Forward Press of Peterborough has ceased trading.
Royalty-free poetry publisher Forward Press has ceased trading. The Cambridgeshire-based company is expected to be put into liquidation on 29th November 2010.
Ian Walton, managing director, founded Forward Press in 1989. No one from Forward Press was available to comment.
The Bookseller
Based in Woodston Peterborough, the company employs approximately 100 staff who are all now redundant.
Back in the day, Forward was embroiled in a row over whether they qualified as a “vanity publisher” since many of their poets effectively bought anthologies of their work.
Here is an interesting article from The Independent from back in 1996 about the row between Forward and the Poetry Society.
It’s possible to speculate on a connection between the end of the company and the rise of self-publishing on the Internet. It remains to be seen whether this is a harbinger of further trouble in store for printed media in general.
Sympathy goes to those workers left jobless at this difficult time.