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Vivendi officer: Company was at brinkPARIS, July 19, 2002 -- The French conglomerate Vivendi, which owns textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin, was within three days of a collapse June 30, when the board fired chief executive Jean-Marie Messier, according to Claude Bébéar, the new chair of the board's finance committee. In an interview in Business Week magazine, Bébéar said:"If the decision hadn't been made when it was, Vivendi would have run out of money within days. The banks were supposed to extend $400 million in credit, but they decided not to. They would have pulled the rug out from under Vivendi." Messier was fired on a Sunday. "On Tuesday," said Bébéar, "the banks would have cut off credit." Since then, he said, new credit lines have been secured. Still, he added, Vivendi's debt level remains unsustainable. "We are evaluating which holdings should be sold to reduce debt."Bébéar, 66, is considered France's leading French financier. Some call him the Godfather of French Capitalism. In the 1990s he put together France-based global insurance giant Axa. |
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MIFFLIN
 VIVENDI
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 | Scholastic: Revenue dropped fell 2 percent to $1.9 billion for the company's latest fiscal year, but operating income climbed 88.3 percent to $185.9 million. The company said that cost reductions of $45 million contributed to the record operating margin.
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Greenwood trims imprints, journals| WESTPORT, Connecticut, July 18, 2002 -- Academic publisher Greenwood Press, which expanded rapidly with acquisitions in 2000 and 2001, announced major cutbacks, including phasing out its Ablex, Auburn House, Bergun & Garvey, and Quorum imprints. The Oryz monographs published with the American Council of Education also will be phased out. So will many other Greenwood monographs. Forty employees, mostly in production, will be let go and production hired out. Spokesperson Elizabeth Neel said the changes will "consolidate the gains of our recent growth." Libraries Unlimited of Denver, a recent acquisition, is being closed. Neel said Greenwood will focus on reference and information books for libraries. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | William Boyes, (economics), Arizona State University, and Michael Melvin (economics), Arizona State University, wrote the second edition of Fundamentals of Economics (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Deborah Chasman, editorial director at Beacon Press, joined Boston Review as co-editor with Joshua Cohen. |
 | Daniel D. Chiras (biology), University of Denver, wrote the fourth edition of An Human Biology: Health, Homeostasis, and the Environments (Jones and Bartlett). |
 | Dennis Hinkle, (sciences), Towson University, William Wiersma (sciences), and Stephen G. Jurs (sciences), wrote the fifth edition of Applied Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Nancy Hunt, (education), California State University, Los Angeles, and Kathleen Marshall (education), University of South Carolina, wrote the third edition of Exceptional Children and Youth (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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From Frank Silverman, award-winning speech pathology author:
"Stephen Covey's 1989 book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, can be helpful to academic authors negotiating book publishing contracts. Covey provides the following script: "I only want to go for win-win. I want to win and I want you to win. I wouldn't want to get my way and have you not feel good about it, because downstream it would eventually surface and create a withdrawal. On the other hand, I don't think you would feel good if you got your way and gave in. So let's work for a win-win. Let's really hammer it out. And if we can't find it, then let's agree that we won't make a deal at all. It would be better not to deal than to make a decision that wasn't right for us both." If an academic author were to take this position before beginning to negotiate a book publishing contract, particularly one for a textbook that has the potential to be widely adopted, I suspect that the author would end up with a less one-sided contract. Remember, an acquisitions editor who is motivated to negotiate with you is probably as interested in acquiring your book as you are in having it be acquired. Acquisitions editors who acquire too few books are unlikely to get substantial bonuses and tend to be at relatively high risk for losing their jobs." |
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HAVE A TIP TO SHARE?
