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Business Book Vets Launch Texere
Calvin Reid -- 4/10/00
Myles C. Thompson, former publisher in the professional and trade division of John Wiley, and Martin Liu, founder of U.K.-based Orion Business Books, have joined forces to form Texere, a publishing house focused on business and technology titles with offices in New York and London.
Texere was launched by Thompson, the firm's president, in January and he told PW that the firm subsequently assisted Liu in a management buyout of the Orion Business Books imprint last month. Thompson was previously publisher of the finance program at John Wiley and has also worked for Amacom Books, Prentice Hall, Holt Rinehart & Winston and Random House. Liu, who is Texere's managing director, was previously publishing director and founder of Orion Business Books.
Thompson told PW that the Orion backlist will provide immediate revenue for Texere. The Orion name will continued to be used until June and the company's frontlist will provide Texere's initial presence in the business book market. Beginning in July, Texere will publish books under its own trademark, with 12 new titles released in the U.S. and 35 titles released in the U.K. Distribution will be handled by W.W. Norton.
The books, said Thompson, will focus on business, technology and finance. Thompson also said that besides books for the trade, college and professional markets, Texere content will eventually be delivered in the form of video, webcasts, audio, online journals and other media. The fall 2000 list includes Absolut: Biography of a Bottle by Carl Hamilton; The Weightless Society by Charles Leadbeater and an upcoming title by World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee.
Eventually, Thompson said, the press will publish around 40 books a year and release all its titles simultaneously worldwide in English. "We want to be a provocative and authoritative voice in business publishing," Thompson said, noting, "This is a dynamic time in publishing. There are more books being published and it's easier to reach audience segments. You can create bestsellers without a huge infrastructure."
Texere has about nine employees split between the U.S. and the U.K. Thompson described the firm as a "virtual company," with a large contingent of freelance workers. Liu said the new firm would be "author-centric. We're focused on their ideas and how to increase their readership."
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