This is the week for practical stuff in the URJ Press-Behrman House transition. The nuts and bolts of implementing this arrangement and getting it closed have been at the forefront, as we get our website ready and the URJ folks review book contracts and arrange to ship books from their Atlanta distribution center to Behrman House’s NJ offices. It’s heavy lifting time—figuratively and literally!
Here are some highlights:
We have already begun to receive calls from people wishing to place orders with us for URJ materials. We are currently directing them to the URJ Press, and will need to do so until the official closing date. Until actual closing, all orders will be filled directly by URJ Press, after that time they will come to Behrman House.
We now expect close around June 15, rather than our original deadline of June 1. Obviously this is a disappointment, but it is still alllows plenty of time to get you the mateirals you need.
Assembling and confirming the URJ’s contracts with authors and artists is proving more time consuming than originally expected, which is understandable given the large number of titles (approximately 400) and the many years over which they were developed. Without sufficient contract rights to a particular title, we would be unable to distribute it.
The first trailer-load of books will leave the Atlanta distribution center on Tuesday, May 26 and will arrive here in NJ on June 1. This also is taking longer than we expected. There more to come.
We are adding the URJ Press titles to our website, creating pages with cover images and descriptions for each. We’ve got two interns on the case. All the titles are already in our computer system, so we will be able to take orders for everything even if we don’t have a nice picture and a description up yet, but our goal is to have all that as well. URJ Press has agreed to keep their website up and running for 18 months after closing, with links to the Behrman House site, to help people find what they need and also to give us extra time to migrate all the great support materials over to our site as well.
We’d love to hear from you about your concerns and questions. Thoughts? Please let us know.
