Author Solutions Buys Yet Another Rival

Online self-publishing company Author Solutions (we're not calling them "vanity presses" anymore?) has bought rival Trafford Publishing, a Canada-based brick-and-mortar vanity press that has published more than 15,000 authors from 120 companies. This is just three months after Author Solutions purchased Xlibris. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. ASI has more than 900 employees worldwide, and now Trafford's 95 employees will be added to the mix. Geoffrey Reid, CEO of Trafford, told the Wall Street Journal that the purchase gives his employees greater security. He will remain CEO of Trafford after the sale. According to the WSJ, self-publishing is hot, hot, hot: 411,000 books with ISBNs were published last year and "a significant number of those were do-it-yourself authors," according to Albert Greco, a professor at the Fordham Graduate School of Business who studies the book industry. Author Solutions' chief executive Kevin Weiss says the company will have $100 million in revenue in 2009. Full release after the jump. BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (April 6, 2009) â€“ Author Solutions (ASI), the world leader in indie book publishing â€“ the fastest-growing segment of book publishing, announced Monday the acquisition of the publishing assets of Trafford Publishing of Victoria, British Columbia. Since its founding, Trafford has helped more than 15,000 authors from more than 120 countries publish and bring to market nearly 20,000 new titles. "As more and more authors turn to indie book publishing, we are seeing strong double-digit growth in North America as well as the UK, and we believe the time is right to accelerate our international expansion. The Trafford brand gives us a platform to help more writers become published authors around the globe," said Kevin Weiss, ASI president and chief executive officer. Established in 1995, Trafford was the world's first company to offer an on-demand publishing service and an early adopter of the Internet bookstore model. Weiss added, "Trafford's strong Canadian and UK presence and roster of more than 15,000 authors make it a valuable addition to our family of author services brands." In 2008, the ASI author services brands brought to market more than 21,000 new titles, including one out of every 20 new titles put into distribution in the U.S. Overall, ASI's catalog now includes more than 120,000 titles from more than 85,000 authors.

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Author Solutions Buys Yet Another Rival

Rachel Kaufman

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Rachel Kaufman