Casemate Publishers

• 1. Introduction

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  Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors LLC, based in the suburbs of Philadelphia, has grown from a single distribution operation into a sprawling network of military history and academic publishers. It began not with a grand vision, but with a phone call, a buyout, and one man's decision to keep a niche alive. How does a company built on military history books become the largest distributor of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh publishers in the United States? That question sits at the heart of what Casemate is.

• 2. A Company Born From a Sale

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  In 2001, Combined Publishing's US operations were sold to Perseus Books Group and folded into its Da Capo imprint. That transaction left one piece unresolved: the distribution operation. David Farnsworth, who had served as Combined Publishing's sales director, stepped in. He took over the distribution work and created a new entity, Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors LLC. Rather than simply inherit a client list, Farnsworth built a publishing program alongside the distribution work. Since 2001, Casemate has grown its annual publishing output to 75 book titles a year, covering memoirs, historical overviews, and accounts of specific military events.

• 3. Crossing the Atlantic

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  In July 2007, Casemate moved beyond North America. The company supported a management buyout of the Greenhill Books and Chatham Publishing distribution operation and sales team from Lionel Leventhal Ltd. That deal created a new entity, Casemate UK Ltd, which took on responsibility for the sales, marketing, and distribution of several military history and art book publishers. The move gave Casemate a foothold on both sides of the Atlantic and positioned it as a transatlantic operator rather than a regional one.

• 4. The Oxbow Acquisition

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  In December 2011, Casemate Publishers Ltd, the UK parent company, bought Oxbow Books, a leading archaeology publisher and bookseller, along with its US operation, The David Brown Book Company. Oxbow Books was founded in Oxford in 1983 by David Brown, and the purchase was made on his retirement. Oxbow currently publishes 80 books a year and remains based in Oxford. The David Brown Book Company, which Brown had founded separately in 1991, came with the deal. By 2013, that North American arm had been rebranded as Casemate Academic, providing specialist sales, marketing, and distribution to institutions and publishers from around the world serving the US market.

• 5. Building a Distribution Empire

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  In 2015, Casemate acquired International Publishers Marketing from Books International and merged its existing Athena brand into a new division called Casemate IPM. This became Casemate's general trade distribution arm. Four years later, in 2019, Casemate acquired the distribution business of US-based Dufour Editions. That acquisition made Casemate IPM the largest distributor of books for Scottish, Irish, and Welsh publishers in the United States. Dufour Editions continues to publish under its own imprint, with Casemate IPM handling its distribution, preserving an independent publishing identity within the broader Casemate network.