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Broader u-press subsidy proposedANN ARBOR, Michigan, November 29, 2004 -- The director of the University of Michigan Press, Philip Pochoda, has called for all research universities and most other colleges to contribute financially to support the 90 remaining university presses. To make promotion and tenure decisions, most university and colleges rely on the rigorous winnowing process used by university presses and should "pay their fair share," Pachoda says. The vast majority of colleges, which don't have their own presses, are riding free, he said. Several university presses have closed in recent years and others are in jeopardy as budget-strained university executives pare away at subsidies from general budgets.
Pachoda favors creating a pool of money from institutions that support academic research to subsidize authors who are published by university presses. The subsidies, called subventions, probably $5,000 to $10,000 per book, would be passed on to academic presses that publish the work. Universities that require books and journal articles for tenure and promotion might be asked to contribute more if they don't operate their own press. |
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| The American Association of Univerity Presses says the typical budget for an academic book is $25,000 to $30,000. On average, presses recover less than one-half of costs through sales. |
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Testing advice: Aromatherapy| STAMFORD, Connecticut, November 28, 2004 -- After testing unconventional approaches to improve test results, Thomson Petersonıs, which produces academic test prep materials, suggests a sprtiz of lavender. Lavender helps clear the mind, the company reported. Also, it concluded, citrus energizes and spearmint soothes anxiety. Colors help too: Pale apricot tranquilizes, red does the opposite. For music, try a slow beat or rhythm. |
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THOMSON
PETERSON'S
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Report: Copyright pact has ways to goWASHINGTON, November 27, 2004 -- The World Trade Organization's 1994 TRIPS agreement for global copyrighht reform remains a framework for tighter compliance , but enforcement is a problem, according to a report from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a coalition representing the U.S. copyright-based industries. Piracy has been reduced, said Eric H. Smith, the association's presdient. "Unfortunately, many countries have to date failed to live up to these enforcement obligations," he said. "Until they do, they will forego the vast benefits in economic growth and cultural and technology expansion that the TRIPS Agreement has promised."
Smith said that billions of dollars in new revenue and millions of new jobs have been created in World Trade Organization countries, including the United States. "By enhancing the ability of countries to grow their local copyright industries, TRIPS has been a key factor in promoting local creativity and protecting cultural diversity," he said.
Smith listed these U.S. copyright actions under the TRIPS agreement:
Japan, for inadequate protection for pre-existing sound recordings.Denmark for inadequate search remedies.Sweden, for inadequate search remedies.Ireland, for inadequate copyright law and enforcement.Greece, for allowing "rampant television piracy."
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The Inter-
national Intellectual Property Alliance is a coalition U.S. copyright-
based industries that seeks improve inter-
national copyright protections.
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
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| Barry L. Duncan (psychology), Scott D. Miller (psychology), Jacqueline A. Sparks (psychology) wrote The Heroic Client: A Revolutionary Way to Improve Effectiveness Through Client-Directed, Outcome-Informed Therapy (Jossey-Bass). |
| Bruce Hildebrand, senior vice president of media, communications and litigation at the Hill & Knowlton political consulting agency, was named executive director of the Higher Education Division of the Association of American Publishers. Hildebrand also has been co-chair of the Republican National Committee. |
| Linda Keene, a marketing and organizational consultant, was named executive vice president of marketing at Scholastic. |
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Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Book publishers seek to diversity| NEW YORK, November 19, 2004 -- The Association of American Publishers has created a web site to encourage diversity throughout U.S. book publishing. The site, Bookjobs.com, is the centerpiece of the Book Yourself a Career campaign. The site provides entry-level job listings from almost 300 publishers. The campaign, created by the association's Recruit and Retain Committee, also will target colleges with diverse student populations as well as demanding academic standards to increase awareness of book publishing as a viable career choice, Grads ar sought in literature, graphic design, business and other fields. The site is a one-stop resource seeking a career in book publishing, said Bridget Marmion of Houghton Mifflin, chair of the Recruit and Retain Committee. |
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Association of American Publishers |
Pearson school group moving to Boston| BOSTON, Massachusetts, November 18, 2004 -- Pearson Education has begun relocating its school publishing group from New Jersey to the Back Bay section of Boston. The relocation involves moving 500 jobs to the former New England Life Building, now known as The Newbry. Pearson is leasing 103,000 square feet on the 9th and 10th floors for 16 years. The move is expected to be complete in August 2005. The move brings Pearson's Boston head-count to 1,200. This includes 700 Higher Education Group employees at 75 Arlington Street. |
