The sale of the Perseus Books Group has been completed. It was announced in March that Hachette was acquiring the company's publishing business, while Ingram Content Group was buying Perseus' distribution arm.
Ingram, which acquired Perseus' four distribution divisions through the deal--Perseus Distribution, Publishers Group West (PGW,) Consortium, Legato plus its digital asset management service Constellation--sent a letter to its new clients detailing the changes that would be on the horizon. In the letter, which PW obtained, Ingram stressed that it saw the addition of as a "strengthening" of its core business. The Perseus purchase will give Ingram a client base of about 600 publishers.
Among the most notable changes to come from the deal is that Mark Suchomel, who had led Perseus' distribution business, will not be making the move to Ingram. Sabrina McCarthy, who was senior v-p and group sales director at Perseus, was named general manager of Perseus Distribution Services and international sales. Mark Ouimet, who is Ingram Publisher Services’ general manager, will, Ingram said, continue to oversee IPS while adding oversight of Consortium, PGW and Legato. McCarthy and Ouimet will both report to Ingram's chief content officer, Phil Ollila.
In a separate deal, the Hachette Book Group completed its purchase of Perseus' publishing operations which includes nine imprints. HBG is making Perseus Books a new division under Susan Weinberg, a long-time Perseus executive who has served most recently as senior v-p and group publisher. Weinberg will join HBG’s executive management board as senior v-p and publisher of Perseus Books, reporting directly to HBG CEO Michael Pietsch.
Pietsch called the acquisition "a major step forward for Hachette." With a backlist of 6,000 titles and a publishing program that releases about 500 titles annually, Perseus "adds to our portfolio of publishers a new program of great diversity and strength, and advances our strategic goals of overall growth, and the expansion of our nonfiction and backlist catalogs," Pietsch noted.
