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Greenwood keeping Praeger imprint| WESTPORT, Connecticut, July 31, 2002 -- The consolidation at Greenwood Publishing will spare the Praeger imprint. Vice President Linda May, who is marketing director, said Praeger will be the single imprint for the company's monograph program, absorbing the imprints Ablex, Auburn House, Bergin & Garvey and Quorum. Greenwood, meanwhile, will focus on reference works for the upper-level high school, college and library markets, emphasizing multivolume reference works, May said. There will be a trimming of titles under the Praeger umbrella, she said. The current output of monographs, 700 to 900 a year, will be cut to 400 with a focus in fewer disciplines, May said. She identified the disciplines as business and economics, criminology, education, history, literature and cultural studies, political science, psychology, and Third World studies. Monograophs willo still account for about the same revenue as current, she said. Greenwood is a unit of publishing giant Reed Elsevier of London. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | Richard
Labunski (journalism), University of Kentucky, The Educated Student:
Getting the Most Out of Your College Years (Marley and
Beck). |
 | William Murdick (business), California University of Pennsylvania, wrote The Portable Business Writer (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Lennis G. Echterling (counseling), James Madison University, Eric Cowan (counseling), James Madison University, William F. Evans (counseling), James Madison University, A. Renee Staton (counseling), James Madison University, Grace Viere (counseling), James Madison University, Jack Presbury (counseling), James Madison University, and Anne L. Stewart (counseling), James Madison University, wrote Thriving! A Manual for Students in the Helping Professions (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Melvin L. DeFleur (mass communication), Boston University, and Everette E. Dennis (mass communication), Fordham University, wrote the seventh edition of Understanding Mass Communication A Liberal Arts Perspectives
(Houghton Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Messier's big goof: Houghton Mifflin| BOSTON, Massachusetts, July 30, 2002 -- The Vivendi acquisition of U.S. publisher Houghton Mifflin in 2001 was a major miscalculation in Jean-Marie Messier's plan to build a global media content development and distribution system, analysts say, as Vivendi prepares now to scale back to survive financially. "I don't see a strategic fit for the division," Mark Harrington, an analyst at JP Morgan, told the news agency Reuters. "I would imagine Houghton would be split off from the other publishing businesses." Messier, now departed as Vivendi's chief executive, had hoped that Houghton would create content for the Vivendi distribution network he was cobbling together around Hollywood's Universal studios. Among analysts, the expectation now is that Vivendi will divest itself of Houghton's el-hi, college and testing divisions -- if not the whole subsidiary. By splitting up Houghton, Vivendi could maximize the valuation on its college textbook division, according to most analysts. "I'd say the K-12 sector looks weaker than a 1-1/2 years ago," said Neil Godsey at ThinkEquity Partners. Godsey noted that U.S. el-hi sales have fallen off substantially because of budget shortfalls in most states. "But," he said, "virtually every company in the higher education space is reporting strong results." The college business could fetch about $500 million, possibly from publishers Reed Elsevier, McGraw-Hill, Thomson or Wiley, he said. Several investor groups are exploring the possibility of bidding for Houghton's testing and e-hi units and probably breaking them up into smaller pieces for resale. |
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Suit challenges digital copyright limitsBOSTON, Massachusetts, July 30, 2002 -- The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit challenging the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forbids the dissemination of information that could be used to bypass copy-protection schemes.The suit, on behalf of Harvard computer scientist Benjamin Edelman, argues that researchers should have free speech protections to explore weaknesses in programs and share their research with others. Edelman says a Seattle firm, N2H2, has used the 1998Digitial Mellennium Copyright Act to deny him information he needs to do his research.
