PW: Pages Sells Fairs To Scholastic

Jim Milliot |

Jul 06, 1998

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Pages Sells Fairs To Scholastic
Jim Milliot -- 7/6/98
Pages Inc., which during the early 1990s began a major effort to challenge Scholastic in the school book-fair market, has sold out to the opposition. Late last month, Pages announced that it had sold its book-fair operations, including inventory, bookcases and customer lists, to Scholastic for $10.5 million.
Pages had been the nation's second-largest book-fair operator and sold more than 12 million books through 19,000 fairs in 1997. Despite its growth, Pages struggled to turn a profit and had a net loss of $5.3 million on sales of $27.8 million in 1997.

With the divestiture of its book-fair group, Pages will consist of its Junior Library Guild (JLG) unit as well as its book-publishing business. According to Pages, JLG has annual sales of approximately $2.6 million and historically has been profitable. JLG serves as a review and subscription service, providing libraries with nine reading levels of children's books from a variety of publishers.

Pages' proprietary publishing program typically publishes 110 titles a year and has a backlist of 850. The majority of its sales came through its book-fair operation, and a company spokesperson said Pages is "reviewing how it can best utilize this asset." The sale of the fairs will also result in a sizable reduction in Pages's workforce. At the end of March, Pages had 120 employees, and few, if any, are expected to move to Scholastic.

Pages also announced last month that it expected its lawsuit against its former auditors, Arthur Andersen, to go to trial by late summer or early fall. Pages is suing Andersen for $16 million in connection with the work it did for the company during its purchase of School Book Fairs Inc., which resulted in an IRS tax assessment.
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A version of this article appeared in the 07/06/1998 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: