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Canada’s largest book distributor now bankrupt

H.B. Fenn filed for bankruptcy today. Normally I wouldn’t comment on a book distributor (they don’t seem to handle ebooks), but they released a statement today which said they had:

encountered significant financial challenges due to the loss of distribution lines, shrinking margins and the significant shift to e-books, all of which have significantly reduced the company’s revenues.

Yeah. Right.

That statement alone might tell a lot about why the company failed. Do ebooks really account for that much of the market in Canada? (does anyone know?) I’d like to not believe the statement but without numbers I hesitate to make a claim.

Or you could look at it another way, and ask why they didn’t get into ebook distribution at the beginning. They have the connections with the publishing industry; they could have set themselves up as the biggest ebook distributor in Canada.

via National Post

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Comments


Alexander Inglis February 6, 2011 um 2:02 pm

Hachette had a distribution deal with Fenn in Canada and recently (two years ago?) created a Canadian subsidiary and ended the Fenn deal. There were not enough indie publishers left to support Fenn’s business model.


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