Distribution Daybook: Partly Cloudy in Florida

BookWorld Services, Inc., in Sarasota, Fla., had both good news and bad to start off the new year. On the sunny side, BookWorld is entering the Canadian market by signing on with Canadian Book Network, a one-year-old Toronto firm that uses Georgetown Publications for its fulfillment services. "We hope to fill an embarrassing gap," said BookWorld president Ronald Smith. "I'm looking for one or two million dollars out of that for the first year."

In less happy news, Smith announced that BookWorld is closing its Publisher Alliance division for self-publishers starting immediately. "It's really sad," he said. "We conscientiously get them stocked in Ingram and get them in databases. In 96 of one hundred cases, nothing else happens. There are no reorders; there is no bookstore demand. We calculated we received four times more telephone calls from self-publishers than from larger publishers with more books. The costs are just all out of proportion." BookWorld plans to keep on four Publisher Alliance presses.