What If Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Isn in Breakdown?
In a conversation among GalleyCat readers about last week’s layoffs at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one participant discussed the HMH situation in relation to the layoffs and corporate restructurings at other publishers: “Lots of people think consolidation is necessary. The question is whether this leadership has the skills to pull it off. The answer seems to be ‘no’ and that’s why the headlines for other companies are just ‘layoffs’ but for HMH it’s ‘breakdown.'” So we thought it might be worthwhile to take a moment to explain why we chose that word: It all started with the decision to stop buying new properties, popularly described as a “freeze,” but which we wound up calling a “lockdown.” The corporate messaging around that decision quickly deteriorated—among other things, Otto Penzler told the AP he had clearance to keep buying books. Then came the abrupt departure of Rebecca Saletan, at which point we switched from ‘lockdown’ to ‘breakdown’ in large part due to the deflated morale o
