NOBODY in San Diego had a remote clue how to manage PGW. They NEVER integrated the two companies – corporate culture clash from day one.

All you “indies” are just gravel in the bottom of the publishing fishtank. AMS couldn’t give a rat’s ass about some tiny publisher or author. They were deep in business with all the heavyweights. Quit all your whining – you wanna play with the big boys, you take your chances.

– a former AMS associate.

- “Is there a historical precedent for this? Have publishers been through this type of crisis before?”

Sure. There have been other times when book distributors have gone bankrupt, causing all sorts of problems for their client publishers.

Among the most prominent example (and one that’s often cited in some discussions about PGW) is the 2002 bankruptcy of the LPC Group which distributed many independent publishers.

Also, a Canadian distributor General Publishing declared bankruptcy in 2002, which caused similar panic for its distributees.

Indeed, I think it fair to say that many of the reactions to the AMS/PGW bankruptcy are colored by people’s recollection of the LPC bankruptcy.

- “What portion of AMS’s business did PGW represent?”

Keeping in mind that AMS has had to restate earnings and financial statements several times over the years (and has done so with varying degrees of timeliness) and that any figures the genera public may be able to dig up might be of dubious accuracy, but:

According to a March 2006 release (here: http://tinyurl.com/ylvulc ), AMS estimated 2005′s net sales at somewhere between $915 and $920 million.

According to the Shelf-Awareness article at http://tinyurl.com/wc2y5 , PGW had actually had a very good 2006, reporting that 2006 net sales were up 5.5% to $138.6 million. If I’m doing the math right, that implies PGW’s net sales in 2005 to be a bit over $131 million.

And if all that’s right, that’d lead one to believe that PGW represented about 15% of AMS’s overall business in 2005.

Obviously, those numbers may be flawed, and “net sales” doesn’t give a compete picture of a company’s overall financial status, but these numbers might give a general sense of the relative size of PGW in relation to its overall parent company.

– is there a historical precedent for this? have publishers been through this type of crisis before?

– what portion of AMS’s business did PGW represent? Was AMS’s failure related to financial problems at PGW, or is PGW (and its creditors) just getting screwed because of AMS’s problems?

Just thought I’d ask, Ed, in case you have the answers …