Baker & Taylor, which was founded in 1828 as a subscription book publisher and bindery, is (I mean was) the largest book supplier for libraries. They also had a print on demand and retail book distribution division. They are ceasing all operations by the end of this year. This is a HUGE development in the industry. The companies that used Baker & Taylor for their print on demand books are in a big pickle right now, to say nothing of the libraries that are scrambling for another supplier.

The failure of Baker & Taylor comes after a planned merger with ReaderLink fell through. While the details aren’t available, we can only surmise that Baker & Taylor was having severe financial difficulties, and that ReaderLink didn’t think buying the company was worth the financial risk.

At BookLocker, we approached Baker & Taylor several years ago to try to get a better deal than we were getting from Ingram. Despite having thousands of books on the market, Baker & Taylor said we were “too small.” Gosh, maybe if they’d not refused to do business with some print on demand publishers, perhaps that could have saved them. They’d have made money on every book sold. Just looking at our numbers alone, I can tell you they walked away from a lot of revenue over the years. Not too smart!!

Folks in the industry immediately assumed that Ingram, the largest book distributor, would likely take up of the slack. Nope!

On Reddit, a library employee wrote, “We contacted Ingram and they aren’t taking new accounts right now!”

Perhaps Ingram already knows what it took Baker & Taylor too long to figure out. Catering to libraries for book sales is a dying business. Think about it logically. A library might buy one copy of a book to lend out to its customers while bookstores may buy a few copies of a book. It’s simple math. However, the largest seller of books is Amazon. Why spend time and money trying to sell a few books when you can simply market directly to potential readers online, and sell hundreds or thousands? I’ve been advising authors for years that marketing to libraries and to physical bookstores is a waste of time and money.

Sadly, approximately 1,500 employees will lose their jobs. Some were immediately let go after the announcement.

According to “librarycatlady” on reddit, her library was receiving books on time until this past summer. If orders weren’t coming in, that was a HUGE red flag! Oh, we also read online that they owe money to some publishers. That means those publishers’ authors are ALSO owed money!

I noticed that Baker & Taylor’s “News” page for its publishing services hasn’t listed any new clients since 2021. Hmmm…

“Gwendohlyn,” who was laid off after almost 12 years, wrote, “This is not how you treat employees who have been loyal throughout this. Ghosting most of your employees with zero communication is unacceptable. Many of those people had been with BT for 10s, 20s, and 30+ years.”

You can read more comments from their laid off employees on THIS THREAD.

One person who works at Brodart said, “We were still taking new accounts earlier today and hit a moment of capacity by this afternoon.” Brodart, which has been in business since 1939, competed with Baker & Taylor.

It’s the end of a long era for Baker & Taylor. 197 years!!! We feel so bad for their loyal employees. This is just another example of how the book sales and distribution industry has changed so much in the past 25+ years. And, it’s also a bad sign for libraries. We all suspected that libraries would get hit hard when ebooks came out. However, print books continue to outsell ebooks. But, that alone hasn’t protected libraries. They’ve had to evolve through funding cuts over the years, and consumers’ behavior changes.

We can’t predict what will happen next. However, it looks like Baker & Taylor will be racking up some more legal fees. They were recently sued by OCLC.

And, Baker & Taylor is no stranger to litigation. According to Wikipedia:

In 1999, Baker & Taylor paid a settlement of $3 million USD to the U.S. government to settle a federal lawsuit. The suit claimed that Baker & Taylor had overcharged the federal government, as well as state and local libraries using federal funds. These charges occurred after 1992, when Baker & Taylor was sold by its then-parent company, W. R. Grace and Company. Baker & Taylor denied all allegations. Baker & Taylor and its former parent company W. R. Grace agreed August 2 to pay $15.5 million to settle allegations that they overcharged schools and libraries in 18 states for books over more than 10 years. B&T, after spending five years in litigation with the U.S. government over an alleged violation of the False Claims Act, settled with the Department of Justice in July 1999 in return for release from all federal civil liability. B&T has had other legal problems, notably U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered on July 10, 2013 a consent decree resolving a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

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