Let's hope us freelancers will see some recompense now the announcement of HarperCollins buying TFP has *finally* been made. How many months has this been dragging on?

Well normally I'd be first among the doom-mongers but it was ever thus in this industry. It always seems to be in trouble but there often seem to be as many going up in the world as down.

I'm not sure TFP's problems were symptomatic of the publishing industry.

The Works were there to help clear up some of the industry's mistakes but cleverer printing and shorter runs should do that - in fact I wonder if that might have been a contributory factor. The industry might be better off without this safety net.

McGraw-Hill's sales down is hardly an indicator of anything but business as usual. There has never been a company more prone to yo-yoing than McGraw-Hill.

Butler and Tanner doesn't seem to have gone bust. Looks more like an asset strip by a venture capatalist to me. Yes they had some problems but were they resolvable? It doesn't look as though the owner could be bothered to find out and the plant is on prime (brown field) real estate.

Of the examples you cite the only one that would worry me is the Blackwells story as it affects our routes to market - but I wonder if this will prove as significant as all that. Since I've been in the industry - not all that long - we've seen chains come and go. We've lost Dillons and Ottakers to Waterstones, but Borders came out of nowhere, Foyles is fast turning into a chain with franchise plans to boot and Fnac is considering moving to the UK.

Finally we've exciting new publishing houses with huge productivity levels driven by automation and adherence to industry standards. I'm sure we can expect a lot from them, if we just knew who they were. ;->

M

Butler and Tanner are reportedly in "voluntary liquidation" - please see md Mike Dolan's comments towards the bottom of this report.

http://www.printweek.com/news/806132/B-T-Parliamentary-debate-plea-thrown-Commons

It would be very helpful (for credibility) if the insolvency practitioner was actually named.

According to md Mike Dolan in earlier news reports, B&T were merely illiquid, not insolvent (make of that what you will).

Dolan had no experience in the print trade before 2006. He was previously active in the music and record business.

http://www.printweek.com/RSS/News/742331/Hitting-right-notes-business

B&T would make an excellent investment for one of the larger publishing houses : the skilled workers have too much experience to be merely dumped. Somerset and Bath have lost literally thousands of skilled print jobs in the past decade.

My heart goes out to all the workers left without wages or any immediate prospects.

Well it's not all doom and gloom.
Just had a letter from the local printers to say they are out of administration and back in business under the new name Synergie Basingstoke.
And they are now doing 'print on demand'. Yippee.

I think Matthew is right to put a more positive case. I too think there is a lot to be positive about right now. There is wider financial gloom in the air, for sure, but there are some signs that within the Industry the astonishingly slow take-up of web solutions might now stand some in good stead. Fear now looks like cautious foresight ...

TFP was not thought through from the get-go. I've yet to speak to anyone in the Industry who really understands offline to online conversion. And how they managed to allow themselves to get so far in to debt is truly baffling.

Looking forward to your new approach - as a sideliner, of course.

Here's a video news report re B&T which was transmitted on BBC Points West this evening, Friday 2nd May