With Memorial Day about to begin and the summer bookselling season set to move into full swing, booksellers, publishers, and other wholesalers are starting to come to grips with the pending shutdown of Baker & Taylor’s retail wholesaling business.
Nearly every major publisher has issued new terms on how independent booksellers who were B&T customers can open new accounts, making it easier for those booksellers to order titles directly. To date, publishers to announce such terms include Candlewick Press, Chooseco, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, and Simon & Schuster. Wholesalers IPG and Bookazine have also introduced programs aimed at signing B&T customers.
For its part, B&T issued a timetable outlining how it plans to phase out of the business, and some of those dates will hit soon. The most important date is July 15, which is the last day the company will ship retail orders. Backorders for catalogue items will be cancelled at noon on that day as well.
The following are dates of significance in the coming months:
- May 31, when current promotions will end, and until which date B&T will support the Indie Next program for June titles
- June 1, the last date upon which B&T will fulfill author event orders
- June 30, when the My Books & More websites will shutter, and which is the last day on which B&T will ship NYP titles; all open orders for pub dates after July 1 will be cancelled, and sellers seeking a report of what is on order with a pub date after July 1 are encouraged to reach out to their representatives
- July 1, by which date all 2019 co-op requests need to be made; reports will be sent by the end of August.
- July 30, the last day B&T will accept overstock returns at the return center
This story has been updated with further information and for clarity.
