Macmillan buys into US customisation

Global publishing company Macmillan has acquired the higher education publisher Hayden-McNeil for an undisclosed sum.

Macmillan’s US publishing arm bought the Michigan-based publisher of teaching and learning materials in January.

The acquisition adds to the company’s higher education publishing portfolio, which already includes Bedford St Martin’s, WH Freeman and Worth Publishers.

Macmillan, which is part of the Georg von Holtzbrinck media group, said that its latest acquisition represented the “gold standard” in the fast-growing field of custom publishing, in which products are tailored to the specific needs of colleges and universities.

Brian Napack, president of Macmillan, said: “As teaching and learning moves online, we expect customisation to be a core principle of successful publishing.”

Patrick Olson, founder and CEO of Hayden-McNeil, which will continue to operate as a standalone business, said that the move would “enable us to grow to the next level”.

• Also in the US, Sage Journals Online (SJO) has won the Professional and Scholarly Publishing award for excellence for best e-publication platform.

SJO offers 500 social science and scientific, technical and medical journals from Sage. The scholarly platform was developed alongside Stanford University’s HighWire press.

John Shaw, director of publishing technologies at Sage, said: “Sage and HighWire have continued to develop SJO since its initial launch, adding enhanced, user-friendly features based on feedback from faculty, students and librarians.”

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