Publishers Monitor West Coast Ports Developments

The 10-day lockout of dock workers at 29 West Coast ports had only a slight impact on publishers before a court, at the urging of President Bush, ordered port operators to end their lockout of longshoremen last week while the judge considered the president's request for an 80-day cooling-off period. The lockout will delay shipments by about two weeks, something publishers said they must adjust for. In addition, publishers said they will continue to monitor the situation to see if they need to consider alternatives to printing in Asia.

Tim Cooper, v-p of strategic operations for Harcourt, said the company was just beginning to experience delays before the court ordered an end to the lockout. Despite the halt to the lockout, Cooper said Harcourt will continue with its contingency planning. Among the possible alternatives are air freighting and shifting work to other plants overseas and in the U.S. None of the alternatives, Cooper said, are attractive from a financial or scheduling standpoint.

Glenn D'Agnes, COO at HarperCollins, said the company had to make alternative arrangements for a couple of children's titles, but for the most part, its books arrived before the docks were closed. If a permanent settlement isn't reached soon, HC may consider doing reprints in the U.S. "It's on the radar screen," D'Agnes said. A spokesperson for Scholastic said the company had begun moving reprints to Mexico and domestic printers where needed. Simon & Schuster spokesperson Adam Rothberg said its new titles all made it to shore, but that some reprints "were stuck on the water."

Mark Ouimet, executive v-p of marketing at PGW, told PW, "We do have a number of books delayed offshore. There are some children's and illustrated titles, and there may be a couple of big books, but some books came in early." He said the situation bears watching, but noted "it's not dire."

One of the PGW books floating offshore belongs to author Vicki Lansky. Lansky is the publisher of Book Peddlers, a Minnesota small press. She's also the author of Book Peddlers' Toilet Training: A Practical Guide, a title previously published by Bantam, that has sold more than 275,000 copies.

Bantam let the book go out of print, so Lansky took the rights back and has a new edition packaged with Koko Bear's New Potty. There are about 10,000 copies stuck on an unloaded ship. "They arrived off shore two weeks ago," but Lansky said she isn't too worried yet about the delay, since the book has a December pub date.