For the past month the top news story dominating book industry email newsletters like PWDaily, Publishers Lunch, and Shelf Awareness has been the December 29 bankruptcy filing of San Diego book wholesaler Advance Marketing Systems (AMS), parent company of Publishers Group West (PGW). Unless you’re an acquisitions librarian, you are probably a bit like me and pay little attention to the intricacies of book distribution. (I don’t care how the book gets there as long as it is in my favorite bookstore, library, grocery store, airport bookstore, and my local Costco’s when I want it.) The main things I knew about PGW is that it distributed some interesting and unique small presses (Seal Press, McSweeney’s Books, Berrett-Koehler) and threw the hippest, coolest parties at BookExpo—Indie rocker Michelle Shocked was the star attraction at the first PGW party I attended.

But a Jan. 27 San Franciso Chronicle report, “A Financial Thriller in the Publishing World” offers an excellent, clear-eyed overview of the financial crisis that threatens the existence of 130 independent publishers. At stake are the three months of sales revenues prior to Christmas (the most profitable time of the year for many publishers) collected by PGW for its clients. The bankruptcy filing suspended all payments by AMS and its subsidiaries, including PGW. Thus the $600,000 in profits (much from the sale of Dave Eggers’s new novel What is the What) McSweeney’s had expected to receive has been frozen, and the publisher is unable to make its planned donations of the novel’s profits to a charity helping Sudanese refugees. Although an offer by Perseus Books Group to pay the publishers 70 cents for every dollar owed them by PGS in exchange for a four-year distribution contract looks promising, the article concludes that “for better or worse, the bankruptcy may have ended an era in independent book distribution.”  For an insider’s look at the AMS bankruptcy, check out Radio Free PGW , a blog started by affected PGW publishers.