PW: LB Canada Closes Down

"We've had our own Canadian operation for the last 11 years," explained Rick Hall, executive v-p, finance and operations at Time Warner Trade Publishing. "We looked at the size of it and it was difficult to create a profit." he said.

Kim McArthur, president and publisher, presided over a staff of seven and a dozen commission sales reps to produce about C$20 million in annual revenues. She said the company was profitable. McArthur also began an indigenous Canadian publishing program, with annual sales of about C$3.5 million from books by such bestselling authors as Maeve Binchy, Joanna Trollope, Bryce Courtenay and Richard Ford, for which she bought Canadian rights. Her list also included an eclectic roster of Canadian authors, with sales estimated at C$500,000 annually. Order fulfillment was handled by Little, Brown's U.S. warehouse in Indiana.

At the same time, Warner titles were sold through Canadian book distributor H.B. Fenn. "We knew we needed to consolidate for efficiency purposes," Hall said. "There was no real good answer."

It might make sense, in theory, to ship books into Canada as if it were a northern state, but books must be cleared across the border and then reshipped to customers. Harold Fenn, who last year opened a new warehouse in Bolton, Ont., outside Toronto, can hold all the Little, Brown and Warner inventory for Canada on site. Among the other lines represented by Fenn are St. Martin's Press mass market, Tor Books, Macmillan U.S. general reference titles and lists from 30 smaller houses.

Among those most upset by the change are Little Brown's Canadian authors, notably Katherine Govier, Barry Callaghan and Marsha Boulton, and publisher and mystery writer Anna Porter. Fenn, who founded his company in 1977 after a 17-year career with Coles Bookstores, at the moment has only a limited publishing program.