Independent which brought the Millennium trilogy to millions of English-language readers puts company up for sale
The publisher behind The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, independent press Quercus, has put itself up for sale in what it has described as a "challenging" and "increasingly competitive" book market in the UK.
The 10-year-old independent publisher, which has had one of the biggest literary hits of recent years in the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, said last week that it was expecting "a significant trading loss" for 2013. This follows disappointing sales in the last quarter of 2013, "due in part to continuing issues within the book trade which led retailers to adopt very conservative ordering policies", Quercus said, as well as "a lower than expected upturn in digital sales over the Christmas period to the end of the year".
The news of the fall in sales has now been followed by Quercus's announcement to the stock market that it would be "in the best interests" of its shareholders to seek a buyer. As well as Larsson's tales of the hacker Lisbeth Salander – which have sold more than 75m copies in 50 countries – Quercus, founded in 2004, is also home to Stef Penney's Costa-winning novel The Tenderness of Wolves, and to bestselling writers William Nicholson and Peter May. At the end of last year, it announced it would be publishing a fourth book in Larsson's Millennium series, based on the Swedish author's creations but written by David Lagercrantz, in 2015.
Chief executive Mark Smith said it would be "business as usual" at the publisher while it looks for a buyer, and that "there won't be any effect on the publishing programme".
"We feel that with the resources a larger partner would bring to Quercus, we would be able to compete more effectively in an increasingly competitive market here in the UK," Smith told the Guardian.
With volume sales of books in the UK falling to 184m, an 11-year low, in 2013, according to figures from the Bookseller, Quercus is not the only independent publisher hit by difficult financial times. Last week, Atlantic Books announced that after a "tough" two years, its editor-in-chief Ravi Mirchandani – who acquired and published Aravind Adiga's Booker prize-winning novel The White Tiger – would be leaving the company "by mutual agreement", and that there would be further redundancies and financial restructuring at the company.
"Publishers are looking at a perfect storm of a struggling high-street sector leading to a lack of visibility for their titles on shelves, and flagging ebook sales," said the Bookseller's editor Philip Jones. "The slight unreality provided by the outlandish ebook growth of the past three years is coming to an end, meaning publishers will again be reliant on hits and strong discovery channels to grow their businesses."
Independent presses, said Jones, have "had a good run" thanks to strong ebook sales, "and that is coming to an end". Add this to the fact that "it's not business as normal, as the high street is more damaged now than it was three years ago", and "we are all waking up to a new reality, which has come more suddenly than many thought".
"Quercus always lived close to the edge, as many new companies and independents have to," said Jones. "It survived the post-Stieg downturn, and let's hope it can do so again – albeit perhaps in a corporate environment." Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.
The publisher behind The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, independent press Quercus, has put itself up for sale in what it has described as a "challenging" and "increasingly competitive" book market in the UK.
The 10-year-old independent publisher, which has had one of the biggest literary hits of recent years in the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, said last week that it was expecting "a significant trading loss" for 2013. This follows disappointing sales in the last quarter of 2013, "due in part to continuing issues within the book trade which led retailers to adopt very conservative ordering policies", Quercus said, as well as "a lower than expected upturn in digital sales over the Christmas period to the end of the year".
The news of the fall in sales has now been followed by Quercus's announcement to the stock market that it would be "in the best interests" of its shareholders to seek a buyer. As well as Larsson's tales of the hacker Lisbeth Salander – which have sold more than 75m copies in 50 countries – Quercus, founded in 2004, is also home to Stef Penney's Costa-winning novel The Tenderness of Wolves, and to bestselling writers William Nicholson and Peter May. At the end of last year, it announced it would be publishing a fourth book in Larsson's Millennium series, based on the Swedish author's creations but written by David Lagercrantz, in 2015.
Chief executive Mark Smith said it would be "business as usual" at the publisher while it looks for a buyer, and that "there won't be any effect on the publishing programme".
"We feel that with the resources a larger partner would bring to Quercus, we would be able to compete more effectively in an increasingly competitive market here in the UK," Smith told the Guardian.
With volume sales of books in the UK falling to 184m, an 11-year low, in 2013, according to figures from the Bookseller, Quercus is not the only independent publisher hit by difficult financial times. Last week, Atlantic Books announced that after a "tough" two years, its editor-in-chief Ravi Mirchandani – who acquired and published Aravind Adiga's Booker prize-winning novel The White Tiger – would be leaving the company "by mutual agreement", and that there would be further redundancies and financial restructuring at the company.
"Publishers are looking at a perfect storm of a struggling high-street sector leading to a lack of visibility for their titles on shelves, and flagging ebook sales," said the Bookseller's editor Philip Jones. "The slight unreality provided by the outlandish ebook growth of the past three years is coming to an end, meaning publishers will again be reliant on hits and strong discovery channels to grow their businesses."
Independent presses, said Jones, have "had a good run" thanks to strong ebook sales, "and that is coming to an end". Add this to the fact that "it's not business as normal, as the high street is more damaged now than it was three years ago", and "we are all waking up to a new reality, which has come more suddenly than many thought".
"Quercus always lived close to the edge, as many new companies and independents have to," said Jones. "It survived the post-Stieg downturn, and let's hope it can do so again – albeit perhaps in a corporate environment." Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.