LET OTHER AUTHORS KNOW
TELL
SA2 |
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Guild offers web links, lessons| ST. NEW YORK, July 19, 2002 -- The Authors Guild, the largest authors group in the United States, announced a promotion service for author sites at its Authors Guild.net. The service is free to qualifying writers through August 31, then $6 a month. The service is only for sites directly related to the registrant's work as an author. The Guild offers online software to permit authors with no HTML knowledge to build sites, post book excerpts and magazine articles, host discussions, send electronic newsletters with a feature that keeps track of subscribers, and link to online bookstores. "Reaching your audience through the Internet has become a part of modern authorship," said Guild president Nick Taylor. After 30 minutes of familiarization with the program, most writers can quickly build web pages, he said. |
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TAYLOR |
| Mark Bauerlein. "Ignore Fast-Track Assessments of Scholarly Books at Your Peril, Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 48 (July 19, 2002), Number 45, Pages B7-B9. Bauerlein, himself an author, suggests that fellow scholars accept the sometimes off-mark and lame reviews in the mainstream media as first round in the dialogue about their work. But don't, he says, be silent. Engage the critics, even at the risk of letters of response being overedited or inciting facetious or annoyed comment, he says: "The other option -- nonengagement -- is worse." |
| Anne Leach. Marketing Your Indexing
Services, second edition. Information Today, 1998. This is a collection of articles from the American Society of Indexers' Key Words, with additional chapters by Anne Leach. It includes strategies for beginning indexers and new business owners, as well as established professionals. |
| Hans H. Wellisch. Glossary of Terminology in Abstracting, Classification, Indexing, and Thesaurus Construction, second edition. Information Today, 2000. This updated version defines terms used in writings on abstracting, indexing, classification, and thesaurus construction, as well as terms for the most common types of documents and their parts. |
Vivendi officer doesn't see print sale| PARIS, July 17, 2002 -- The chief at Vivendi Universal Publishing, which owns textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin, told a French newspaper she doesn't expect her unit to be sold or broken up as new management works to salvage the parent company. Said Agnès Touraine: "I don't think a dismantling is on the agenda at the moment." Touraine said an audit has been launched by Jean-René Fourtou, the new chief executive at the parent Vivendi company. Strategic decisions will flow from the audit, Touraine said. Touraine's preference? "As it is today, VUP can live its life, alone. There are always benefits to being in an important group, notably a media group, in terms of development and investment." |
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Committee OKs distance learning bill| WASHINGTON, July 17, 2002 -- The House Judiciary Committee approved a Senate-passed bill that would broaden the existing copyright exemption for instructional television broadcasting to encompass distance education delivered via digital networks. The bill, the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act, was passed by the Senate more than a year ago. Next step: Full House consideration. The bill is a compromise worked out by educators and publishers for the use of copyrighted materials on the Internet with minimal risk of widespread, unauthorized reproduction. |
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Pearson chief talented? Just lucky? Stay tuned| NEW YORK, July 15, 2002 -- The mastermind behind the refocusing at London-based Pearson, whose interests include textbook publisher Pearson Education, took a fall from grace in a report by journalist Stanley Reed in Business Week magazine. Marjorie Scardino has made bad decisions that have eroded investor confidence, Reed writes. Pearson stock, which tripled in Scardino's' heyday after taking charge in 1997, is now lower than when she started. What went wrong? As Reed tells it, sales of internet-related textbooks have faltered, K-12 adoptions have fallen, and Scardino missed cues to cut back on Internet development budgets until it was too late. Also, Pearson overpaid to buy National Computer System, an educational testing company, for $2.5 billion -- 26 percent more than the market value. In London, ad revenue at the Financial Times is in a funk. Red quotes analysts who project relatively low revenue growth of 2 percent in 2002 and 3 percent in 2003. Any bright spots? "The college and high school divisions remain strong," Reed wrote. Despite sagging investor interest, Reed said, Scardino retains the confidence of Pearson directors. His bottom line: "Over the next few quarters, Scardino will show whether she is the talented manager she seemed to be early in her tenure or whether she was just another lucky CEO riding the boom." | 
SCARDINO |
ABOUT GOD AS COAUTHOR: Acknowledging inspiration can be easier than sharing the rights. That's how God sees it, as illustrated in Zick Rubin's conversation between the Creator (upper case) and the creator (lower case). Yes, Rubin tells us, God has his own ideas. A snippet:
God: Neale, I hate to break this to you so abruptly, but I've spoken to a copyright lawyer.
Neale: Why in heaven's name did you do that?
