Book manufacturing giant Lakeside Book Company has acquired Baker & Taylor Publisher Services, the distribution arm of the soon-to-be closed library wholesaler Baker & Taylor. The distributor had been regarded as an important B&T asset and was continuing to operate as most of B&T's other operations are being closed down. The purchase includes the print-on-demand operation located in BTPS's Ashland, Ohio, headquarters.

In making the announcement, Lakeside called BTPS "a great strategic fit for the company's end-to-end book supply chain portfolio" by adding a distribution capability to its other manufacturing services.

Lakeside already ships approximately 400 million books annually, primarily through warehousing and order fulfillment services where customers provide their own sales operations. The company serves such publishers as Sourcebooks, Pearson, Savvas, and Amplify across its warehouse platform, but has lacked the sales and order-to-cash capabilities that BTPS brings.

"We print, store, and sell books. It's kind of simple," Michael Shea, president of book services for Lakeside, told PW. "The BTPS service offering really fills the gap for us. What BTPS allows us to do is to kind of fill out our service offering, so that for small and medium-sized publishers, we can integrate them into our warehouse environment and provide order-to-cash."

B&T launched BTPS in 2017, expanding on the operations of Bookmasters, which specialized in distribution for small publishers and self-published authors. Under the direction of industry veteran Mark Suchomel, BTPS expanded the range of publishers it works with, although it remains focused on small and mid-sized publishers. The service currently works with approximately 200 customers, with 50 to 75 of them "very active," according to Shea.

All 100 BTPS employees are being offered positions with Lakeside with the existing BTPS management team remaining in place. Robert Gospodark, VP of operations, will continue to oversee operations in Ashland and Jeff Tegge, will continue to serve to serve as VP of client services. Shae said there will be continuity of service, with no interruption.

With the acquisition, BTPS will be incorporated into the Lakeside Book Company brand. "The services offered by BTPS are a perfect fit within Lakeside Book's end-to-end solutions for publishers, from sales all the way through order-to-cash," Shea said. Publishers who are distributed by BTPS will now have direct access to Lakeside's book manufacturing capabilities.

Lakeside's growth plans aim to target three audiences: existing BTPS customers, current Lakeside warehousing clients who could benefit from the new order-to-cash service, and new customers in the broader market. "Our goal is to serve the market. We're all about books," Shea said. "We want to keep the physical print book alive."

The Lakeside Book Company name is only five years old, created when the book division spun out from RR Donnelley's LSC Communications, but the organization traces its roots back 161 years. The company employs 6,000 people across three North American locations, with headquarters in Warrenville, Illinois. "Nine out of 10 of the BTPS publishers didn't know who we were until I said we were formally the book division of RR Donnelley, and then lights go on," Shea said.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.