Quercus Books — the home of Stieg Larsson‘s Millennium trilogy (soon to be a quadrology) and sf imprint Jo Fletcher Books — has announced that it is putting itself up for sale.

The Commencement of Formal Sale Process notes “the Board of Quercus has decided that it would be in the best interests of the Company’s shareholders to seek potential offerors by means of a formal sale process.” The sale will be conducted through Quercus’ adviser, Livingstone Partners LLP. “Interested parties will be required to enter into a non-disclosure agreement with the Company on reasonable terms satisfactory to the Board before being permitted to participate in the process. The Company then intends to provide participants who have entered into such non-disclosure agreements with access to information with which to evaluate whether to make, and the terms of, any offer. Potential offerors for the entire issued and to be issued share capital of the Company should contact Livingstone.” The full text of the announcement, along with contact information, is available here.

The formal sale announcement follows last week’s announcements that the 10-year-old independent publisher was expecting “a significant trading loss” for 2013, following disappointing sales in the last quarter of 2013, “due in part to continuing issues within the book trade which led retailers to adopt very conservative ordering policies”, and “a lower than expected upturn in digital sales over the Christmas period to the end of the year”.

Chief executive Mark Smith told the Guardian it would be “business as usual” at Quercus while the company seeks a buyer, and that “there won’t be any effect on the publishing programme. We feel that with the resources a larger partner would bring to Quercus, we would be able to compete more effectively in an increasingly competitive market here in the UK.”