New Name, Trade Unit For Samuel Weiser

New Boston Partners, LLC, which purchased Maine publisher and distributor Samuel Weiser Inc. in December (News, Dec. 11, 2000) is adding a trade imprint, Red Wheel, this fall and has hired 30 commission reps to sell to trade bookstores.

In addition, Weiser will open an office in Boston later this summer for editorial and sales. Weiser's York, Maine, office will continue to provide back-end functions and the warehouse will stay in Maine. To reflect the changes to the Weiser list, New Boston Partners has renamed both itself and its publishing company Red Wheel/Weiser. The distribution side, which handles 3,500 titles annually for 200 publishers, has been renamed Weiser Wholesale.

"I think this was the natural progression of what we had in mind when we purchased Weiser," Red Wheel/Weiser president and CEO Michael Kerber told PW about the broadening of the list. "We always wanted a trade side." While Kerber does not deny that he and Red Wheel/Weiser publisher Jan Johnson are still looking for other publishing houses to acquire, "right now," he said, "we'd really like to focus on growing the Red Wheel imprint and maintaining the Weiser list."

The Weiser imprint will continue to publish 24 books a year, primarily in what Kerber referred to as "theory books" about esoterica, and will maintain an active backlist of more than 400 titles. The Red Wheel imprint, on the other hand, said Johnson, is more about "practice," and its titles fall into the spiritual self-help category. "We're not reinventing the wheel," she quipped about the name, which reflects her and Kerber's desire to have people turn to Red Wheel for inspiration.

The Red Wheel imprint will start off with about 12 books a year. Among the first books will be Love, Light, and Laughter: Secrets of the Enchanted Couple, by husband-wife team Monte Farber and Amy Zerner, and a book-and-CD package by singer and medium Carol Lynne, Heart and Sound, on sending prayer energy out into the universe and getting it back.