Akashic Remembers Tom Oaks

We at Akashic Books join the whole Consortium Book Sales and Distribution family and beyond in mourning the passing of Tom Oaks on February 25, 2014. Tom was the Publishing Services Coordinator at Consortium, our distributor for over a decade. While we didn’t have the privilege of working under the same roof with him, we do feel we knew Tom personally, thanks to the broad generosity with which he informed his every interaction. Whether through his patient responses to our Akashic Books barraging-him-with-emails tendency, or through his signature CBSD Weekly Round-ups, Tom’s sense of humor—totally self-deprecating yet somehow insightful and honest—set him apart from the rest of the publishing business, which can take itself far too seriously.

He was a supremely nice guy, incredibly smart and helpful, utterly dependable and immediately responsive. Tom was one of the key people who makes the Consortium community feel like a family and not simply a distribution apparatus. This heartbreaking loss affirms the importance of all the work we do together, and the valuable service an entity like Consortium performs, which goes way beyond what anyone who isn’t part of this family could ever imagine a distributor to be. Though Tom is irreplaceable, the great humanity with which he bountifully filled even the simplest of tasks makes him impossible to forget.

—Johnny, Johanna, Ibrahim, and Aaron

Posted: Feb 28, 2014

Category: News | Tags: Akashic Remembers, CBSD, Consortium, Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, Tom Oaks