What this means for authors: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has the backing of book publishers to limit the dissemination of unauthorized copies of books through new digital media. The book industry can be expected to side with N2H2. |
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Research organization losing leader| NEW YORK, July 30, 2002 -- The executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, Frank Daly, plans to resign at an upcoming BISG board meeting. The organization, which is having financial difficulties, was formed in 1975 to generate information of value to the industry. BISG publishes frequently quoted research reports on paper availability, book distribution, el-hi adoptions, printing capacity cycles, and book sales. |
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Consensus: Vivendi will divide Houghton| DARIEN, Massachusetts, July 30, 2002 -- The emerging consensus among analysts is that Houghton Mifflin will be sold, probably piecemeal, as parent company Vivendi tries to right itself from its financial crisis. If Vivendi keeps any part of Houghton, it probably would be the trade and reference book division, which has crossover possibilities with Vivendi's U.S. crown jewel, Universal Studios. Houghton's trade and reference division includes the cash cow Tolkien books and a juvenile list with The Polar Express and the Curious George titles. What about the other Houghton divisions? The book industry trade journal Subtext said the K-12 unit might be too big for competitors, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Reed to acquire because of regulatory and anti-trust issues. But, said Subtext, possible buyers could be smaller players such as WRC Media, which owns Weekly Reader, World Almanac and Compass Learning; Knowledge Universe; or an investment banking group. The college division could be of interest to competitors Wiley, McGraw-Hill and Thomson, Subtext said. The trade journal noted that Wiley chief executive Will Pesce's acquisition policy has two criteria: Would the acquisition enhance Wiley's existing businesses? Is the price are right. Wiley's higher-ed business would increase more than 40 percent if it acquired Houghton's college list. |
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LeapFrop raises $117 million| EMERYVILLE, California, July 30, 2002 -- Educational products provider LeapFrog Enterprises raised $117 million in its initial public offering of stock. With the IPO, LeapFrogšs shares rose 22 percent to $15.85. |
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Bidders lining up for HoughtonNEW YORK, July 29, 2002 -- Potential bidders are waiting for Boston textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin to be put on the market, the Wall Street Journal reported. Anticipating an auction this summer or fall, bankers have begun talking to companies about planning to bid, the Journal's Bruce Orwall and Robert Frank said in an update about Houghton's debt-mired parent company, Paris-based Vivendi. Listed by Orwell and Frank as potential biddders are several Investment groups and media companies:Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & CompanyBlackstone Group PartnersThomas H. Lee PartnersHicks, Muse, Tate & FurstClaven Group If a buyout firm acquires Houghton, it probably would "slice the business into pieces and sell them to interested companies," the Journal reporters said. In Paris, new Vivendi chief executive Jean-René Fourtou has said the fate of Houghton and Vivendi's other U.S. holdings is still being decided. Fourtou has been lobbied by Agnès Touraine, president of subsidiary Vivendi Universal Publishing, to keep Houghton. Houghton is in Touraine's Vivendi unit. |
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Bertelsmann chief pressured to leaveGÜTERSLOH, Germany, July 28, 2002 -- The chief executive at Bertelsmann, a major academic and scientific journal producer, quit under pressure from the board of the family-controlled media giant. Insiders said the Bertelsmann Old Guard had grown uneasy with Thomas Middelhoff's vision for the company to capitalize on media convergence with more investments in television and the web.
What this means for authors: Whether journal publisher BertelsmannSpringer remains on the block remains to be seen. Nobody is weighing in yet on whether Middelhoff's departure will affect Bertelsmann interest in purchasing portions of Vivendi, the troubled French conglomerate that owns textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. Observers believe that U.S.-based BMG Entertainment, formerly RCA records, may be under scrutiny. |
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Grisham literary journal in transition| OXFORD, Mississippi, July 27, 2002 -- The literary journal Oxford American, supported by legal novelist John Grisham through years of red ink, may be purchased by At Home, a publishing company based in Little Rock, Arkansas. At Home would relocate the journal and install a new staff. Founding editor Marc Smirnoff had no comment. The Oxford newspaper, the Gazette, said At Home plans a music issue this fall, then six issues in 2003, then monthly publication. |
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 | Courier: Sales grew 1.8 percent to $51.8 million in this book printer's third quarter. Net income grew 28.1 percent to $4.1 million. For the full year, Courier expects to drop 2.8 to 4.7 percent from $212 million due to weakness in the first two quarters.
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 | Kaplan: The Washington Post Company attributed a sharp earnings increase in its second quarter to its Kaplan test preparation subsidiary and cable television properties. Earnings rose 2-1/2 times to $51.1 million from the same period a year earlier. Sales grew 7.2 percent to $647.7 million.
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 | McGraw-Hill: Net income grew percent 18.1 percent to $136.5 million in the second quarter, compared to a year earlier. Revenue grew 3.6 percent to $1.19 billion. A key to the growth was educational publishing, the company said.
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 | Pearson: Revenue fell 3 percent to US$2.8 billion in the first half of its fiscal year, compared to a year earlier. The company said advertising revenue had sagged at its newspaper division. Operating profit grew 26.6 percent to $118.9 million.
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Mid-East scholar: No to Israel boycott| ANN ARBOR, Michigan, July 26, 2002 -- The editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, has appointed a Israeli academic from Hebrew University to the editorial board, a signal of opposition to a boycott that many scholars are organizing to protest Israeli military initiatives. Cole said the boycott, strongest in Europe, is misguided. He said that almost all Israeli scholars have "deep distaste" for the Sharon government's actions and many are active in the peace movement. "It seems especially in appropriate to punish academics for the actions of a government they largely oppose," Cole said. He attended a recent Istanbul conference that was a boycott target. |
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| | INTERNAT'L JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | I. Edward Alcamo (biology),
State University of New York-Farmingdale, wrote Microbes and Society: An
Introduction to Microbiology (Jones and Bartlett). |
 | Donald L. Pavia (chemistry), Western Washington University, Gary M. Lampman (chemistry), Western Washington University, George S. Kriz (chemistry), Western Washington University, and Randall G. Engel (chemistry), Edmonds Community College, wrote Microscale and Macroscale Techniques in the Organic Laboratory (Brooks/Cole). |
 | Stan Warford (computer science), Pepperdine University, wrote the second edition of Computer Systems (Jones and Bartlett). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Vivendi confirms splitting off Canal+| PARIS, July 25, 2002 -- More Vivendi assets will be sold to reduce debt, said the company's new chair Jean-René Fourtou. He was not specific, saying new lines of credit due in late August reduce the urgency to decide what units will be sold. The biggest questions marks are U.S. properties, including Universal movies and music and, to a lesser extent, textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. Meanwhile, Fourtou confirmed that the money-losing Canal+ French television unit will be split off in an initial step to reduce Vivendi's debt load. |
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X-ing out bad contract provisions| NEGOTIATING TIPS: Authors normally cross-out provisions they cannot accept when a publisher mails a coiler-plate contract draft. Either the publisher accepts the deletions or initiates discussion on resolving the issue. In the latest case study from the SA2 Author Experience File, one author reports X-ing out an unacceptable provision and mailing the contract back for the publisher's agent to sign. A vice president indeed signed the document but added a note that all deletions were refused -- no explanation, no discussion. "Finally, the editors stuck between the vice president and me had their legal department come up with a compromise contract that I was willing to sign and they would have been willing to recommend to the vice president," the author said. The lesson: Be persistent. |
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Let fellow authors benefit from your experience
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Confidentiality assured |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | Janet W. Lerner (education), Northeastern Illinois University, wrote the ninth edition of Learning Disabilities: Theories, Diagnosis, and Teaching (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Jack Moeller (German), Oakland University, Winnifred R. Adolph (German), Florida State University, Barbara Mabee (German), Oakland University, and Simone Berger wrote the sixth edition of Kaleidoskop: Kultur, Literatur und Grammatik (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | John P. McKay (history), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Bennett D. Hill (history), Georgetown University, and John Buckler (history), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, wrote the seventh edition of A History of Western Society (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | David W. Oxtoby (chemistry), University of Chicago, Wade A. Freeman (chemistry), University of Illinois, Chicago, and Toby F. Block (chemistry), Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote the fourth edition of Chemistry: Science of Change (Brooks/Cole). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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20,000 books to AfghanistanWASHINGTON, July 25, 2002 -- The non-profit Books for Freedom shipped 20,000 books to help rebuild the National Library collection in Kabul, Afghanistan. The shipment, the first to Afghanistan, includes 12,000 books donated by John Wiley & Sons. The Fordham University law school donated 2,000 books. Books for Freedom promotes library development in impoverished nations.
