Another Distributor Bites the Dust

PW Daily’s Judith Rosen reports on a new wrinkle in the Koen Book Distributors bankruptcy, which took place in July 2005 and is still working its way through the courts. Soon after the distributor went under, Levy Home Entertainment stepped in to create Koen-Levy Book Wholesalers, which was run out of Koen’s former New Jersey warehouse using much of the same staff. But now that, too, is about to shut down. “We decided the business was not performing as anticipated, and it would not make its numbers in the foreseeable future,” Levy president and CEO Carol Kloster and senior v-p and CFO Steve Carlson told PW Daily. Most, if not all, the employees will be laid off, and publishers will be paid in full. Kloster and Carlson anticipate that it will take 90 days to fully close the facility.

If the Koen name sounds familiar to those new to the publishing and distribution game, perhaps its frequent mention of late at Radio Free PGW in relation to the AMS bankruptcy – and how Baker & Taylor handled its buyout of Koen warehouse stock – will ring a bell.

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