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Consultant recommended California cuts| BERKELEY, California, April 30, 2002 -- Cutbacks at the University of California Press follow the recommendations of an outside consultant, Press Director Lynne Withey confirmed. Withey said the Press enlisted McKinsey & Co., which offered its services pro bono, to develop a formula to stem financial losses. McKinsey recommended following the route of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and drop subjects with weakest sales. McKinsey identified six fields in which the Press does 80 percent of its business -- history, anthropology, sociology, religion, biology and natural history. Gone will be new titles in architecture, archaeology, geography, philosophy, and political science. There will be less in literature and literary theory. The university subsidizes just about 7 percent of the Press' budget. Even so, the Press lost $1 million last year. "We can't just trim a little here or cut a little over there anymore," Withey said told the Los Angeles Times. "We need to make changes in the kinds of books we publish.'' She described the process as "painful," Twelve positions have been eliminated through attrition, and more staff cuts are planned she said. |
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| What this means for authors: Although not originally conceived as revenue centers, university presses in the United States are under pressure from their universities to stem losses. Every major U.S. university press lost money last year. More cutbacks like MIT and California can be expected. |
Move up for Pearson Education chief?| LONDON, April 30, 2002 -- A two-way race for a successor to Pearson chief executive Marjorie Scardino is shaping up, the Reuters news service reported. Scardino set up the race herself by naming John Makinson chief executive of Pearson's Penguin operation. Makinson had been chair and finance director at Pearson. The other contender? Said Reuters: Peter Jovanovich, who runs Pearson Education, the company's U.S. textbook arm. |
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| What this means for authors: Scardino's departure could set off domino-effect changes in Pearson executive ranks. Affected could be authors with Pearson brands, including Addison Wesley Longman, Allyn & Bacon, Benjamin Cummings, Celebration Press, Dale Seymour, Globe Fearon, Modern Curriculum Press, Peregrine, Prentice Hall, Scott Foresman, Silver Burdett Ginn. |
Minnesota ups juvenile sex press run| MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, April 30, 2002 -- The University of Minnesota Press ordered a second printing of Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine after a controversy heightened interest in the book. Douglas Armato, director, said the reprint would be 10,000 copies. The first run was 3,500. Meanwhile, the university named a blue-ribbon commission to review the process that the Press uses to decide what to print. Armato denied that the book endorses child molestation, as critics have claimed. |
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Doing Americanization right -- and wrong
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| Eyeing the world's largest mass media market, the United States, both Canada-based Thomson and France-based Vivendi have tried re-inventing themselves as U.S. companies. How differently they've gone about it.
Thomson, whose properties include Wadsworth and other major players in U.S. textbook publishing, moved its operational headquarters to Connecticut in the 1990s and step-by-step Americanized itself. It has been a methodical transition for the 70-year-old Toronto company. If Canadians have been rankled, it's been at low decibels. |
In contrast, Vivendi roared into Hollywood in 2000 and bought Universal movies and music. In 2001, after scarfing up myriad small educational publishers, Vivendi paid a premium $2.2 billion for U.S. textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. Then high-profile chief executive Jean-Marie Messier bought a $17 million Manhattan apartment to orchestrate the company's Americanization.
Wall Street didn't cotton well to what was going on. Vivendi stock is down more than a third. The folks back home in Paris didn't like Messier's Americanization rhetoric. It worsened when he fired Pierre Lescue as head of Vivendi's main French television unit, Canal+. Lescue is an icon of French culture -- a champion of French cinema and founder of the immensely popular Canal+ pay-television service.
Is there a lesson in these tales? Authors with Thomson imprints are not losing sleep over the company's long-term strategy that's being methodically executed. Nobody is fretting about dislocations.
At Vivendi's Houghton Mifflin, however, nobody can be sure of anything. There is consensus Messier will have to spin off some of his mixed-bag holdings, which are as disparate as Arabian water utilities, Colombian garbage haulers, and, yes, a U.S. textbook publisher.
Renaissance expands math products| WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wisconsin, April 30, 2002 -- A new math program, MathFacts in a Flash, was launched by Renaissance Learning for summer. MathFacts is designed to improve the computation fluency by giving teachers information on individual pupil skills and problem areas. The program expands on Renaissance Learning's Accelerated Math and Star Math programs. |
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New web site for academic authorsWINONA, Minnesota, April 30, 2002 -- The new Society of Academic Authors launched a web site, called sa2, to provide textbook and other academic authors with news and information about authoring. John Vivian, himself a textbook author, will edit the site from Minnesota. He earlier edited other news sites for academic audiences. These include the CyberIndee, a campus news site at Winona State University, his academic home. He founded the Text and Academic Authors Association site in 1996. He was the founding editor of the Academic Author newsletter.
