The saga of magazine distributors Anderson News and Source Interlink continues, as Publishers Weekly reports that magazine distributor Anderson News may be dead and gone. Though CEO Charles Anderson, in a note posted on the company’s door, said the company hoped to resume normal business activity soon, Anderson News has reported laying off 110 employees.
Anderson’s woes, and similar difficulties at Source Interlink, apparently stem from their attempt to impose a seven-cent-per-copy surcharge on magazines they distribute, ostensibly to pay for additional freight charges on unsold copies. Major magazine publishers balked at the additional charge and pulled their business.
An unnamed employee quoted in the Knoxville News Sentinel said of the closure: “We saw it coming the last three weeks. As far as I’m concerned, Anderson News doesn’t exist anymore. There’s only a few people left to take everything down.” He went on to say the business had been unprofitable in recent years and the board overseeing the company finally decided it was enough.
Rather than going quietly into that good night, Source Interlink is responding to the situation with a lawsuit. They filed a 28-page complaint in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, accusing Time, Inc., Hachette Filipacchi, and other major magazine publishers, of trying to destroy its business and put its 8,000 employees out of work (in 2007, Anderson claimed 9,800 employees). Source claims the defendants’ goal is “to give competitors Hudson and News Group a wholesale monopoly,” according to PW. Source has requested a temporary restraining order, forcing the publishers to continue shipping their magazines to Source.
PW says that Anderson and Source, combined, had held 50% of the country’s magazine distribution business. And as Tor Senior Editor David Hartwell reminded us after our previous article on the subject, “It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that the magazine distribution collapse could bring down mass market books with it. Same wholesalers.” Indeed, PW notes that “book publishers have begun reclaiming inventory from Anderson.”