Founded in 1993 by director Duncan McCorquodale, Islington-based Black Dog and Artifice, which supplied bookshops, galleries and organisations with high-end non-fiction books on art and culture, ceased trading on 5 January and all of their 22 employees were made redundant.
The firms went into liquidation on 24 January, with Neil Andrew Bennett and Alex David Cadwallader of Leonard Curtis appointed as joint liquidators.??
According to The Bookseller, the liquidators said they had been able to sell the assets of the companies “shortly after being appointed” due to the “solid reputations within the industry” of both Black Dog Publishing and Artifice Books. The demise of the firms was blamed on “cashflow problems and considerable creditor pressure”.
St James’s House Media Group communications director Ben Duffy said the company completed the purchase of the two firms’ goodwill and existing stock early last week after being contacted by the liquidators shortly after their appointment.
Duffy told PrintWeek: “At the moment St James’s House does high-end coffee table books, with contracts including Rolls-Royce Owners' Club and the Royal Air Force.
“And we’ve got another trade arm called SJH Publishing that does celebrity autobiographies. We saw Black Dog as a natural fit to expand upon that with the books that they produce.
“There’s a number of projects there that were ongoing and left in various different states, so we’re going through all of those at the moment and getting in touch with the people that had the contracts with the previous owner and we are trying to get all of those through.
“The plan will be to follow the same sort of contract publishing model that they had been doing.”
The acquired companies will be known as Black Dog Press and Artifice Press moving forward, and will be headed up by Anna Danby, Duffy added.
None of the two firms’ staff have been taken on by St James’s House as yet, but Duffy said the group is looking to get in touch with some of the former employees.
Black Dog Publishing’s statement of affairs has revealed that its unsecured creditors were owed £756,672 in total. This included the HMRC, which was owed £48,059 and Islington council, which was owed £6,925.
The 22 employees were each owed more than a month’s wages, totalling £65,572, while UK print industry creditors included Akcent Media, which was owed £8,000; Severn £5,857; Glyphics £633; Rival Colour £541; and London Digital Print £433. McCorquodale was owed £189,889.
A source close to Black Dog told PrintWeek: “[The company had] been struggling to pay its staff on time since spring 2017, with wages being paid late in several months during 2017.
“Many invoices from printers went unpaid for months on end, with printers and image agencies refusing to work with BDP on account of overdue invoices.
“Although many books were ‘completed’ in-house in recent months, barely a handful of them were actually printed, due to the financial situation – with staff put in the unhappy position of having to mislead clients about the status of their projects.”