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Payoff reported near in Tasini case| NEW YORK, Nov. 17, 2004 -- The National Writers Union and the New York Times and codefendant publishers reportedly are near agreement on settlements in a 2001 Supreme Court ruling on copyright infringement. Some freelancers in three class-action suits reportedly have been already. Gerard Colby, president of the National Writers Union, said a final agreement had not yet been signed. In the case, the Supreme Court found the publishers had infringed on author rights by re-issuing author work in digital form without permission. The original suit was filed in 1993 by Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union at the time, and five other freelance writers. They will have to be paid, as well as thousands of other free-lancers in the class-actions. The defendants, which lost 7-2 before the Supreme Court the New York Times, Newsday, AOL Time Warner, Lexis-Nexis and ProQuest (formerly University Microfilms). |
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Plagiary-plagued prof: Firing wrong| NEW YORK, November 16, 2004 -- A architecture professor, fired by New School University after admitting plagiarizing for a book, has sued the university to get his job back. Roger Shepherd says his termination was a breach of his contract. Samuel Landau, Shepherd's lawyer, said that Shepherd may have inadvertently copied a few pages but that firing him after 30-plus years was unduly harsh. Landau said the book in question, Structures of Our Time: Thirty-One Buildings That Changed Modern Life, was "totally unrelated" to Shepherd'ss work at the Parsons School of Design at New University. Shepherd earlier admitted that segments from a book by Meredith Clausen, of the University of Washington, ended up in his book with neither permission nor credit. Shepherd blamed post-9/11 pressure and a mistake by an assistant that survived into print. Publisher McGraw-Hill has recalled the book. |
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Wal-Mart bans second comedy bookNEW YORK, November 13, 2004 -- Wal-Mart has refused to sell comedian GeorgeCarlin's book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops because its cover pokes fun at the Last Supper, according to a Carlion spokesperson. Wal-Mart spun its decision differently: The book would not appeal to a majority of customers. Wal-Mart sent back 3,500 copies because, it said, they had not been ordered. The cover, which has Carlin sitting next to an empty chair where Jesus sits in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper." No offense was intened, the Carlin spoeksperson said.
In October Wal-Mart decided not stock the best-selling book A Citizen's Guide to Democracy by Jon Stewart of the Daily Show because of a satirical spread that pastes the heads of Supreme Court justices onto naked bodies. The images "really seemed to shake people up," said Jamie Raab of publisher Warner Books.
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Courier buys new textbook press| CHELMSFORD, Massachusetts, Nov. 12, 2004 -- Book printer Courier Corporation ordered its second high-capacity four-color press, a $12 million unit, in two years. The MAN Roland Lithoman press will be installed parallel to a similar unit at Courier's Kendallville, Indiana, plant. Chief executive James Conway said the purchase reflects strong demand for four-color textbooks. The new press will be up and running by late 2005, he said. |
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September el-hi sales gainNEW YORK, November11, 2004 -- Sales of K-12 books increased 17.1 percent in September, compared to a year earlier, according to the latest data from the Association of American Publishers. For the year to date, sales remained in red ink, off 1 percent. Here are the year-to-date data for genres in which academic authors write the most, as extrapolated from 92 reporting publishers:
El-hi
Prof'l, scholarly
College
University press (soft)
Univ press (hard)
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| Septem-
ber
17.1%
6.6%
5.6%
-29.1%
-43.2% |
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| Year-
to-date
-1.0%
0.7%
1.7%
2.9%
1.2%
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Association of American Publishers |
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Section 215 champions fight on| WASHINGTON, November 10, 2004 -- A founder of the American Booksellers Association's Campaign for Reader Privacy, Oren Teicher, said the November 2 election was a setback for opponents of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The Bush Administration, now with stronger control in the Congress, wants to retain the Patriot Act's Section 215, which allows the government to search bookstore and library records. Even so, said Teicher, the House bill to soften Section 215 has attracted some conservative members and, he hopes, more representatives may sign on . The amendment fell one vote short of passage last summer. Even if the bills against Section 215 fail, Teicher said there will be a campaign to remove the act's application to books removed when the act comes up for renewal in 2005. |
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Lindsay Waters. Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship/ Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004. Waters, executive editor in the humanities at Harvard University Press, calls for an overhaul of the publish-or-perish link for academics. Because of financial dificulties, Waters argues, the university presses that are central in the process are less able to shoulder their role.
