (and noting that Saletan’s Harcourt was, before the merger, probably the more attractive of the two trade publishing programs from a business standpoint). “This is because the company was overleveraged by bankers,” the insider asserted, citing the $7 billion debt incurred by the private equity firm Education Media and Publishing Group when it bought Houghton Mifflin in 2006 and Harcourt in 2007. The publishing veteran compared the situation to the recent mismanagement and degradation of major American financial institutions, fuming: “Those fuckers have destroyed two venerable publishing houses in less than a fucking year.”
They are a bunch of crooks, They fucked everyone!
Care to elaborate, Mssr Jeff? I’m in the biz myself, and have suffered through layoffs before, so I really know the brutal feeling of cuts firsthand. Though such wholesale changes have to be particularly awful. Would love to hear more of the story from an insider’s perspective.