What this means for authors: Academic authors have around-the-clock access to the latest news that affects them and their work. A growing reference section, including corporate profiles, will be of ongoing value. |
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Virginia Press changes name| CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, April 30, 2002 -- The University Press of Virginia will change its name to the University of Virginia Press, university President John Casteen III announced. The changes reflects the Press' "close relationship to its host institution," Casteen said. |
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 | Renaissance Learning: Sales grew 15 percent to $30.2 million in the quarter ended March 31, compared to a year earlier. Net income grew 50 percent to $7.8 million. Company explanation: Strong reading and math sales.
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 | Houghton Mifflin: Earning before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization grew 15 percent to US$266 million last year. High school sales grew 27 percent; trade, 25 percent; and college, 8 percent.
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Academic authoring society formed| WINONA, Minnesota, April 30, 2002 -- A long-time advocate of author interests, John Vivian, announced the formation of a new organization, the Society of Academic Authors. Vivian described the society as a "high-impact virtual organization that will exist entirely online." The society's purpose, he said, is to promote excellence in academic authoring, to bring recognition to academic authors, and to advocate the interests of academic authors. "Membership is open to both academic authors and individuals aspiring to academic authorship," he said. |
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| What this means for authors: The new society promises to be a highly visible collective voice for academic authors. The society also plans to serve authors individually with information and news. |
Sales: College textbooks up 34%WASHINGTON, April 29, 2002 -- College textbook sales grew 34.4 percent in February, compared to a year earlier, according to the Association of American Publishers. The strong February made for a year-to-date increase, counting both January and February, of 13.3 percent. Here are the year-to-date AAP data through February, extrapolated from 74 member-publishers, for genres in which academic authors write:College
University press (paperback)
El-hi
University press (hard cover)
STM, professional | 13.3 percent
8.8 percent
3.9 percent
-9.7 percent
-10.1 percent |
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| What this means for authors: College textbook authors can strengthen their posture in contract negotiations by citing numbers about the recent spectacular performance. |
Wiley swallows Hungry Minds wholly| NEW YORK, April 28, 2002 -- The name Hungry Minds is disappearing. John Wiley & Sons, which acquired the publishing house in September 2001, said Hungry Minds is being completely assimilated into Wiley's professional and trade operation. Some Hungry Minds brands are being retained: Betty Crocker, For Dummies, Frommers, Weight Watchers. |
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St. Martin's using e-rights expiration| NEW YORK, April 27, 2002 -- St. Martin's Press is insisting on electronic rights from authors but offering something in exchange, executive Jeff Gomez told the trade journal Publishers Weekly. Authors are being offered the rights back when a book goes three years without sales, said Gomez, who is St. Martin's e-books and print-on-demand manager. "There are no complaints from agents," he said. Although St. Martin's is a textbook publisher, the company also is heavily into trade books, where most of its e-book activity has been. The company has about 2,000 titles in formats for electronic delivery. Strongest sales are sci-fi, followed by women's fiction and literary fiction, Gomez said. |
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| What this means for authors: Look at new contracts to see if your publisher has a sunset provision on its e-rights claim. If not, site what St. Martin's is doing and insist on the same provision. |
Sabre increases free book shipments| LAWRENCE, Massachusetts, April 26, 2002 -- The nonprofit Sabre Foundation which donates school books to needy parts of the world, opened a 67,000-square foot warehouse in Lawrence to expand its work. Colin McCullogh, who handles donations, said he expects 40 shipload containers to be sent this year. Most will go to Africa the Balkans, Uzbekistan -- as well as Sabre's first container ever to Afghanistan. In recent years Sabre has averaged about 20 shipments a year. Sabre, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, accepts learning materials from individuals and publishers. |
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| What you can do: The Sabre Foundation accepts books for distribution to the Third World. Look at your shelves for unused desk copies: Sabre Foundation |
Ebrary deals extend global market| MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, April 25, 2002 -- The information distribution and retrieval service ebrary signed agreements with three firms for global distribution. Coutts Library Services will resell ebrary service in Europe, North America and the Middle East; iGroup, will resell in Asia, Australia and New Zealand; and E-libro.net will resell in Latin America and Spanish language libraries in the United States. Ebrary services full-text books and other documents |
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Congress ponders better texts for blindWASHINGTON, April 24, 2002 -- A new infrastructure to speed the delivery of instructional materials to blind children was proposed in Congress. The Instructional Materials Accessibility Act, would improve the efficiency of the conversion process from print format to Braille and other formats, said Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, one of the bill's sponsors. Currently, Dodd said, blind pupils often encounter lengthy delays in obtaining current instructional materials. In some cases, the materials are never available in Braille, he said. The legislation would establish a standard national electronic file format to convert textbooks and other instructional material into accessible formats. Publishers would be required to provide core instructional materials to a national clearing house for timely distribution.
