Houghton Mifflin Harcourt filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, from which it has already emerged. Schools are buying fewer textbooks, which has hit the company hard.
NewsCorp is splitting its entertainment and publishing properties into separate companies. Newspaper circulation is in a nosedive, and this is before Rupert Murdoch’s empire got embroiled in the recent hacking scandal. Rather than risk that sullied reputation dragging down the entire corporation, Murdoch seeks to mitigate its impact by effectively keeping it in quarantine. Of course, losing money on news operations is exactly what NewsCorp deserves, after bribing cops and hacking a dead girl’s phone. As HarperCollins will be part of this new company, the book publisher’s financial performance will be even more important to make up the difference. In short, it looks like Harper just got thrown under the bus.
And it finally seems like Dorchester Publishing may have a buyer — Amazon. I think it’s a smart move on Amazon’s part. If the deal goes through, Amazon has promised to honor all the debts incurred by Dorchester. Hopefully this means all those authors who got screwed over in the Leisure debacle will at last receive the royalties for which they’ve waited years.
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