Publishing News Shutting Down
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 7/15/2008 12:03:00 PM
The U.K. book trade weekly Publishing News is shutting down. The July 25 issue will be its last. The 29-year-old magazine attributed the closure to advertisers’ shifting their spending to online and direct sales.
PN founder and chairman Fred Newman said, "This has been a sad and difficult decision to make, but the nature of the book trade, which today offers a multiplicity of ways for publishers to sell books both to booksellers and to consumers, has changed dramatically. For the biggest book publishers, the trade press is now only one of many options for the promotion and sale of their titles." Closing of the magazine will result in the elimination of eight positions. Among the departing editors are editor Liz Thomson, deputy editor Roger Tagholm, Rodney Burbeck and Ralph Baxter.
PN’s parent company, Publishing News Ltd., will continue to organize the British Book Awards, and its joint venture with the BA, the Christmas Books Catalogue, will continue as well. BML, a research agency for the book business that PN Ltd. bought in 2003, will also continue and will present its Books and the Consumer Conference in March 2009. Managing director Jo Henry, who took over as managing director of PN Ltd. nine months ago, said, "It was clear from the outset that the job was going to be a challenge, and I’m only sorry that time ran out for the excellent and highly experienced team here to fully enact the plans we had for the future of the company as a whole."
PW partnered with PN on several special publications, including Show Dailies at the London and Frankfurt book fairs.