Glencoe math texts to carry USA content| NEW YORK, April 24, 2002 -- A partnership between McGraw-Hill and USA Today Education will put USA content into several of McGraw's 6-12 Glencoe math books in the fall. McGraw said the USA content would provide a real-world context for math concepts and principles. Covered in the agreement are Glencoe Pre-Algebra, Glencoe Algebra 1, and Glencoe Algebra 2. |
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Thomson seeks New York stock listing| STAMFORD, Connecticut, April 23, 2002 -- The corporate parent of the Thomson Learning, Thomson Corporation, is preparing a public offering of stock that will make it eligible to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Stock in the company, formerly based in Canada, currently is sold on the Toronto exchange. Business Week magazine quoted analysts that Thomson will need to convince investors that the current high price of the stock is warranted. Shares are selling at 34 times projected earnings. Analysts said that Thomson somehow will need to increase earnings, reduce debt, or demonstrate that earnings are destined to improve. |
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| What this means for authors: Thomson Learning, now home to many former Harcourt titles, as well as Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, Dusbury, Heinlke, Schimer,South-Western, Wadsworth, West and other brands, may be under increased pressure to cut costs to improve earnings. |
Atomic Dog buys OpenMind titles| CINCINNATI, Ohio, April 22, 2002 -- A rapidly growing textbook publisher, Atomic Dog, has bought most of titles of OpenMind Publishing Group of Raleigh, North Carolina. Terms were not announced. Alex von Rosenberg, Atomic Dog founder, said said the deal brings "great authors" into the Atomic Dog fold as the company expands its "value alternative" to the Big Four textbook publishers. The OpenMind acquisition comes on top of these others: CourseWise, Copperhouse, Mindleaders and Starr. |
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Nonfiction freelancer heads Guild TAYLOR |
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NEW YORK, April 22, 2002 -- A nonfiction author and freelance journalist, Nick Taylor, was elected to a two-year term as president of the Authors Guild. Taylor, who characterizes himself as an "authors' advocate," said he wants to expand services to the Guild's 8,200 members. "The author's world is evolving so fast it's dizzying," said Taylor. "The Guild has been on top of those changes." As president, Taylor succeeds Letty Cottin Pogrebin. |
New chief at Harvard Business Press| BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 22, 2002 -- The Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, producer of the vaunted Harvard business case studies, hired David Wan as chief executive. Wan, who holds a Harvard M.B.A., is president at Penguin Group, a unit of London-based Pearson. He had reported directly to Pearson chief Marjorie Scardino. At Harvard, he succeeds Linda Doyle, who is returning to teaching. Wan's salary was not announced, but insiders pegged it at $709,000. At Pearson, Wan rose through the ranks after nine years in the education units at Simon & Schuster before Pearson took over. |
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McGraw music texts add software| NEW YORK, April 22, 2002 -- The Net4Music Finale notation software, widely used in college music labs, will be bundled with McGraw-Hill college music theory textbooks, the company announced. McGraw said adopters have asked for software to support music education textbooks. |
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California Press trims scope | BERKELEY, California, April 22, 2002 -- Two editors at the University of California Press resigned to object to a decision to quit publishing in archeology, architecture, geography, philosophy and political science. Lynn Withey, acting director, said the Press needed to reduce costs. There were to be no layoffs, she said, noting that the departing editors chose themselves to leave in displeasure at the subject areas targeted to be deleted. Also, the Press will be much more selective in accepting literature and literary theory works, Withey said. The Press must "play to its strengths," she said. She identified strengths as anthropology, biology, history, natural history, religion and sociology. More regional works can be expected, she said. |
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| What this means for authors: Many university presses are dropping subjects in which they've traditionally published. Authors will need to find other presses for their work. Be prepared to answer questions about profit potential. |
