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After much shopping around and one false start, Viacom has named H.B. Fenn the new Canadian distributor for the Macmillan General Reference unit of Viacom's Simon & Schuster Publishing. The unit includes the group of seven imprints - including Betty Crocker cookbooks, Burpee gardening books, and Frommers travel guides - that were the subject of a controversy earlier this year (see June Q&Q, p. 35).
Viacom had planned to move the imprints from Canadian - owned Distican to Prentice Hall in May, but bowed to pressure from Canadian publishers and the media, who insisted the decision contravened Paramount's undertaking to Investment Canada to place its "consumer" lines with Canadian - owned distributors.
Ironically, it now appears the Viacom plan would have saved Canadian jobs. Ken Proctor, director of professional trade, and reference books at Prentice Hall (now with Macmillan Publishing in Indianapolis), told Q&Q in April that he had offered positions to eight employees in the trade department of recently acquired Maxwell Macmillan, but those offers have since been rescinded and the employees laid off.
A source says...