More Publishing Layoffs, Now at Macmillan

Macmillan, whose imprints include Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), Henry Holt, and St. Martin's Press, announced yesterday that it has eliminated sixty-four jobs, nearly 4 percent of its U.S. workforce. The publisher, which put a freeze on salary increases earlier this month, joins major houses Simon & Schuster and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in an industry-wide scaling back of positions.

Literary imprint FSG, which has published authors such as Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, and Flannery O'Connor, was hit hard, losing associate publisher Linda Rosenberg, head of production Tom Consiglio, and editor Denise Oswald yesterday, the New York Observer reported, and Michael Eisenberg, associate publisher of FSG Books for Young Readers. As of January 1, the FSG children's division will be consolidated with six other children's imprints to form Macmillan Children's Publishing Group.

"Book sales are markedly slower this Christmas than they were last Christmas," said Macmillan CEO John Sargent, Motoko Rich reported on the New York Times Arts Beat blog. "This is a recognition of the times that we are in this Christmas and the times that we will be in at least through the first half of next year."

The changes come in response to the current recession as well as the pressures that technology has been putting on the publishing industry. Sargent told Publishers Weekly, "We looked at the realities of the business and felt we could operate more efficiently by centralizing some processes."