Last week a Publisher’s Weekly report that Harcourt Houghton Mifflin (HMH) had put a freeze on acquiring new books sent a tremor through the book world. But as the matter has begun to shake out, it seems the report was a bit overblown—or, at least that’s what is being heard from the folks at HMH.
Today we read in an AP article by Hillel Italie that the freeze is news to Otto Penzler, whose Otto Penzler Books is an HMH imprint. Mr Penzler doesn’t work at the HMH offices so he called to find out whether the story was true. Apparently he was told the report was blown out of proportion and that he could keep buying books—his is mystery book imprint and he releases about 6-8 titles per year.
According to the AP article, Penzler says the information came from a high-level Harcourt Houghton executive, whom he declined to publicly name, saying he wanted to preserve the official’s privacy.
The book world was stunned Monday by a posting on the Web site of Publishers Weekly that HMH had “temporarily stopped” buying books, the latest shock resulting from the economic crisis. HMH is the publisher of Philip Roth, Nobel laureate Guenter Grass and one of the literary world’s most lucrative franchises, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Houghton Mifflin acquired Harcourt in 2007. Their owner, the private-equity concern Education Media and Publishing Group, has acknowledged that rival publishers have expressed interest in buying HMH, leading to broad speculation in the industry that the announced halt in buying was a prelude to the company’s sale.
More from the AP article: “To the best of my knowledge, the company is not being shopped,” HMH spokesman Josef Rosenfeld said Wednesday. He would not comment on whether other publishers had approached HMH.
Rosenfeld has called the current policy “freeze-lite,” although cracks keep appearing. Rosenfeld confirmed that education and children’s books are still being acquired, did not dispute Penzler’s assertions and added that the “right” book, of any kind, would still be considered. He said talk of a freeze had been taken out of context.
“A headline about a freeze is very appealing, but in reality all we’re doing is taking a good, hard look at everything that comes in, much the way this company is watching all expenses and expenditures,” he said. “It’s just a higher degree of scrutiny.”
Asked if agents should continue submitting manuscripts to HMH, Rosenfeld said, “I don’t see why not.”
At LFR we find the whole idea of a freeze sort of an interesting way to attack the practice of ridiculously high advances being paid. While HMH may not technically be in a freeze, it’s our bet that they won’t be in the running to win any mega-auctions. This could very well be the beginning of the end for agents and authors shopping for huge advances. In fact, this could be the signal that we could be witnessing the rebirth of the publishing industry of old—the industry operated by book people rather than deal makers. We might return to the era when the book and the author were able to sink or swim on merits. Wouldn’t that be nice!
