PW: Humanities Press Sells Assets To Different Buyers

Diane Patrick |

Sep 14, 1998

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Humanities Press Sells Assets To Different Buyers
Diane Patrick -- 9/14/98
Prometheus Books has acquired the bulk of the assets of Humanities Press International, including its backlist and inventory of approximately 350 titles, as well as 100 forward contracts. In a separate transaction, Brill Academic Publishers acquired Humanities' journals as well as a limited number of books. Brill also acquired the right to the Humanities Press name.
Early next year, Prometheus will launch a new imprint, Humanity Books, which will include all the former Humanities Press titles as well as newly acquired titles. Humanity Books will focus on philosophy and the social sciences; among the authors are Milton Fisk, Leonard Harris, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Herbert Marcuse and Kai Nielsen. Fifteen new titles are planned for spring 1999, and another 15 for next fall.

Tracey Thornblade, formerly an associate editor at John Wiley &Sons, has been appointed acquisitions editor and will head the imprint, which "will have editorial autonomy and will continue to develop its unique list of both scholarly and trade books," said Prometheus vice-president of marketing Paul Kurtz.

Prometheus, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 1999, has more than 1100 fiction and nonfiction titles in print, in categories including popular science, contemporary issues, social science and current events. The acquisition will boost the annual Prometheus output to more than 100 new titles a year, and its active backlist to upward of 1500 titles.

The Brill purchase includes about 10 journals as well as all published and unpublished books in the Studies in Central Europe series and Petri's translation of the three-volume Hegel's Philosophy of Nature.
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A version of this article appeared in the 09/14/1998 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: