Within the next few days it will be announced to the public that the US Province of the Priests of the Sacred Heart, through its subsidiary Theological Book Service, has reached an agreement to purchase the Sheed & Ward Publishing Company.
In recent years TBS has been looking for ways to grow as a business and as an apostolate. At its winter meeting the Board of Advisors of TBS determined that traditional strategies for growth (e.g., increased direct marketing, advertising, etc.) were too incremental to achieve the desired goals. A new enterprise was needed to advance beyond the limitations of the retail sale of published books.
A few weeks later the National Catholic Reporter, the parent company of Sheed & Ward, announced that it was getting out of the book publishing business and wanted to spin off this part of its operation. In the dozen years that NCR has owned Sheed & Ward it had always been a profitable company. Although they didn't say so, it seems that they simply want to focus on their main business, which is the weekly national newspaper.
The leadership at TBS, in close consultation with the bankers on the Advisory Board, settled on a purchase price. (There is a standard formula for determining the worth of a business.) Approval was sought and received from the Provincial Council. Our lawyers approved the wording of the letter of intent. The final contract will be signed on June 30, 1998.
The addition of Sheed & Ward will produce several immediate benefits for TBS. It will expand the ministerial services that TBS can offer. From now on it will not only be a marketer and retailer, but also a publisher (producer) of religious books. It will bring financial stability. It will maximize utilization of existing systems (i.e., computer, warehouse, marketing, etc.) without any substantial increase in costs or personnel. It is estimated that one or two new people will be needed. Mr. Jeremy Langford, the current acquisitions editor of Sheed & Ward, has already been hired. One additional person may be needed for customer service.
Buying a publishing company does not entail the purchase of printing presses (the actual printing is contracted out). For the purchase price the buyer receives the inventory, the mailing list, the manuscripts in editorial process, the complete archives of correspondence and copies of everything ever published by S & W, and the trademark name. As you know, Sheed & Ward has an excellent and long-standing reputation for quality and integrity in Catholic publishing. Since the company was founded over seventy years ago by Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, it has published works by almost all the leading Catholic authors of the twentieth century, including Avery Dulles, Christopher Dawson, Henri de Lubac, Francis Durrwell, Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx. In recent years the editorial emphasis has been on pastoral and catechetical resources. It has published over thirty new titles a year in the areas of Spirituality, Theology, Medical Ethics and Pastoral ministry. One of the first tasks of the leadership team of TBS will be to define a publishing strategy in keeping with their mission statement as an apostolate of the US Province.