Publishing Mergers and Acquisitions

Posted byKendall DunkelbergPosted inpublishing, WritingTags:, , , , ,

The world of publishing is a constantly shifting ground with mergers and acquisitions a faily common occurrence. I’m not going to try to address the broader picture here, but instead I’ll just give a brief history of my experience with this through my creative writing textbook A Writer’s Craft.

When I first submitted the book it was to Palgrave, an English publishing house, but I soon learned they were part of Macmillan. As the book coming out and I was getting going with marketing it, I learned that Macmillan International was a separate division from Macmillan USA, and I was with Macmillan International. Soon the Palgrave titles I was with were put under a new imprint Red Globe Press, though all of my sales and marketing were done through Macmillan International Higher Ed with distribution through Springer Nature. It’s enough to make your head spin.

Then this May, I learned that Red Globe Press had been acquired by Bloomsbury, so my title would move to a new publisher. Everything seems to be going along with that move, though the process is a little interesting. My book page at Macmillan IHE (including the companion website for the book) was transferred over to a new website for Red Globe Press. That seems to have happened September 1 or possibly in August, though now I’m told the last step in the process will be to move everything over to Bloomsbury as of October. I’ll keep my links to A Writer’s Craft updated when that happens.

I’m sure there are legal and logistical reasons for why there are so many steps in the process. All of this has happened without any input on my part — my contract was transferred over and I haven’t had to sign again or anything. I’m just a small pawn in a much larger system, which is fine with me. Bloomsbury seems like a good home, though I’ve had no complaints about Palgrave / Macmillan / Red Globe Press, who I’m still officially with. Some of the editors I’ve worked with have come along with Red Globe in the move; others had aleardy been shifted to different responisiblities at Macmillan IHE. I’ll be interested to see what changes occur after the move is completed in October and what developments for the book come as a result of the move.

Published by Kendall Dunkelberg

I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I am Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, and I have published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the textbook A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Osage, Iowa, and have lived for over thirty years in Columbus, Mississippi, where my wife Kim and I let wildflowers grow in our yard to the delight of spring polinators and only some of our neighbors.

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