What you can do: Other organizations that send books to Afghanistan include the Sabre Foundation or Brother's Brother Foundation. Look at your shelves for unused desk copies to donate.
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Ebook sales growing; still miniscule| NEW YORK, July 24, 2002 --The Open eBook Forum reported that e-book sales are growing at a steady pace. Nick Bogarty, executive director, said a survey of its members found that more than a half million e-books were sold in 2001 and that number is expected to double in 2002. Textbook publishes have been slow to shift to e-editions, bhut other genres are picking up steam. Among Open eBook Forum findings: McGraw-Hillšs professional e-book sales are 55 percent ahead of 2001. |
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Thomson leads professional revenues| DARIEN, Connecticut, July 23, 2002 -- The Canadian conglomerate Thomson dominated the professional segment of the U.S.publishing industry in 2001, according to rankings by the trade journal Subtext.More than half of Thomson's professional revenue was from Westlaw and other legal and regulatory information services. Reed Elsevier, with its Lexis-Nexis legal and information service, was a close second. John Wiley registered 2001's largest growth, 16.1 percent, with its acquisition of Harcourt imprints Churchill Livingstone, Mosby, and W.B. Saunders. The 2001 ranking, with the growth from the year before, based on published information and estimates: |
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Thomson
Reed Elsevier
Wolters Kluwer
John Wiley
McGraw-Hill
BNA |
| $ 5.2 billion
5.0 billion
3.1 billion
530 million
448 million
260 million |
| 6.4 percent
6.5 percent
4.5 percent
16.2 percent
1.1 percent
4.0 percent |
What this means for authors: Professional publishing in the United States is now dominated by six companies, down from seven as year ago with Reed's acquisition of Harcourt. Consolidation of ownership leads to consolidation of lists with, in the end, a reduction of titles.
Report: Vivendi trimming Canal+| PARIS, July 22, 2002 -- The cash-short Franco-American media conglomerate Vivendi has decided against selling the whole business, but will sell non-French parts of the Canal+ television operation, the newspaper Le Figaro reported. The decision, attributed to new chair Jean-René Fourtou, means Canal+ film production and distribution assets will go up for sale along with most of Canal+'s international operations. Profitable French channels will stay inside Vivendi, Le Figaro said. The report indicates that Vivendi's U.S. media operations, including Universal movies and music, USA Networks and textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin survived the first round of cuts aimed at easing the company's debt load. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | Glen Hanson (health), University of Utah,
Peter J. Venturelli (health), Valparaiso University, and Annette E.
