Baker & Taylor is winding down

R. S. Breed · 2025-10-08T20:48:00+00:00

Publishers Weekly is reporting that Baker & Taylor, the library wholesaler, is preparing to shut down. Staff were told at a town hall on 6 October. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/98777-baker-taylor-prepares-plan-to-shut-down.html For most indie authors this won't show up in next month's royalty statement. Where it matters is library sales of print books, because libraries tend to buy through wholesalers rather than direct, and there's about to b...

R. S. Breed Founder

11 months ago

Publishers Weekly is reporting that Baker & Taylor, the library wholesaler, is preparing to shut down. Staff were told at a town hall on 6 October.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/98777-baker-taylor-prepares-plan-to-shut-down.html

For most indie authors this won't show up in next month's royalty statement. Where it matters is library sales of print books, because libraries tend to buy through wholesalers rather than direct, and there's about to be one fewer of them.

I don't know yet what this means in practice for self-published print, and I'd be a bit wary of anyone claiming they do this week. If your print distributor lists Baker & Taylor as a sales channel, it's a fair question to put to them.

The broader lesson is an old one. Parts of the book business you don't control can change or vanish without much warning, so don't build everything on any one of them.