Amazon chief: Used books are good| SEATTLE, Washington, April 22, 2002 -- Sometimes quixotic Jeff Bezos, founder of the Amazon.com web book retailer, came out swinging at the Authors Guild over used books. Bezos called the Guild "a small but vocal organization" that has tried to rally opposition to Amazon's new sideline in used books. The Guild calls used books author-unfriendly. Not so, said Bezos: "Offering customers a lower-priced option causes them to visit our site more frequently, which in turn leads to higher sales of new books while encouraging customers to try authors and genres they may not have otherwise tried." Bezos threw a barb at the Guild: These are the folks who advocate "charging public libraries royalties on books they loan out." | |
| What this means for authors: Bezos is talking about trade books. He may be right in a macro sense, but tell that to an author who loses royalties whenever a customer chooses a used copy. Regarding textbooks, Bezos is flat wrong. A used-textbook sale is a lost new book sale that will never be recovered. Good news: Amazon has hardly any traffic in textbooks, used or new. |
Passwords into more Thomson texts| STAMFORD, Connecticut, April 22, 2002 -- The InfoTrac online periodical library from Thomson's Gale subsidiary will assume a greater role in Thomson texts, the company announced. In the fall Infotrac access codes will be included with most texts published under the Thomson brand names Brooks/Cole, Duxbury, Heinle, Schimer, South-Western and Wadsworth. Infotrac has grown to 3,800 full-text journals and 10 million full-text online articles. |
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Is Vivendi an acquisition target?| PARIS, April 22, 2002 -- The tough profits-or-else posture that Vivendi chief Jean-Marie Messier took with his Canal+ television subsidiary infuriated many French people but also may have restored some investor confidence in the media conglomerate. Within three days, Vivendi shares rose 10 percent. Even so, rumors persisted that the depressed Vivendi stock makes the company a likely takeover target. Carol Matlack, reporting in Business Week, identified possible pursuers as the Bronfman family of Canada, whose Seagram's fortune is tied up in Vivendi-owned Universal Studios and MCA in the United States. Since the Bronfman sold Universal to Vivendi in 2001, their shares have lost 58 percent of their value. Matlack said other pursuers include Barry Diller, who runs Vivendi's television and movie businesses in the United States. he sold USA Networks to Vivendi in 2001. Another possible is U.S. cable industry wizard John Malone. |
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| What this means for authors: Some observers believe Vivendi will need to shed core holdings to assauge shareholder doubts about the company's focus. The $64,000 question: Is Vivendi textbook subsidiary Houghton Mifflin a core holding for a company that Messier wants to reinvent as an entertainment powerhouse? |
Foundation ponders Afghan shipments| PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, April 22, 2002 -- The nonprofit Brother's Brother Foundation is waiting until Afghanistan is sufficiently stable before shipping learning materials into the war-wracked country. In the meantime, said Karen Lensie, development director, the foundation will continue to focus on Nepal, the Philippines, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. About Afghanistan, Lensie said shipping remains too expensive, about $5,000 per container from nearby countries. Also, she said, more basic needs like shelter, food and medicine have priority. Last year Brother's Brother shipped 80 containers of books, worth $30 million, to the Third World. The foundation accepts learning materials from individuals and publishers. |
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| What you can do: The Brother's Brother Foundation accepts books for distribution to the Third World. Look at the shelves for unused desk copies: Brother's Brother Foundation |
Vivendi turmoil deepens with Canal+ firingPARIS, April 16, 2002 -- The chief executive at Vivendi International, Jean-Marie Messier, fired the founder of Canal+, a popular television provider in France that is part of the Vivendi media empire, setting off a national uproar. The Canal+ staff pre-empted programming to put their founder, Pierre Lescure, on the air live with a call to cancel subscriptions. The newspaper Le Monde ran a Page One article that the Vivendi's board was organizing to oust Messier.