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Open Access hits British setbackLONDON, November 9, 2004 -- Most proposals from a Parliament committee to make state-supported scientific research free have been rejected. The rejection, from the Department of Trade and Industry, disagreed with the committee about whether there are "major problems" in accessing scientific information. The department called the scientific journal industry is both "healthy and competitive." The proposal for so-called Open Access had come from Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons to counter increasing publisher restrictions on access to publicly financed research. The committee also was trying to counter soaring journal prices. About 5.3 percent of the world's scientific, technological and medical journal articles originate in Britain.
The chairman of the Commons Science and Technololgy committee, Ian Gibson, called the government's response a sell-out to publishers, which stood to lose from the proposal. About the Department of Trade and Industry, Gibson said: "They're obviously kowtowing." At the giant journal publishing house Reed Elsevier, a spokesperson greeted the rejection as "a clear statement of support for the current market and the current system, which confirms that the publishing market is competitive and innovative." Open Access supporter Jan Velterop, publisher of the BioMed Central journals, was surprised at the rejection. He predicted a debate in Parliament to pressure the Trade and Industry Department into changing its position. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
| Anita Kopec, founder and chief executive at Educational Consulting services, was appointed to the company's board of directors. Earlier she was chief executive at Steck-Vaughn. |
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| Brooke Noel Moore (philosophy),, California State University-Chico, and Ken Bruder (philosophy), California State University-Chico, wrote The Power of Ideas (McGraw-Hill). |
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| Rhoda K. Unger (psychology) edited Handbook of the Psychology of Women and Gender (Wiley). |
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Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Report details copyright industry scopeWASHINGTON, November 6, 2004 Copyright industries continue to lead the U.S. economy in their contributions to job growth, gross domestic product, and foreign sales and exports, according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance. Newspapers, books, recording, music, periodicals, motion pictures, broadcasting and software accounted for 4 percent of the workforce and 6 percent of the gross domestic product. A larger copyright industries catgeory, which includes related businesses, accounted for 8.4 percent of the workforce 12 percent of gross domestic product. This level approaches the total employment levels of the entire health care and social assistance sector and the entire U.S. manufacturing sector, said Stephen Siwek of Economists Incorporated, wsho updated nine previous studies detailing the economic impact and contributions of U.S. copyright industries.
Siwek's data, for 2002, the latest available, showed U.S. copyright industry exports at $89.4 billion, leading other major industry sectors such as chemicals, food and livestock, motor vehicles, and aircraft.
Pat Schroeder, chief executive of the Association of Anmerican Publishers, greeted the report enthusiastically: ³At a time when the jobs picture in much of the U.S. economy is bleak, the copyright industries -- our creative sector -- are providing American workers with more good jobs and bright futures." Shroeder said the study shows that copyright industries deserve the staunchest protection against piracy at home and abroad. |
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The Inter-
national Intellectual Property Alliance is a coalition U.S. copyright-
based industries that seeks improve inter-
national copyright protections.
