Berkshire to Become Trade Book House

After packaging reference works for other publishers, Berkshire Publishing Group LLC in Great Barrington, Mass., which was founded five years ago by Karen Christensen and her husband, David Levinson, is making plans to become a full-fledged publishing house.

In July, the company will release its first reference volumes under the Berkshire imprint (although the books will not be offered at a trade book discount), the two-book Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, edited by William Sims Bainbridge, which will be made available online in September. Meanwhile, Berkshire will continue to package books, such as the Congressional Quarterly's forthcoming Encyclopedia of Global Perspectives on the U.S. (June 2005), and will move into trade book publishing in 2006.

For CEO Christensen, starting a publishing imprint "is exciting. David and I don't like being put in a box. In 2005, we'll do two big reference sets that can vary from two to five volumes and three smaller ones. In 2006, we'll do three trade books and then build to 10 trade books a year."

To help with the transition to independent publisher, Berkshire hired Steve Hibbard, former CEO of Lonely Planet in Melbourne, Australia. He is currently living in western Massachusetts and will become a company director when he returns to Australia later this year. Hibbard said he's helping Christensen and Levinson "put together a business plan." He also said he sees a number of similarities between Berkshire and Lonely Planet: both were started by husband-and-wife teams, and "The encyclopedia is a great way to organize a body of information; a guide book is a great way to organize information about a place."

Both Christensen and her husband collaborate on many of Berkshire's titles, such as Berkshire's Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World (Sage), which they edited and which was selected as a Best Reference Source 2004 by both RUSA/American Library Association and Library Journal. The couple also rely on a network of 12,000 experts for contributions for projects that they package and publish.

Even with the changes at Berkshire, Christensen still makes time for her own writing. MQ Publications will publish her newest book, The Armchair Environmentalist: Three-Minute Action Plan to Save the World (Oct.), both here and in the U.K.