One local book company, known for its book-binding, has been stuck putting nearly two dozen employees out of work. The Perma-Bound books have had to lay off a total of 23 employees. The president of the company, Jim Orr, says that around the same amount of people were put out of work from the company last year. He also said that a number of the people who were recently laid off were people who were brought back from last year’s layoffs. At this point in time, Perma-Bound currently employs a total of around 280 individuals. The primary focus of the company is to provide reading material that is used in schools and libraries, which includes curriculum text. Orr has said that one of the reasons the layoffs have been made is because of the way that the economy is right now. He also ays that the school districts are not ordering nearly a much material as they once did before.

Orr has said, “When you look at schools and you look at school budgets and you look at budgets for library books or you look at budgets for classroom use, if they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the funding to put purchase orders in to have books for the classroom or the books for the library, that affects us.” He also said, “It affects your sales, it affects your bottom line, it affects your employees.”

A separate book company in the Jacksonville area, Bound to Stay Bound, has not had to make any layoffs just yet but the president of that company, Bob Sibert, has also admitted that business has drastically declined over the past few years. Sibert says that the vast majority of the company’s market is books that are used in school and has made it clear that the problem is due to the fact that schools are dealing with major cuts and are not able to purchase as much material as they once did before. Sibert says, “It’s hard to cut back on the classroom, but people feel like they can get by without new books for a year easier than they can get by without classroom teachers or something.” He also said, “The school libraries are just a very common target in times of budget cuts. Usually, they’re the first place to cut and then the last place where they put the money back in when times get good.” It I clear that with cuts being made left and right, the book companies are suffering because they are not receiving nearly as many orders.