Trafford sold to U.S. firm
By Scott MacDonald
Quill & Quire
April 7, 2009
The biggest name in Canadian self-publishing, the Victoria-based Trafford Publishing, has been purchased by one of the biggest names in American self-publishing, the Indiana-based Author Solutions. As a result of the sale, some of the work of publishing Trafford titles will be diverted to the U.S., and Trafford CEO Geoff Reid will now simply be CEO of the firm’s printing unit, the Morris Publishing Group.
According to Author Solutions CEO Kevin Weiss, he’d been interested in Trafford for awhile. “It’s got a terrific print operation, they did a good job of growing the brand, and it’s got a strong presence in Canada and the U.K.,” he says, adding that it was also simply prudent to grow the scale of the overall Author Solutions empire, which includes the U.S. brands Wordclay, XLibris, AuthorHouse, and iUniverse. “If you don’t have scale, it’s really tough to do customer support, and we pride ourselves on supporting our authors in every way, shape, and form,” he says.
By acquiring Trafford, Author Solutions increases its business by about 20%. As Weiss explains, Author Solutions already has about 100,000 titles to its name, while Trafford adds another 20,000.
Though the plan is to invest further in Trafford titles, and to increase the company’s current output, there will likely be a reduction in the 90-person staff of the Victoria offices. “There will be more hires for Trafford in Bloomington, Indiana, not in Canada,” says Weiss. As for the Victoria employees, Weiss adds that he hopes to relocate any unneeded staffers to Morris Publishing. “We’re going to increase the output that’s going through the print facility in Victoria. That’s the first thing we want to see. Not only Trafford titles, but titles from our other imprints.” (Former Trafford CEO Reid was unavailable for comment, referring all enquiries to Weiss.)
Another major goal of the purchase, says Weiss, is to improve sales of titles – both Authors Solutions’ and Trafford’s – in Indigo/Chapters stores. “It’s a great opportunity to grow our relationship with Chapters,” he says, adding that Chapters has been listing fewer and fewer of their titles of late. “I’m going to do everything I can to strengthen relations with Chapters.”
Meanwhile, he says, Trafford authors may now have a chance to do more business through big U.S. booksellers like Barnes & Noble.