The Bookseller.com

3rd July 2009

HC clinches deal for TFP

30.04.08 Graeme Neill

HarperCollins has finally acquired certain assets from collapsed blog-to-book publisher The Friday Project, two months after it went into administration.

HC bought TFP’s website, name and author contracts for an undisclosed sum from administrator Panos Eliades, Franklin and Company. TFP will be housed in the Press Books wing of HC, with publishing director Clare Christian, publisher Scott Pack and managing editor Heather Smith reporting to Press Books m.d. John Bond.

Around 30 authors have moved over from TFP including Caroline Smailes, Tom Reynolds and Mark Brendon, whose expose of swing culture will be published in August. TFP’s first title under its new owners, Nasim Marie Jafrey’s The State of Me, will be published in July.

Bond said that TFP would “by and large” stick to its original model of publishing books from blogs, and would continue not to offer advances for its titles.

“The appeal is that it sits outside the normal model of how we do things,” he said. “We can look at publishing books while taking a few risks, as well as look at e-commerce opportunities. TFP has already done this by publishing special premium editions, and doing some innovative things with marketing.”

Bond’s intention is to keep TFP as separate as possible from Press Books’ other imprints. The company will remain in its Waterloo offices, rather than move to HC’s Hammersmith offices.

“There’s no point in doing this and making it like everything else we do,” he said. “We want it to have as much of a separate identity and way of doing things as possible, which means treating it as independent.”

Christian, who described the last few months as “frustrating”, said the takeover would give the publisher the ability to experiment further with e-commerce. “Being able to have some of the financial welly means we can pare down the list and concentrate on doing exciting things with each of the titles,” she said. “We will be able to use our key books to experiment with digital content.”

TFP went into administration in March, with administrators blaming a lack of sales and an inability to fund reprints of out-of-print titles. It owed £1.8m to a number of creditors, with the administrator still working on reimbursing creditors who include Anthony Cheetham (£60,000). In 2006 it made losses totalling £724,023 on a turnover of £357,070.

HarperCollins The Friday Project Graeme Neill Home TFP John Bond

Comments on this article