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Duping versatile used book site?| COLLEGE PARK, Maryland, November 5, 2004 -- Entrepreneur John Verde, who founded Bookholders.com as used textbook store near the University of Maryland in 2000, said he is exploring possibilities to expand to other campuses. Verde, 25, set up Bookholders for students to sell their oldbooks on consignment. Books are priced according to condition. Sellers receive 85 percent of the purchase price. Sellers can readjust the price online and can take the book back before it sells. Bookholdes also will buy books outright for cash. |
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Peer reviewers handed subpoenasJACKSON, Mississippi, November 4, 2004 -- Five peer reviewers of a scholarly book on health risks of the chemical compound vinyl chloride monomer have been subpoenaed at the request of more than 20 chemical companies that want to discredit the book. The reviewers, all historians and health experts, were instructed in the subpoenas to appear for questioning with all drafts of their reviews, documents they had consulted in preparing the reviews, and correspondence about the book. At issue is the 2002 book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution by Gerald Markowitz, of City University of New York, and David Rosner, of Columbia University. Markowitz and Rosner cited internal industry documents from the 1950s through the 1990s in arguing that chemical-industry leaders failed to inform the government about a link between the chemical and cancer.
The subpoenas are for depositions in a case of a chemical worker who now suffers from cancer. The worker is suing Dow Chemical, Goodrich, Goodyear, Monsanto and Uniroyal.
The Markowitz-Rosner book was published jointly by Milbank Memorial Fund, which supports research on health policy, and University of California Press. The publishers, after being subpoenaed several months ago, turned over copies of comments from eight reviewers, as well as their names. In an earlier hearing, Markowitz already has been questioned about his research methods for five days by chemical company attorneys for a deposition. Markowitz, also, has been an expert witness in several cases against the chemical companies.
In peer reviewing the book, Milbank and University of California Press used an expanded pool of reviewers eight instead of the usual two or three. The enlarged process is used when the publishers have a joint project. The reviewers met with the authors and editors to discuss their critiques.
What this means for authors: This may be the first case in which peer reviewers have been subpoenaed to, in effect, defend their reviews in a judicial proceeding. The effect could be chilling for the peer review process. |
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Section 215 foes Sanders re-elected| WASHINGTON, November 3, 2004 -- The primary author of the Freedom to Read Protection bill in the U.S. House, independent Representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont, was re-elected. The Sanders bill aims to amend Section 215 of USA Patriot Act, which book people have opposed as stifling to free inquiry. Also re-elected was Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, who was one of the primary sponsors of the Senate version of the Sanders bill, the Security and Freedom Ensured Act. The re-election of George Bush as president bodes a tough road ahead for advocates who propose changing the Patriot Act. Bush is pledged to renew all sections of the act, including 215, which allows government agents to search bookstore and library records to track what individuals are reading. The Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry had been a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the Sanders bill. |
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Reed tops in professional, STMDARIEN, Connecticut, November 2, 2004 -- Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier continued in 2003 as the largest professional and scientific, medical and technical publisher, according to the trade journal Subtext. Reed' sales, at $6.4 billion, were 1.4 percent ahead of the previous year. The Subtext breakdown, with numbers rounded:
Reed Elsevier
Thomson
Wolters Kluwer
Wiley
McGraw-Hill
Taylor & Francis
BNA |
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| $ 6.4 billion
5.4 billion
2.2 billion
819 million
470 million
309 million
267 million |
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| 1.4 percent
3.4 percent
-15.9 percent
7.9 percent
-3.1 percent
17.9 percent
1.5 percent |
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Library of America sees upsurgeNEW YORK, November 1, 2004 -- When reviewers of Bill Clinton's autobiography made comparisons to Ulysses Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters, generally considered the best of the presidential autobiographies, movement in the sales charts at Library of America was palpable. The nonprofit publishing house, which specializes in keeping substantive works on the U.S experience in print, had sold 93,000 copies of Grant before the Clinton book came out from Knopf in June. Max Rudin, publisher at Library of America, said the surge in Grant sales would take several months to measure precisely. Rudin said bookstore sales of Library of America titles, including the new American Poet series, have increased steadily, in addition to 20,000 subscribers.
Library of America was founded in 1982 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation. More recent grants have been for specific projects. Even with the grants, the house has been self-supporting in 1984. |
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