Publishers Weekly - March 7, 2016

Noting the last-minute cancellation of the previous attempt to buy Perseus, Pietsch said he was “very happy to be at this point.” He sees the purchase as “a big step in expanding our range and expertise in a wide number of new nonfiction categories.” Pietsch said he has no plans to make major changes in Perseus’s publishing operations. “They have been publishing brilliantly, and we want to help them be even better,” he said. Perseus publishes about 500 new titles annually and had estimated sales of about $100 million.

In about six months, HBG plans to move Perseus’s New York City employees into its own offices in Manhattan. HBG also intends to move the Da Capo Boston staff to HBG’s Boston office. The purchase adds three cities to HBG’s operational map, with Perseus having offices in Philadelphia; Boulder, Colo.; and Berkeley, Calif.

Ingram president Shawn Morin said it
is the company’s attention to operate
Perseus’s four distribution groups—
PGW, Consortium, Perseus Distribution
Services, and Legato Publishers Group—
alongside its existing Ingram Publisher
Services group. The combination of IPS
and the Perseus distribution group
will handle distribution for more than
600 clients. The Perseus distribution
group has client revenue of about
$300 million. Phil Ollila, Ingram’s
chief content officer, will oversee the
combined distribution unit.

The purchase includes Perseus’s Jackson, Tenn., warehouse and its Constellation digital asset management and distribution service, as well as a U.K. office, which will let Ingram expand its footprint there, Morin noted.

For Morin, the most exciting aspect of the purchase is that it continues Ingram’s transformation into a service provider for publishers in both physical and digital markets. —Jim Milliot purchase of Black Dog and Leventhal.

The Perseus acquisition adds another 6,000 titles to HBG, about 80% of which are nonfiction.

When the Perseus deal is done, which is expected by the end of March, HBG will make the Perseus publishing group a new division under Susan Weinberg, a long-time Perseus executive who has served most recently as senior v-p and group publisher. Weinberg will join HBG’s executive management board as senior v-p and publisher of Perseus Books, reporting directly to HBG CEO Michael Pietsch.

Perseus comprises nine imprints: Avalon Travel, Basic Books, Basic Civitas, Da Capo Lifelong Books, Da Capo Press, PublicAffairs, Running Press, Seal Press, and Westview Press. The publisher also has partnerships with the Economist, the Nation Institute, Participant Media, and the Weinstein Company.