God: With all the talk about copyright in cyberspace. I was feeling out of touch. So let's get to the point: If I wrote the book, why does it say right in the front, "Copyright 1995 by Neale Donald Walsch?" I talked to you, Neale, but I never assigned my copyright. |
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RUBIN
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Scholastic books free for literacy project| NEW YORK, July 15, 2002 -- The early-childhood staffs at Scholastic and Denver-based Children's World Learning Centers announced plans for a school-to-home literacy program. Families will receive age-appropriate Scholastic books and literary activities every three months for free. The same materials will go to 600 CWLC centers in 26 states for teachers to integrate into their curricula. Once a month children can bring their Scholastic books to review in at their CWLC classroom. More than 76,000 children will receive the free materials. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
| Gail Deegan, chief financial officer at Houghton Mifflin from 1996 to 2001, when it was acquired by Vivendi, was named to the board of information storage company EMC Corporation. |
 | Barbara Goldstein, (English), Hillsborough Community College, Jack Waugh (humanities), Hillsborough Community College, and Karen Linsky (English), Hillsborough Community College wrote Grammar to Go (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Joel F. Harrington (history), Vanderbilt University, wrote A Cloud of Witnesses: Readings in the History of Western Christianity (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Joel Walz (French), University of Georgia, and Jean-Pierre Piriou (French), University of Georgia, wrote the fifth edition of Rapports (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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| A Society of
Academic Authors survey found authors facing great confusion and uncertainty in
corporate acquisitions and mergers -- as do editors and other publisher personnel too. One author kept up through a stock broker: "I bought stock in my publisher many years ago and receive updates on positions from my stockbroker and through annual reports quarterly. My stockbroker alerts me each week on the status of all of my stocks and that is how I find out about mergers and acquisitions. I bought the stock on purpose just to find out when these things happen." |
| ABOUT sa2
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Reporter: Vivendi's three optionsNEW YORK, July 14, 2002 -- The debt-mired French company that owns textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin has three ways out of its problems, as reporter Janet Guyon, writing in Fortune magazine, sees it. Guyon's scenarios:
Vivendi Light: Sell everything except the core entertainment assets -- Universal films, music games; USA Networks; and Canal+. This would mean selling publishing assets, including Houghton.
French Solution: Besides keeping Vivendi Light assets, keep politically sensitive French properties including water utilities. This would preserve French pride.
Vulture Scenario: Sell everything to bargain-seeking buyers. Vivendi shares are off 90 percent from their 2001 peak and 76 percent this year. |
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Survey: Book industry raises downNEW YORK, July 14, 2002 -- With sales sluggish overall, people in the U.S. book industry realized lesser salary increases in 2001 than the year before, according to a survey by the trade journal Publishers Weekly. raises averaged 6.7 percent, compared to 9 percent in 2000. The data are based on responses from 550 PW subscribers and do not break out text from trade parts of the business. The 2001 data for publishing house employees with whom authors have the most continuing contact:
| | THE BUSINESS OF PUBLISHING |
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COMPANY
REVENUE | $1
million+ | $10
million+ | $100
million+ | $500
million+ | Editorial director
/ editor-in-chief | $ 70,600 | $ 85,600 | $ 90,300 | 94,200 | | Senior editor /
executive editor | 86,000 | 96,000 | 100,000 | 94,200 | | | Editor | 58,300 | 55,700 | 54,800 | 56,600 | | Production editor /
development editor
/ acquisitions editor | 62,500 | 65,300 | 68,300 | n/a | | | Editorial assistant | n/a | 28,000 | 30,300 | 28,000 | | Sales rep /
account manager | 57,600 | 63,000 | 61,300 | 70,000 | |
| L. Kathy Heilenman and Ervin Tschirner. "The Culture and Comic of the Foreign Language Textbook: A Preliminary Investigation," in David P. Benseler, editor, The Dynamics of Language Program Direction (AAUSC Issues in Language Program Direction). Heinle & Heinle, 1993. Pages 111-154. Survey of French and German university-level language textbook authors. Includes discussion of academic values and rewards in respect to textbook publishing. |
| Malcolm Litchfield, "University Presses Aren't Endangered, But Presses Must Stress Ideas, Not Markets," Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 48 (June 28, 2002): Number 42, Pages B9-B1. Litchfield, director of Ohio State University Press, proposes rescuing the marketplace of ideas, "scholarly communication" as he calls, from the marketplace. His scenario: Universities put all their professors' work in their libraries for cataloguing, digitizing and archiving through a non-exclusive license -- books, articles, even letters to the editor and research notes. Libraries would become a digital portal to all the knowledge generated at their universites. Meanwhile, professors could pursue separate commercial outlets for their work. See companion article by Niko Pfund. |
| Niko Pfund, "University Presses Aren't Endangered," Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 48 (June 28, 2002): Number 42, Pages B7-B8. Pfund, academic publisher at Oxford University Press, offers a litany of reasons for optimism about the future of university presses. Authors like university presses. Libraries and dealers rely on university presses. About whether self-publishing is a threat, Pfund says university presses offer invisible services that authors would be hard-pressed to match on their own. He notes that university presses have the advantage of residing in academe's "gift economy," in which "thousands of hours of scholarly labor are often rewarded with little more than a modest press run, some reviews, and perhaps a shot at tenure." See companion article by Malcolm Litchfield. |
Random doubles author costs in libel casesNEW YORK, July 13, 2002 -- Authors with trade publisher Random House will pay more in the future if their work results in a libel suit, the publisher announced. Twenty percent of advances will be charged to cover damage judgements, settlements and attorney fees. Formerly 10 percent was charged. Random House litigation director Linda Steinman said the change was forced by insurance companies that raised Random's deductible for libel cases from $100,000 to $1 million. Other publishers, also facing dramatically higher deductibles, are expected to follow Random House's policy. Random said the author's obligation in a copyright infringement suit will remain 20 percent of the advance.
