Courier Corp. has sold the assets of its Creative Homeowner publishing subsidiary to Fox Chapel Publishing for an undisclosed price. The deal involves over 100 titles in home design, home improvement, landscaping and gardening.
Courier acquired Creative Homeowner in 2006, but the unit has been losing money in recent years as interest in its home improvement titles fell following the home-buying bust in 2008-09. For the nine month period ended June 28, 2014, for example, Courier’s publishing division, which includes Dover and REA in addition to Creative Homeowner, lost $2.2 million with most of the loss attributed to Creative Homeowner.
Fox Chapel, one of PW’s fastest-growing publishers in 2013, has been diversifying its operations in the last few years. In April, it bought 1,400 titles from New Holland Publishers U.K., a purchase that more than doubled the number of titles it publishes annually
