In the wake of the mess known as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, another big conglomerate publisher owned by a hedge fund, Perseus Books (which includes Basic Books, Da Capo, PublicAffairs, Running Press, Vanguard Press, and others), which also owns Perseus Distribution, (which in turn owns 80 percent of the country’s indendent press distribution, including Consortium and PGW), has announced some austerity measures, albeit with more restraint shown than in the HMH disaster: According to a report on PW Daily, president David Steinberger has sent out a memo saying the company is taking “several across the board steps,” including the suspension of annual pay raises and contributions to retirement accounts, as well as a hiring freeze. The memo, which PW quotes only partly in its five sentence report—surprisingly brief, in light of Perseus having been chosen by PW as last year’s conglomerate “Publisher of the Year“— seems to indicate there may be more to come: Steinberger says he “will be monitoring the situation.” The announcements come just weeks after Steinberger’s announcement of what another PW report called a “record year.”