Fleckenstein (health), University of Utah, wrote the seventh edition of Drugs and Society (Jones and Bartlett). |
 | Thomas A. Lovik (German), Michigan State University, J. Douglas GuyMonika Chavez (German), University of Wisconsin, Madison, updated Vorsprung: An Introduction to the German Language and Culture for Communication (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Thomas F. X. Noble (history), University of Notre Dame, Barry S. Strauss (history), Cornell University, Duane J. Osheim (history), University of Virgina, Kristen B. Neuschel (history), Duke University, William B. Cohen (history), Indiana University, and David D. Roberts (history), University of Georgia, wrote the third edition of Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
|
U.S. shareholders sue Vivendi, Messier| NEW YORK, July 22, 2002 -- A law firm specializing in class-action litigation, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz filed a suit against Vivendi Universal in federal court. The suit names ousted Vivendi chair Jean-Marie Messier. The filing, Rosenbaum Partners v. Vivendi, alleges that false and misleading statements artificially inflated the market price of Vivendi stock securities. The suit says that Messier "orchestrated a scheme to conceal the severity of Vivendi's liquidity problems stemming from the massive debt load" incurred by a series of acquisitions, which included U.S. textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. The suit says Messier "failed to disclose the true contours of Vivendi's cash crisis" and made "affirmative misrepresentations to the contrary." Wolf Haldenstein invited affected parties to join the class-action suit. |
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New America plans book series| WASHINGTON, July 21, 2002 -- The New America Foundation, a political and social policy think tank, announced a forthcoming series of books on contemporary history and public policy. Eight to 10 books a year are planned, said editor Sherle Schwenniger. The first title will be Jennifer Washburn's The Kept University, an abridged early version of which appeared in Atlantic magazine in August 2000. Promotion of New America books will be by Perseus' Basic Books.
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| American Textbook Publishers Institute. Textbooks in Education: A Report From the American Textbook Publishers Institute to Its Membership, Its Friends, and Any Others Whose Interests in the Development of the Educational System in the United States Goes Beyond Mere Passing Fancy. American Textbook Publishers Institute, 1949. An interesting analysis of the textbook industry in the mid-1900s. Although obviously biased in favor of textbook publishers, nevertheless contains valuable information on the development of textbooks. |
| Lee Joseph Cronbach. Text Materials in Modern Education. University of Illinois Press, 1955. The first and one of the few discussions of text materials in a broad perspective. Argues for a comprehensive theory of the textbook. Provides a broad view of the textbook as a philosophical construct, a factor in learning, and product of authors and publishers. |
| Stanley Reed. "Can Scardino Get Pearson Out of This Pickle?" Business Week, (July 2, 2002). Pages 50, 52. Reed, a business reporter, offers a fact-laden article that points to miscalculations and unforntuate circumstances that question whether Marjorie Scardino, five years into her tenure as chief executive at Pearson, is the genius she earlier was portrayed as being. Pearson stock has slipped to a five-year low. |
| Robert J. Scholes. "The Transition to College Reading," Pedagogy, Volume 2 (Spring 2002): Number 2, Pages 165-170. Scholes, an emeritus professor of English at Brown University, worries that many college students are unable to deal with "the otherness" of a text's author." The tendency is to assimilate the thought and feeling in a text as their own thoughts and feelings. |
Boston Review prepares book series| BOSTON, Massachusetts, July 21, 2002 -- The political and literary journal Boston Review will launch its own imprint, editor Joshua Cohen announced. Cohen said the books will cover intellectual issues as diverse as public policy, evolutionary biology and literary criticism. The books will draw on Boston Review contributions but also include additional content, he said.
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Vivendi delays financial report| PARIS, July 21, 2002 -- Debt-stricken media giant Vivendi postponed the publication of extracts of its first-half results that had been scheduled for July 26. Vivendi did not reschedule the release. After the announcement, Vivendi shares fell a further 4 percent to US$17.45 in a weaker market. Meanwhile,Vivendi is negotiating a second emergency loan with banks, reportedly for as much as US$3 billion to pull through its cash crisis. |
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Union drops member libel coverage| NEW YORK, July 21, 2002 -- The National Writers Union dropped the libel protection available to its members because of huge increases in deductibles. In some cases, Union members can rely on publisher policies to absorb some litigation expenses, although publishers are insisting that authors absorb a greater percentage of expenses. Other authors have no protection through publishers. Jonathan Tasini, president of the Union, bemoaned the large deductibles, saying publishers should consider increasing royalty rates to offset authors' new financial risk.
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