Letter sent to Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd. customers last Friday:

Dear Customer,

As a condition of the sale of our business by our former owners, Reed Elsevier, Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd has to change its name.

From 19th November we will become Raupo Publishing (NZ) Limited, with a Maori name of Te Karuhi tä täpui o Raupö (Aotearoa).

This name change will have little or no effect on the way in which we do business together. The sale, promotion, customer service support, and distribution of books from Raupo (Reed) will continue as normal.

• You will notice some small changes in communication from us. Telephone greetings, email addresses, invoices and stationery will be updated to reflect the new company identity.

• However every effort has been made to ensure that such changes have minimal effect or disruption. For example, any emails sent to the current Reed addresses will be automatically forwarded onto the new Raupo addresses, and our contact telephone numbers, postal and physical addresses will remain unchanged.

• The Reed and Heinemann websites will no longer be operational.

The change of company name does not currently affect the use of Reed, Reed Children’s or Heinemann as imprints, or your trading terms with us.

39 Rawene Road, Birkenhead, North Shore 0626, Auckland, New Zealand

Private Bag 34901, Birkenhead, North Shore 0746, Auckland, New Zealand

Tel: (64 9) 441 2960 Fax: (64 9) 480 4999

Footnote:

This letter says nothing about staff retentions/redundancies but does infer that life will continue as normal at the existing premises. I understand this is not the case and that there are extensive redundancies but until we are officially told something by the new owners, Penguin Books (NZ), we can only guess.

The letter also says that the change of company name does not currently affect the use of the Reed imprint. I suggest the key word here might be "currently". Time will tell but Bookman Beattie has been informed that the Reed imprint will definitely not continue.