What this means for authors: Who knows how the volatile Vivendi situation will play out, but authors with Houghton Mifflin, a Vivendi subsidiary acquired in 2001, need to follow developments closely. |
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Co-authors awarded $32.4 million| BOSTON, Massachusetts, August 18, 2001 -- The author of first-person Holocaust book, Misha Levy Defonseca, and her co-author were awarded $32.4 million from Mt. Ivy Press, which they claimed had inadequately promoted the 1997 memoir. Judge Elizabeth Fahey ordered the award, tripling the damages set by a jury last summer. Defonseca and co-author Vera Lee had numerous complaints against Mt. Ivy, which has gone out of business. Among them was that the publisher, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, had postponed promotional efforts, including an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey television show. Also, Defonseca and Lee said the company hid royalties in offshore accounts and pilfered copyrights. |
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Supreme Court: Child porn law went too far| WASHINGTON, April 16, 2002 -- In a free expression-friendly 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act unconstitutional. The Court said the law was "overbroad" in allowing the government to prosecute depictions of teenage and child sexuality. Even the play Romeo and Juliet could be banned under the law, noted one justice. The law banned adult actors from playing child roles involving sex. It also banned computer-generated sexual images that purported to involve children even though they did not. |
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| What this means for authors: The decision is the latest in expansive Supreme Court decisions to limit government restrictions on expression. The trend dates to Schenck v. U.S. in 1919, albeit occasional setbacks. |
Court: State can't ban kill-and-tell profits | BOSTON, April 16, 2002 -- A proposed Massachusetts law to require profits from books by criminals to go into escrow would be unconstitutional, the state Supreme Judicial Court concluded. The Court relied on a 1991 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that a similar New York law allowed excessive government interference with free expression. The Massachusetts law would have required publishers and literary agents to ask the state's attorney general to assess whether revenues generated by a criminal's book related substantially to the crime. "It really smacks of censorship," said attorney Zick Rubin, who argued against the legislation. Rubin represented book, magazine and newspapers publishers; movie-makers; and authors. |
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| What this means for authors: The opinion makes it more difficult for the government to interfere in the publishing process. The impact on academic authors is only in by the abstract. |
Congress tackles Bush access limits WASHINGTON, April 15, 2002 -- Legislation to assure that scholars have access to presidential papers was introduced in Congress by House Democrats and Republicans. The bill would overturn an executive order by President Bush that allows presidents to bar access to working papers from their White House years. Scholars have objected to the Bush order and filed a law suit against it. The lead sponsor of the House bill to overturn the Bush order was California Republican Stephen Horn. The Horn bill reaffirms the 1978 Presidential Records Act that opens most presidential papers 12 years after a president leaves office.
What this means for authors: Outrage at the President's order, signed November 1, was muted in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Academicians, as well as the news media, have since found their voice and found too that they have friends in Congress. |
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Vivendi execs buying more stockPARIS, April 14, 2002 -- The chair of Vivendi International, parent company of U.S. textbook brand Houghton Mifflin, said he and his executives would use their 2001 bonuses to buy Vivendi stock. The announcement by Jean-Marie Messier was a response to flagging investor confidence, analysts said. Vivendi shares have been off 38 percent since January 1. Meanwhile, the French company's annual report listed Messier's post-tax 2001 salary at US$2.2 million, not counting stock options, up 46.6 percent from the year before.
What this means for authors: By French standards, Messier's compensation is high. This isn't playing well. But is his comp excessive? At Disney, Michael Eisner earned $12.3 million in 2000; with options and incentives $60.5 million. At McGraw-Hill, Harold McGraw earned$2.3 million; with options and incentives $12.9 million. |
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Court: Readers have 1st Amendment rights too| DENVER, April 8, 2002 -- The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that people have a "fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from government interference." The decision ended a two-year battle by the Tattered Cover bookstore to resist turning its records on customer purchases over to government agents. The Court held that search warrants targeting bookstore records seriously threaten First Amendment-protected rights and should be issued only in extreme cases. The Tattered Cover case grew out of a police drug raid in which two books about drug manufacturing were found along with an invoice number from the Tattered Cover. Police obtained a warrant to go through the bookstore's records to identify customers. |
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Minnesota question: Pro or about pedophilia?| MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, April 8, 2002 -- Attacks by radio talk-show host Laura Schlesinger and other moralists on a University of Minnesota Press book, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine, prompted the university to launch a review of procedures for choosing works for publication. Christine Maziar, the university's vice president for research, said the review will help the university respond to concerns in a way that protects and promotes academic freedom. Doug Armato, director of the Press, called the criticism of Levine's book "misleading and inaccurate." The book, he said, does not advocate pedophilia. Rather, he said, Levine attempts to make a case for open and honest discussion about adolescent and child sexuality. |
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