Since 1988, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, has brought forth more than 750 titles in the trade publishing industry, but as of April 30, it will close its hometown office altogether. Dee’s parent company, Rowman & Littlefield, has decided to move all operations from the Chicago office to its home in Lanham, Maryland. “Our imprint will remain,” Dee says. “Our books will still be marketed under our imprint. Our books under contract will still be published under our imprint. Anything beyond that is still uncertain.”
Dee’s Chicago employees will all move onto other jobs or, as Dee says, begin selling shoes.”
I’m going to do,” Dee says of himself, “for the moment at least, freelance editorial work on those books that are still under contract. Beyond that we have a number of things that we’re looking at at the moment but can’t comment on.” There are several possibilities, he says, though things are still too uncertain for anyone to have a clear vision of the imprint’s future.
“It’s a reflection of the state of the book business, which is not good. Particularly in trade books, which is what we publish. It’s a consolidation of expenses.” This consolidation, apparently, hasn’t affected any of Rowman & Littlefield’s other imprints, about a dozen of which are located in cities like Boulder, Colorado, Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania and New York City. It seems they’ve wanted to keep things quiet, and they’ve done a good job. “We haven’t put out any public information about this because it’s easy to misinterpret this as a closing of our imprint,” Dee says, “which it’s not.” (Micah McCrary)
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Since 1988, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, has brought forth more than 750 titles in the trade publishing industry, but as of April 30, it will close its hometown office altogether. Dee’s parent company, Rowman & Littlefield, has decided to move all operations from the Chicago office to its home in Lanham, Maryland. “Our imprint will remain,” Dee says. “Our books will still be marketed under our imprint. Our books under contract will still be published under our imprint. Anything beyond that is still uncertain.”
