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To Houghton authors: Stand byWINONA, Minnesota, July 10, 2002 -- The Society of Academic Authors issued an advisory to members with Houghton Mifflin titles to prepare to act in their individual interests if, as expected, Houghton is put up for sale. In an email message, SA2's John Vivian said many authors could be adversely affected: "The history of book company acquisitions and mergers is swollen with titles that the acquiring companies abandoned to streamline their consolidated lists." Vivian urged authors to be prepared to express their concern during a U.S. Justice Department anti-trust review. "It is possible, of course, that Vivendi will choose to keep Houghton rather than sell. Another possibility is that Houghton would be sold to a company or investor group that isn't already in the textbook business," Vivian said in the author advisory. "Whatever is ahead, be prepared to act quickly if your interest as an author is at risk." |
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Shakeup continues at Harvard press unit| BOSTON, Massachusetts, July 10, 2002 -- The publisher at Harvard Business Press, Penelope Muse Abernathy, resigned under pressure in what insiders said was continuing fallout from the Wetlaufer Affair. Abernathy, 50, a former New York Times executive, had campaigned for speedier action last winter when it was learned that top editor Suzy Wetlaufer had been involved romantically with retired General Electric Chair Jack Welch while developing a story on him. Abernathy's position rankled other executives and board members, who passed her up for chief executive. Her salary as publisher: $400,000. Replacing Abnernathy will be Cathryn Cronin Cranston. associate publisher. Meanwhile, David Wan, formelry with Penguin, remains as chief executive at the not-for-profit Harvard publishing arm. |
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Book people concerned at Patriot Act| ATLANTA, Georgia, July 9, 2002 -- After hearing a litany of tales about post-9/11 law-enforcement attempts to get into library records, the American Library Association adopted a resolution of concern at its national convention. Other organizations also signed on, including the Association of American Publishers. Of greatest concern is a provision that allows government agents to seize library records to see who's been reading what. The provision allows agents to receive warrants for these searches without a hearing, and libraries are forced not only to comply but are barred from disclosing that their confidentiality has been compromised. How aggressive have police pursued library records? A University of Illinois survey of more than 1,000 libraries found federal or local agents had gone to 85 libraries in a two-month period seeking information on patron reading habits. |
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Trinity surprise: University press back| SAN ANTONIO, Texas, July 9, 2002 -- Countering a trend, Trinity University relaunched its university press after closing it in the late 1980s. Director Barbara Ras, formerly at the University of Georgia Press, said six to eight titles a year are planned, mostly on the Southwest and Mexico with emphasis on literature and the environment. The staff will number four or five. The announcement came as a surprise, considering that many universities have slimmed down or eliminated their presses. Two factors led to reactivating the press, Ras said. One was a donor who offered financial support. Another was that Trinity President John Brazil sees a press as a signal of a university's intellectual mission. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
| Gordon Edlin (health), University of Hawaii,
Eric Golanty (health), University of California, Davis, and Kelli
McCormack Brown (health), wrote the seventh edition of Health and
Wellness (Jones and Bartlett). |
| Sari Factor, president of Wright Group at McGraw-Hill and earlier with Tribune Education, was named president of Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, which handles Pre-K-6 products. |
 | Timothy S. Hatten (business), Mesa State College, wrote the second edition of Small Business Management Entrepreneurship and Beyond (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Neal Tannahill (political science), Houston Community College, wrote the sixth edition of American Government: Policy and Politics (Longman). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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College sales up 19.3 so far in 2002WASHINGTON, July 8, 2002 -- College textbook sales totaled $53.3 million in May, 23 percent more than for the same month a year earlier, according to the latest data from the Association of American Publishers. So far in 2002, college sales are running 19.3 percent ahead of the same period a year earlier. Here are the year-to-date AAP data through May, extrapolated from 74 member-publishers, for genres in which academic authors write:College
University press (hard cover)
University press (paperback)
STM, professional
