Demand For Payment From Smaller Publishers
In August 2007, A & R Whitcoulls Group's commercial manager, Charlie Rimmer, sent out a letter demanding payments ranging between $2,500 and $20,000 from smaller distributors and publishers to make up for reduced profitability compared to other suppliers.
The letter, leaked by Tower Books to the public, claimed that if the payment was not made, the books from the supplier would no longer be sold in A&R stores. Many publishers have expressed a disbelief at Angus & Robertson's decision, with Tower declaring that they will withdraw supply for Angus & Robertson as per the letter's requirement.
In response to the situation, Dave Fenlon, Chief Operating Officer at Angus & Robertson, responded by claiming that the whole situation is blown up out of proportion and that A&R is simply negotiating a new business agreement with selected suppliers deemed to not be meeting their obligations to the company and that Angus & Robertson is committed to selling Australian published books from a large range of Australian publishers, large and small.
Read more about this topic: Angus & Robertson
Famous quotes containing the words demand, payment, smaller and/or publishers:
“If she first meet the curled Antony,
He’ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
Which is my heaven to have.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There are always those who are willing to surrender local self-government and turn over their affairs to some national authority in exchange for a payment of money out of the Federal Treasury. Whenever they find some abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying the remedy themselves they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“He [Robert Benchley] and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and that to compress it further can only make it more obscure?”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)