Rick Simonson

Random Buy and Buy

Word came of Random House's acquisition of Watson-Guptill just as the Macmillan stack of catalogs was being looked through - seeing what was what for the coming season. Several 'random' thoughts came to mind, including the 'name life' Watson titles have had since they left off being on their own only a short time ago. Watson did its own sales, distribution, and billing for years via commission reps. In computer systems like our bookstore's, Watson-Guptill titles were Watson-Guptill. Then they were picked up by the entity known at the time as Holtzbrinck. By the time all the prefixes were finally corraled, the whole caboodle was re-tagged Macmillan. Now, when it's time, said prefixes will mosey over to Random - there to no doubt to be additionally put to use by other Random titles needing isbns.

That isn't the core of the news, though. Sometimes it seems that as big as some publishers get, they tend to box themselves out of whole kinds of books they don't feel they can publish: it could be translated fiction (this seems to be changing), it could be poetry, it could be a concentrated of high-level academically-inclined titles (the old Basic, the old Free Press), the quickly produced polemic. Overlooked in these kinds of conversations had with others has been the whole array of larger format art, design, architecture, photography, and other kindred titles.

Of the larger houses, only Harper, with its Harper Design imprint, seems to actively, consistently keep its hand in this kind of publishing. Hachette/Little, Brown for years handled the New York Graphic Society, which then segued into Bulfinch Editions, which now mostly seems to be keeping Ansel Adams in print. (New York Graphic Society has re-constituted and -emerged otherwise.) Viking Studio went away, I think, and now, seems to be back Knopf does the title here and there. When Jacqueline Onassis was at Doubleday, that house often published large-scale visual books. 

This isn't Random's first acquisition this way, either - the current fall selling season sees the Random Green sales force coming in with Monacelli.

It's dicey publishing - not all done the same way novels, memoirs, most cookbooks, and children's books are published, and when things don't work out, the loss seems magnified.

The companies doing the most publishing - albeit not into the same niches as Watson - Abrams, Taschen, Phaidon, Rizzoli (whose sales are handled by Random) - all publish here in the context of publishing internationally. This is probably not to the good in the U.S. for these companies right now, what with the weak dollar. There are others who also play significant roles - D.A.P in a class by itself, and then Yale, and some other university presses.

Watson, at least, to outside eyes, looks very much the stable, smart enterprise, publishing into a market that's been there, and will be. One hopes the 'absorption' goes well for all concerned - better than it seems (to these eyes) to have worked in Random's attempt to go evangelical via Multnomah. And there are further moves that can be remembered: way back when Crown was acquired, mostly so that Random could have Outlet, a premium remainder house. No sooner, it seems, that Outlet became Random House Value but that the whole thing lost most value. Thankfully, Crown itself, once a seeming appendage to Outlet, would grow and flourish within the Random realm. 

Posted by Rick Simonson on May 15, 2008 | Comments (0)