As New York’s book world tried to make sense of Rebecca Saletan‘s abrupt resignation from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt yesterday, a publishing insider familiar with the situation told us that many at the beleaguered company—already trying to cope with the public fumbling by its corporate spokespeople over whether it’s stopped acquiring books or just buying fewer of them—were just as surprised as the rest of us. Rumors flew around the Union Square office that some sort of announcement was planned yesterday afternoon, we’re told, but the word didn’t go out until early that evening. (Otto Penzler told the AP she called him that day; the time is unspecified.) “I don’t think anybody knew what to expect,” our source said. “It’s all so bizarre… Nobody could see this coming.”
This observer went on to express the opinion that Saletan should receive none of the blame for HMH’s downward spiral over the last two weeks—praising the way in which she was able to distill the combined resources of Hougton Mifflin and Harcourt into an effective publishing house (and noting that Saletan’s Harcourt was, before the merger, probably the more attractive of the two trade publishing programs from a business standpoint). “This is because the company was overleveraged by bankers,” the insider asserted, citing the $7 billion debt incurred by the private equity firm Education Media and Publishing Group when it bought Houghton Mifflin in 2006 and Harcourt in 2007. The publishing veteran compared the situation to the recent mismanagement and degradation of major American financial institutions, fuming: “Those fuckers have destroyed two venerable publishing houses in less than a fucking year.”
Speculation abounds as to what happens next; a statement by Education Media president Jeremy Dickens last week that the company would consider “a transaction that makes sense for all of our stakeholders” leads many to believe Houghton and Harcourt may be up for sale again. In the meantime, HMH vice-president and editor-in-chief Andrea Schulz is a likely candidate to fill the position Saletan has vacated… but whoever gets that job, with the flow of new acquisitions reduced to a trickle until further notice, one might ask: What will being the publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt mean in 2009?