What this means for authors: Few text and academic authors have negotiated any coverage under their publishers' libel and copyright infringement insurance. Most textbook contracts put the burden of legal protection entirley on authors. The few extbook authors who have protection in their contracts can expect to be asked to shoulder more of the cost. |
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Author sues on repurposing issueALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania, July 12, 2002 -- A business author, Russell Wild, sued the magazine company Jungle Media for interferring with his plans to use material from his articles in a new book. Wild accused Jungle Media of malice and fraud in trying to intervene with his arrangment with McGraw-Hill. Until Wild and Jungle Media resolve their differences, McGraw has the book project on ice. Jungle Media says a clause in Wild's freelance contract bars him from using his magazine material "in any publication, website or other means of distribution by any business oriented website or publication" without permission from Jungle. Wild says to call McGraw-Hill a business-oriented publication specious "is like saying a sardine is a member of the whale family." he says.
What this means for authors: Although neither a text nor academic book is imvolved in this case, the issue is one facing all authors who try to repurpose their material. This is especially important forf textbook authos considering trade or reference book spinoffs. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | Kathleen R. Allen (business), University of Southern California, wrote the third edition of Launching New Ventures: An Entrepreneurial Approach (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | J. David Cooper, (education), Ball State University, and Nancy D. Kiger (education), University of Central Florida, wrote the fifth edition of Literacy: Helping Children Construct Meaning (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | James L. Hein (math), Portland State University , wrote the second edition ofDiscrete Mathematics (Jones and Bartlett). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Rowman & Littlefield buys Catholic house| MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin, July 13, 2002 -- Niche academic publisher Rowman & Littlefield bought the 500-title U.S. assets of the Catholic book publisher Sheed & Ward from the Priests of the Sacred Heart. A Priests spokesperson, Father Paul McGuire, said R&L would "maintain the character and integrity" of the imprint while providing growth potential. Editorial director Jeremy Langford remains. Some of the 10 Milwaukee employees will be asked to work on a freelance basis. Jed Lyons, R&L president, said Sheed & Ward's output, now about 25 books a year for both the academic market and the general trade, will be grown gradually. Other Rowman & Littlefield imprints include Scarecrow, Austin & Winfield, Ardsley House, Lexington Books, AltaMira, and University Press of America. |
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"Vivendi will take bath on Houghton"NEW YORK, July 12, 2002 -- The Boston-based educational publisher Houghton Mifflin may not draw anywhere near the $2.2 billion that Vivendi paid for it a year ago if the cash-strapped French conglomerate decides to sell, according to investment bankers cited by reporter Jim Milliot in the trade journal Publishers Weekly. Several factors are at play, said Milliot, citing a consensus of his sources. Why would Vivendi not recover the money it put into Houghton? For one, it's widely thought that Vivendi overpaid. Also, even though Houghton is itself healthy, there is a dearth of interested buyers. Major competitors like Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Reed Elsevier covet Houghton's strong lists, but their interest is dampened by antitrust issues, especially at the el-hi level. Investor groups considering acquiring the company will likely be scared off by the massive capital and huge risk in developing el-hi products, Milliot's sources said. For investors other than the current big players, there would be no economies of scale to battle the competition. Parts of Houghton would be more attractive than others if Vivendi breaks up the company, especially the college, testing, and trade and reference group, the sources said. |
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The journal NOGO having rough go| BALTIMORE, Maryland, July 12, 2002 -- A web journal founded as an outlet for negative research results, the Journal of Negative Observations in Genetic Oncology, passed its fifth birthday without fanfare. Founder Scott Kern, a Johns Hopkins University pathologist, said that submissions are fewer than ever and he has to scrounge through published papers for material and to tap the scientific grapevine to pursue negative research results. The journal's concept was sound, Kern said -- to publish data so other researches don't go on already-traveled deadends. Alas, he said, most scientists don't seek to advertise their failures. |
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SA2 incorporates Heilenman biblio
| IOWA CITY, Iowa, July 12, 2002 -- Authoring scholar
Kathy Heilenman's 37-item annotated bibliography, compiled in a 1990 research
project, has been added to the SA2 online bibliography. Heilenman, whose discipline in languages, is widely cited for her 1991 work "Of Cultures and Compromises: Publishers, Textbooks and the Academy," which appeared in Publishing Research Quarterly. Her contributions in the SA2 biblio are denoted with a parenthetical LKH. Heilenman is on the University of Iowa faculty. |
