Enjoying its first bona fide homegrown bestseller with Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues, Thomas Allen and Son has announced the departure of well-known industry figure Patrick Crean.

Crean founded the distribution company’s boutique publishing operation 12 years ago and brought out a number of award-winning titles, including Giller Prize winners for Edugyan and Austin Clarke, author of The Polished Hoe.

“It has become so difficult to publish in English Canada that it does seem like a good time to take a pause and re-examine the fundamentals of book publishing, and then get back into it,” Crean told book-trade magazine Quill and Quire.

Replacing Crean is Cormorant Books president Marc Côté, who will operate both companies while maintaining what he called “separate editorial mandates, separate editorial visions, separate editorial directions.”

The two independent Canadian publishers formed a distribution partnership last summer and will firm up their alliance following Crean’s departure by moving Cormorant’s downtown Toronto offices to Thomas Allen’s Markham, Ont. headquarters.