Battered by years of declining sales, hammered by Amazon, gutted by upstart e-book rivals and faced with 80% rent raises in their prime midtown Manhattan locations, two Big Six trade publishers, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, announced they will be packing up and moving their offices sometime in 2013 to Long Island City in the borough of Queens, where they will share an apartment.

Executives of the publishers served notice on their landlords for the move. “Borders,” was one editor’s terse response to a reporter’s question about what what was the tipping point for the decision.  The allusion was not to the bankruptcy of the Borders book chain, the second largest behind Barnes & Noble that threw in the towel last February, but rather to the borders between Manhattan and Queens.

Having shed all but essential employees, the two companies will fit comfortably into a studio apartment on 45th Road just off Vernon Boulevard.  “With electronic document storage we don’t need file cabinets or bookshelves,” a Harper editor pointed out. “You can’t beat the rent. Our Manhattan rivals will be green with envy.”

As for the location, which seems remote to a publishing community accustomed to midtown Manhattan addresses, an S&S spokesperson was reassuring: “We’re a short walk from the number 7 subway station, MoMa-PS1 Museum is just around the corner, and on nice days we can meet with agents in the John F. Murray Playground across the street or hit the Serbian and Paraguayan food carts under the elevated subway. As long as you leave before nightfall you’re perfectly safe.”

Richard Curtis

April 1 2011

After a decade of flat income from printed books and hemorrhagic siphoning of e-book revenues  by pirates, Random House got the green light from parent organization Bertelsmann to alter its corporate charter and become a nonprofit organization. Though the company tried to put a good face on it, the move is a tacit admission that the book business is unprofitable.

To implement the changeover and compete with filesharing pirates, the firm will slash list prices to $0.00. The logic behind the strategy was laid out by a Random spokeswoman: “It’s good will. We believe that customers seeking free books will prefer to patronize a branded company like Random House rather than some no-name buccaneer.”

The company cafeteria will be converted to a soup kitchen for indigent authors, according to one employee who spoke anonymously.

Random’s move was acclaimed by the literary agent community, which itself went non-profit several years ago. “Most of our members now do volunteer work, like reading to children at libraries,” said a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives. “It’s so much more satisfying than dealing with authors.”