This week, independent Melbourne-based publisher Affirm Press was acquired by multinational conglomerate Simon & Schuster in yet another buy-up of independent publishers in Australia. The deal will see Affirm Press continue to operate independently but with the backing of S&S, which in Australia publishes the likes of Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
In its stable of authors, Affirm has ABC journalist Michael Brissenden, children’s writer Margaret Wild and Cheek Media co-founder Hannah Ferguson.
Affirm CEO and co-founder Martin Hughes said he could distil the basis for the acquisition to one word: cashflow.
“Cashflow for an independent publisher is just a nightmare … it’s an enormous burden for an independent publisher,” Hughes told Crikey.
“We’ve had a brilliant few years and we’ve been growing, but that growth almost puts more pressure on the cash flow.”
Additionally, Hughes cited a number of extrinsic factors that place additional pressure on smaller publishers.
“A couple of years ago, we noticed that print prices were increasing 40% overnight … last year Kmart and Target, two of our biggest retailers, have merged — so there’s disruption there.
“Booktopia was struggling this year … they were not selling books, it looked like they were going to go under and then they did, there’s another quarter impacted.”
Hughes said Simon & Schuster would provide the “operational scale to realise the full potential of other channels in publishing” and target untapped opportunities “in digital and audio”.
Asked whether he could provide a number on the value of the acquisition, Hughes declined, owing to contractual agreements, but said that Affirm was “very pleased” with the result.
A labour of love over the past 11 years as a full-time operation, Hughes described Affirm’s biggest hits — the likes of The Dictionary of Lost Words, The Grandest Bookshop in the World, The Bookbinder of Jericho and The Nowhere Child — as “enormously satisfying” but felt compelled to mention a number of smaller successes, namely Ryan Butta’s The Ballad of Abdul Wade and The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli.
Asked whether he saw broader implications for the acquisition of small independent publishers in a market as limited as Australia, Hughes said while it hadn’t happened for a few years, it was simply “cyclical”.
“Once in a generation, the big guys swallow up the little guys, and I’m sure in most cases the little guys are happy with that. But if it were to happen that the indies were all swallowed up, I think it would just create space for new indies to emerge.”
