LibrarianActivist.org

For fans of the hipster indie publisher McSweeney’s, oodles of books and other emphemera (like a one line apology to your girl/boyfriend written by Miranda July) are up on the hawk block. In their words, “every single thing we’ve got is on sale”.

Why the madness? Independent news source Salon.com writes a great piece about how the small press world is dealing with the bankruptcy of Advanced Marketing Services, the parent company of Publishers Group West, that took care of the sales and marketing for approximately 130 independent publishers. According to Salon, it wasn’t the fanciful, bright eyed, ’support the little guy distributor’ PGW that was in financial trouble.

“Ironically, PGW — the largest American distributor of independent publishers — was by all accounts having its best year ever, and the financial troubles of AMS, a corporate giant that mainly distributed to wholesalers like Costco and Sam’s Club, brought it down. AMS filed for Chapter 11 on Dec. 29, a result of being unable to bounce back from SEC and FBI investigations into its advertising accounting practices — which led to three executive indictments — and a class-action suit on behalf of its shareholders. As Horowitz points out, ‘It wasn’t the indie distributor; it was a big, old-fashioned corporation with accounting problems.’”

Un-fans of McSweeneys might want to throw their support to another indie publisher, like Cleis. However not every small press outfit was equipped to deal with this; the mergers and additional bankruptcies have already started. Salon.com reports that Soft Skull, Hugh Lauter Levin and Inner Ocean were absorbed by larger publishers, while Carroll & Graf and Thunder’s Mouth, two Avalon Publishing Group imprints, folded.

The good news (sort of) is that another company, Perseus, took PGW over keeping much of it intact. The downside is that this results in consolidation of distribution for 300+ indie publishers under one company - a bit precarious for the industry should Perseus run into trouble.

McSweeneys approach is a testament to how any bunch of creative and independent maverick thinkers would deal with such a blow. To illustrate … (and yes, I like lists).

1) through derivative ideas. according to the McSweeneys website, Fantagraphics salvaged their company from a similar situation a few years ago.
2) using the Internet. cyberspace being a quick and effective ad hoc distributor of a shout out (but no substitute for the actual distributor).
3) through community. with love and support, their authors and loyal readership have come to their aid in a jiff.

Despite the alarm this raises, the deals to be had are awesome. Collection development librarians and avid readers alike can pick up some interesting titles by ordering online.

i) 50% off backlisted books
ii) 30% off new books
iii) $5 off subscriptions - including an ‘instant gratification’ subscription if you haven’t gotten your fix lately
iv) gift certificates - why limit your gift buying to birthdays and special occasions?

All of this flags the challenge for librarians in keeping their collections diverse in the age of outsourcing. Discussion around this issue calls for its own post, me-thinks. In the meantime, here are a few articles.

Rude, R. I. (2001). Academic libraries and social responsibility: The what? so what? and what now? Catholic Library World, 72(2), 94-98.

Manoff, M. (1999). Outsourcing selection in academic libraries. Technical Services Quarterly, 16(4), 67-70.

Knuth, R., & Bair-Mundy, D. G. (1998). Revolt over outsourcing: Hawaii’s librarians speak out about contracted selection. Collection Management, 23(1/2), 81-112.

Atton, C. (1994). Beyond the mainstream: Examining alternative sources for stock selection. Library Review, 43(4), 57-64.

Hitchcock Mort, K. A., & Mort, K. A. H. (1983). Small and alternative press acquisitions. Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory, 7(3), 233-238.

-PC-