Distributor for Princeton University Press, UC Press to close

The changes brought about by digital publishing are forcing the closure of California Princeton Fulfillment Services, a New Jersey-based fulfillment company that provides books for the University of California Press and Princeton University Press.

Employees have been informed that this time next year, the company will be closing and that they should begin to look for other jobs, Peter Dougherty, director of Princeton University Press, told a New Jersey newspaper.

The company, which once employed 58 people, is down to 34.

“If we look just a year or even two years down the road, we probably could continue to operate CPFS reasonably sufficiently,” Dougherty said. Longer than that, however, and digital publishing’s affect would be too great to maintain the business, he said.

Until the shutdown, books from the University of California Press and Princeton University Press will still be distributed. The two university presses have signed on with Perseus Academic, a new division of the large distributor Perseus.

Perseus Academic will begin its work in 2015, around the time CPFS will close.

“Publishing is a process that is going to continue to evolve, and it’s important to be part of an outfit like Perseus that’s big and can stay at the cutting edge of distribution and warehouse technologies,” Dougherty said. “They will be connecting our distribution to distribution centers all over the world. As much as we appreciate the work our CPFS colleagues have done for us over the years, the business is changing to the degree that we think many, many more publishers will be doing the same thing.”