Iowa State sold to Blackwell

AMES, Iowa, July 29, 2000 -- A British academic publisher, Blackwell Science, will buy Iowa State University Press and operate it as a subsidiary. There already had been a marketing arrangement, the Iowa State University Press selling Blackwell titles in the United States and Blackwell selling Iowa State titles in Europe. The finances of the new deal are complex, with Blackwell Science donating $2 million to a university endowment to support faculty projects. Iowa State, in operation for 69 years, has 24 employees, all of whom will be retained, said Brenda O'Neall-Smith, operations director. The university had been waffling between selling the Press or investing in major repairs and electronic publishing equipment. The press does break even but not turned a profit in recent years, Smith said.

BLACK- WELL IOWA STATE UNIVER- SITY PRESS

Law suit to cover ScottForesman authors

NEW YORK, January 3, 2000 -- A proposed class-action suit against HarperCollins for selling books among in-house subsidiaries at discounts, thus hurting author royalties, may include textbooks authors with Scott Foresman in the mid-1990s. The in-house practice, common in the book industry, has been challenged by Ken Englade, who writes historical fiction, and Patricia Simpson, who writes romance romance writer. They seek class-action status on behalf of all affected HarperCollins writers. Although HarperColins has sold its textbook operation, authors with Harper's ScottForesman brand at the time have a claim, according to source close to the suit. ScottForesman later became part of Addison Wesley Longman, which now is part of Pearson Education. Because of statute of limitations in New York, where the suit is filed, pre-1993 works would not be affected.

CON- TRACTS HARPER COLLINS