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McGraw still reigns in salaryNEW YORK, July 11, 2002 -- Among textbook publishing company executives, Terry McGraw was the highest compensated at $1.6 million in 2001, according to a compilation drawn from federal documents by the trade journal Publishers Weekly. That was a 29.2 percent comedown from $2.3 million the year before. The compilation covers only publicly traded companies. Also, some six-digit executives are not included if their company is part of a conglomerate that is required by government documents to list only the top conglomerate salaries, not subsidiary salaries. The data may vary from other compilations because of vagaries in fiscal periods and other factors. The PW data:Terry McGraw [McGraw-Hill]
Richard Robinson [Scholastic]
William Pesce [Wiley]
Randall White [EDC] |
| $ 1.6 million
1.3 million
985,000
130,000 |
| -29.2 percent
-9.8 percent
-7.2 percent
Unchanged |
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| Maryann Corbett. Directory of Indexing
and Abstracting Courses and Seminars. Information Today, 1998. Included are
courses from public, private and proprietary institutions in the United States and Canada. |
| Laura Lape. "Ownership of Copyrightable Works of University Professors: The Interplay Between the Copyright Act and University Copyright Policies," Villanova Law Review, Volume 37 (1992): Number 223+. Lape, a scholar, reports on her analysis of 70 research universities to determine whether they had copyright policies governing faculty-produced work. Sixty-nine had policies. Five others were drafting policies. The policies varied, but all claimed institutional ownership of at least some faculty works. See Ashley Packard's 2002 update. |
| J. Dan Marshall. "State-Level Textbook Selection Reform: Toward the recognition of fundamental control," in Philip G. Altbach, G.P. Kell, H.G. Petrie and L.W. Weis, editors. Textbooks in American Society: Politics, Policy and Pedagogy. State University of New York Press, 1991. |
Author club to meet in VirginiaST. PETERSBURG, Florida, July 11, 2002 -- The next convention of the Text and Academic Authors Assciation will be in Richmond, Virginia, next spring, the governing board decided. Criminal justice author Tara Gray of New Mexico State University, known for her authoring workshops, volunteered to chair the program. Association leadership hoped for stronger attendance than the last convention in San Diego, California. Sixty people registered.
Authors on
SA2: Keep it comingWINONA , Minnesota, July 11, 2002 -- Responding to a Society of Academic Authors request for visors to the SA2 site to confirm their SA2 membership, messages poured into the society's server. Excerpts:"Your Web site continues to be absolutely invaluable."
"I do appreciate receiving your newsletter updates."
"Thanks for a great job."
"Your alerts have been very interesting. I never knew your organization existed. I sure have learned a lot about negotiation and Houghton Mifflin, my publishing company."
"This is a great service."
"While I have been writing texts for several years, this is the first forum I have ever found to interact with other text authors, aside from the casual contact at conferences. I sincerely appreciate your work here."
"Please continue my membership." |
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| ABOUT
sa2
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | James M. Cooper, (education), University of Virginia, with Susan Goldman (education), University of Illinois, Chicago, Ted Hasselbring (education), University of Kentucky, Mary S. Leighton (education), Dorchester County, Maryland, Public Schools, Greta G. Morine-Dershimer (education), University of Virginia, James W. Pellegrino (education), University of Illinois, Chicago, Robert Plants (education), Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, David Sadker (education), American University, Myra Sadker (education), American University, Robert D. Sherwood (education), Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Robert Shostak (education), Florida International University, Terry D. TenBrink (education), Kirksville College, Carol Ann Tomlinson, (education), University of Virginia, and Wilford A. Weber (education), University of Houston, and Susan M. Williams (education), University of Texas, Austin, wrote the seventh edition of Classroom Teaching Skills (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Kathleen T. McWhorter (writing), Niagara County Community College, wrote the third edition of The Writer's Selections: Shaping Our Lives (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Boycott editor: This isn't personal| MANCHESTER, Great Britain, July 11, 2002 -- The editor-publisher of Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts, Mona Baker, said that Israeli scholars who are banned from her journals should not take it personally. In a statement responding to criticism, Baker said that a boycott being organized against Israeli scholarship is directed at them as representatives of Israeli academic institutions, not as individuals. Baker had asked that Miriam Schlesinger and Gideon Tourey to step down from her journals' advisory boards. When they didn't, she dismissed them, setting off a wave of protests. Five other board members resigned in sympathy with Schlesinger and Tourey. Schlesinger, a frequent critic of Israel's Palestinian policies, said scholarship cannot be accomplished through boycotts. |
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