Hachette Book Group has acquired most of the assets of Meadowbrook Press, which is based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka. Approximately 25 of Meadowbrook’s pregnancy, childcare, and parenting backlist titles will be updated and reissued under the Da Capo Lifelong Books imprint. Another 25 of Meadowbrook’s children’s and gift/humor backlist titles will be reissued by HBG's Running Press unit.
Meadowbrook Press was founded in 1975 by Bruce Lansky and his then-wife, Vicki, to publish her first book, Feed Me I’m Yours, a cookbook for parents of young children; it has sold to date more than three million copies. The company is also the publisher of several bestselling titles for parents and expectant parents, such as The Simple Guide to Having a Baby, which has sold 1.5 million copies, Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn, which has sold almost 1.4 million copies, as well as six baby-naming books, including 100,000+ Baby Names. The baby-naming books, which were authored by Lansky, have sold a total of more than 11.5 million copies.
In a release, John Radziewicz, v-p and publisher of Da Capo said the Meadowbrook titles will be "a terrific complement to our current offerings in the pregnancy and parenting categories and allow us to expand into new areas within these categories as well.” Da Capo will focus on updating and refreshing the existing line, and has no plans to do new editions.
"I've been searching for a terrific home for our books as I'm older than dirt and I've slowed down," Lansky, 76, told PW on Monday afternoon," I'm thrilled to have found a [buyer] that will take care of them."
Lansky has retained the rights to 10-12 children’s fiction releases that will be made available only in e-book format, but does not intend to release any frontlist in the foreseeable future. While his two part-time employees will soon leave the company, the business manager will stay on full-time for at least the next eight months to wind things up on the financial side as Meadowbrook winds down.
