In a conversation among GalleyCat readers about last week’s layoffs at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one participant discussed the HMH situation in relation to the layoffs and corporate restructurings at other publishers:
“Lots of people think consolidation is necessary. The question is whether this leadership has the skills to pull it off. The answer seems to be ‘no’ and that’s why the headlines for other companies are just ‘layoffs’ but for HMH it’s ‘breakdown.'”
So we thought it might be worthwhile to take a moment to explain why we chose that word: It all started with the decision to stop buying new properties, popularly described as a “freeze,” but which we wound up calling a “lockdown.” The corporate messaging around that decision quickly deteriorated—among other things, Otto Penzler told the AP he had clearance to keep buying books. Then came the abrupt departure of Rebecca Saletan, at which point we switched from ‘lockdown’ to ‘breakdown’ in large part due to the deflated morale of the HMH folks we spoke to that day. Whether or not Educational Media’s corporate leadership has a real plan to pull HMH together, the rank-and-file appeared to have given up hope… and outside observers were equally lacking in confidence.
Which brings us to a hypothetical: Before Saletan’s resignation ignited the company’s public tailspin, many publishing insiders told us that the lockdown on new manuscripts was actually a good idea—that even with the personnel cuts in the months following the merger of Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt, the company was probably still publishing too many books and could do with additional streamlining… and that other publishers would probably do well to follow its example, except for the whole “mixed public messages” problem. So that’s our question for you this morning: Despite the widespread assumption that Educational Media is preparing HMH for a fire sale, could they still come out of this with a lean, mean publishing machine?
(We’d like to think so, knowing the strength of the remaining editorial team, but that $7 billion debt keeps popping up in our field of vision. Maybe you’ve got the scenario that will chase it away…?)