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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

in terms of profits, and indeed it got into such trouble that all sorts of management changes were made among the editors and among the publishing and selling people. Now it's been revived with a new management, but it has a considerably different--it's a considerably different type of operation.

The other things that we got into in the book area--Little Brown, a very fine Boston textbook house, which also had educational, law, and what have you divisions--and that has turned out to be a reasonably good business.

Q:

How did that acquisition come about?

Heiskell:

Well, it's funny. Everybody talked about how big companies were gobbling up little publishers, and wasn't that a terrible thing? But the reality of the fact is that these little publishers were family-owned, and when the founder reached sixty, seventy years, and suddenly saw that upon his death he would have to pay fifty percent of the value of his company in straight tax dollars, there wasn't any choice. Because they wouldn't have the money! So they were all selling out really for that reason. And Little Brown, I think, really sold to us because they believed--correctly--that we would not interfere with their editorial management, but that we would be helpful in terms of finances and fulfillment and all the service aspects of it, which indeed turned out to be the case. And it's been a very happy relationship for now twenty-five years, something like that.

Book-of-the-Month--





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