One thing that is clear to me is that this is not going to stop. Even if you survive these cuts, there are more to come. There is just not enough market demand to support 3 (soon to be 2) giant companies. All the Big 3's revenue has been plummeting, and these companies will be a shell of themselves in 10 years. Yes, the disruption that MH had been preaching happened, but the disrupting is happening to these giant dinosaurs that few instructors and fewer students have a need for. Smaller, niche publishers that can meet specific discipline's needs are the future of ed publishing.
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The Thomsons have always been brilliant at getting into info industries like radio, newspapers and publishing at just the right time, maximizing returns and then getting out just in time. Working for their holding company is great, but when they’re done with you...they are done. Private equity usually spells inevitable doom for an organization.
The internet changed commerce for every industry. Period.
I think you're right. Consider that we used to have a Wadsworth, a Delmar, a Southwestern and Brookes Cole and PWS. Each of these smaller, niche publishers boasted decades and decades doing what they did best, serving a slice or two of the higher education pie. Each of these imprints were #1 or #2 in their chosen discipline, as of the 1980s.
And then the world changed, and not for the better. Merger mania was in the air and in most industries, not just publishing. Prentice Hall was out there, and they were big. McGraw Hill was also out there, and they were bigger. Both entities were buying up smaller companies, just like what was happening in hotels and entertainment and insurance and funeral homes.
The Thomsons decided for some reason that they wanted in on this publishing business, and they quietly began acquiring the disciplines listed above. Held them for several years, and then decided to squish everything together to become ITP.
Those early days and years were not bad, once their ironed all the kinks out. In fact, they were downright great. The Thomsons wanted to allow these publishing houses to run their own shows, to operate as silos, with the corporation taking over only shared-need functionality: warehousing and logistics, customer service, HR. This allowed the imprints to continue making their "special sauce" but without all the overhead of running the business. And it worked, quite well.
And then time went on and the squish fist began to squeeze harder and investors greedier and the whole thing fell into a downward spiral that led to the private equity bucket. And there is no real escaping that. Merger is looking like a pipe dream at this point but that step is only delaying the inevitable collapse of this organization. There is just far, far too much debt attached to the place, they cannot ever hope to become solvent again. Rather, there will likely be a true bankruptcy which involves selling the place apart, piece by piece.
Which leads us, full circle back to the idea of smaller niche publishers dominating the field. This is already happening right now, where we see the big three teetering and shrinking while the rest of the field is occupied by these small niche publishers who all do what they do very well and who seem to be doing quite well for themselves.
Imagine seeing the return of a Southwestern, a Delmar, etc. etc. operating as smaller, independently-owned publishing houses out there. It could happen again. In fact, it probably will.