Monday, May 21, 2012

What Does It All Mean?

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has filed for bankruptcy. It is not one of the so-called big six publishers, so we probably won't hear anything about the sky falling over this. And what does bankruptcy mean these days, anyway? Though, really, how many companies come back from bankruptcy and last long term?

Like most publishers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the result of mergers of older companies. Its oldest publishing house goes back to the nineteenth century and published Ralph Waldo Emerson. If I have time in the next couple of days, I'll do some research on this and see how many Transcendentalists were involved in HMH's history.

UPDATE: Here's more on this subject from the LA Times.

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