Houghton Mifflin Sold

Houghton Mifflin sold for third time

Dec 4, 2006 Leslie Poston

Boston based Houghton Mifflin was sold for the third time in four years this week.

December 4, 2006

Houghton Mifflin was sold for the third time in four years this week. The sale was to HM Rivergroup, owners of Riverdeep, a Dublin-based software firm. Experts across the industry are speculating that this may indicate a turn toward being more competitive in ePublishing by one of the major publishing houses.

With ePublishing on the rise, this may very well be a smart move for Houghton Mifflin. They could blaze the ePublishing trail before the other major players in the industry, giving them a huge chunk of market share. That chunk could leverage them into the buyer to beat in book bidding wars of the future, with the ability to offer multi media packaging for every author putting them a step ahead of the game.

This also makes Houghton Mifflin a publisher able to take on smaller projects, should they shoose to do. this could break them out of the Front End marketing syndrome and pave the way for newer, more interesting authors than just the mainstream best seller list names.

Keep an eye on Houghton Mifflin (soon to be known as Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group). If they play their cards right this could very well be an indicator of future trends in on and off line publishing.

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