Scores of independent publishing houses have faced possible shutdown in the past two months, due to the bankruptcy of the corporation that owns Publishers Group West, a major distributor in the indie book world.The Berkeley firm distributed books for over 130 small presses, including McSweeney’s, the San Francisco publishing house founded by Dave Eggers. PGW’s parent company, Advanced Marketing Services, declared bankruptcy on December 29, causing the suspension of all payments to the publishing houses under PGW. McSweeney’s alone is owed $600,000 in profits from the last quarter of 2006, by far the busiest season of the year in terms of book sales.
The bankruptcy has been doubly frustrating for McSweeney’s, as all profits from the sale of Eggers’s best-selling, National Book Award-nominated new novel, What Is the What, were to go to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation. Valentino is the subject of Eggers’s novel, one of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan, and the foundation is raising money to put Sudanese refugees in America through college (see “Indulge Me,” by Christopher Gray, February 16).
The majority of the publishers affected by the AMS bankruptcy — including McSweeney’s — have salvaged their businesses by signing on with a new distributor, the New York-based Perseus Books. Eli Horowitz, managing editor of McSweeney’s, confirms that all publishers signing on with Perseus will receive 70 cents for each dollar they’re owed by AMS/PGW, and that Perseus has “agreed to make a donation directly to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, so that should be mostly unhurt.”
PGW is credited with playing a strong role in the proliferation of independent books into large chain stores in the 1990s thanks to their personal, dedicated relationships with both publishers and bookstores. Horowitz expresses optimism that Perseus will continue to serve McSweeney’s and other publishers with as much loyalty, and says their donation to Valentino’s foundation bodes well for that.
