Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Enters Bankruptcy Process

Yes, one of my publishers did just enter a Chapter 11 bankruptcy for about 3 billion dollars. You can read the New York Times article about it here.

What I remember from working in publishing back in the day, back when Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt were two separate companies, is that their scholarly divisions (all those anthologies you had to read for English class) outweighed their trade by quite a lot of titles, and scholarly divisions are typically a Giant Mess. [UPDATE: apparently the scholarly divisions weren’t too bad; it was the tiny digital company who bought them that added to the fray… As you can see, this is a complicated subject.]

All that aside, the trade books division of (now) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a very strong trade books division, including titles like The Lord of the Rings and The Princess Bride. My little fairy tale is in very good company.

Chapter 11 is a restructuring…and while $3 billion is a lot to restructure, it’s not impossible. Some of you may have visions of Dorchester dancing in your heads, but don’t. Remain calm. HMH is going to pull through this, I am sure. And so will Enchanted. Please continue to purchase the book and audiobook (Brilliance Audio is doing just fine!) and move about your day as if nothing happened.

That’s what I’m doing.

[UPDATE post on the HMH Bankruptcy here.]

xox

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Please note: The Enchanted hardcover is the only title I have under the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt umbrella. The Enchanted audiobook, the AlphaOops books, and The Wonderland Alphabet are all with other publishers. I encourage you to please order books from these publishers (if you haven’t already) to support my writing. I have some handy-dandy links for you right here: http://aletheakontis.com/2012/05/amazon-affiliate-links/