El-hi | 19.3 percent
9.2 percent
7.1 percent
5.3 percent
2.9 percent |
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Learned society chief: Dismissals wrong| TURKU, Finland, July 8, 2002 -- The president of the European Society of Translation Studies, Yves Gambier, said the removal Israeli contributions from his field's primary journal, Translator, is unethical. In the society's newsletter, Gambier wrote: "It would be profoundly unjust and contrary to our ethics to cut off individuals who have chosen to work precisely to overcome attitudes of parochialism, self-isolation sand chauvinism." Gambier directed his comments at the recent removal of Israel scholars from the boards of the sibling journals Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts. Two editorial board members were removed, Miriam Schlesinger and Gideon Tourey, are officers of the Society of Translation Studies. They were dismissed by the publisher-editor of the two translation studies journals after a call for a boycott of Israeli scholars by a group of European scholars. |
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| | Pearson Education says more than 60 percent of its college sales are bundled textbooks and online programs. |
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| Allan Luke, "Basal Reading Textbooks and the Teaching of Literacy," 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. |
| Ashley Packard. "Copyright or Copy Wrong: An Analysis of University Claims to Faculty Work," Communication and Law Policy, Volume 7 (Summer 2002): Number 3 (Pages 275-316. Packard, a scholar, offers a depressing interpretation that the Teacher Exception that gave professors and teachers the ownership of their books and other employee-related work has been weakened in recent case law. Packard updates the 1992 Lape study on institutional ownership with a survey of the same 70 universities used by Lape. This is well-documented, well-argued scholarly treatment. |
| Margie Towery, editor. Indexing
Specialties: History. Information Today, 1998. This compilation of articles
focuses on the indexing of history textbooks, art history, medieval and Renaissance history, Latin American history, and gender and sexual orientation language issues. The presentation is geared for both new and experienced indexers in history and related disciplines. |
| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | David N. Sattler (psychology), College of Charleston, and Virginia Shabatay (psychology), Palomar College, wrote the second edition of Psychology in Context: Voices and Perspectives (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Dan O'Hair (business), University of Oklahoma, Norman, Gustav W. Friedrich (business), Rutgers University, and Lynda Dee Dixon (business), Bowling Green State University, wrote the fourth edition of Strategic Communication in Business and the Professions (Houghton
Mifflin). |
 | Leonard V. Crowley (health), University of Minnesota, wrote the fifth edition of An Introduction to Human Disease: Pathology and Pathophysiology Correlations (Jones and
Bartlett). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Thomson largest U.S. college publisherDARIEN, Connecticut, July 8, 2002 -- With its acquisition of most Harcourt college titles in 2001, Canada-based Thomson became the largest U.S. higher-ed publisher. The latest rankings by the trade journal Subtext place Thomson's college revenue past the $1 billion mark. Thomson left London-based Pearson a distant second, 17.8 percent behind. Here are 2001 revenues with the percentage of change from 2000:Thomson
Pearson
McGraw-Hill
Vivendi
Wiley | $ 1,020 million
838 million
495 million
188 million
141 million |
53 percent
10 percent
13 percent
8 percent
6 percent |
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A French solution for Vivendi?
CORPORATE
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| In another brash moment, the ousted chair of Vivendi, Jean-Marie Messier, blamed the French financial establishment for ganging up on him. Messier told the French magazine Le Point that he was the only French business executive who had succeeded in the United States. His success, he said, inspired jealousy among French business insiders who conspired to remove him. Buried in Messier's overstated and obnoxious egocentrity is a grain of truth. A clubby elite of French business, industry and finance now occupies the vacuum left by Messier's departure. And classic French chauvinism, suspicious of anything not French, may shape the new Vivendi. Call it the French Solution.
With the French Solution, things as alien to French culture as Hollywood would be jettisoned. That would mean spinning off Universal movies, MCA music and all those theme parks. They're so, well, so American. A pure French Solution would also mean selling Boston-based textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. Like Universal, Houghton's on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Vivendi's new leaders have given themselves two months to develop a comprehensive plan. Crystal-balling has its hazards, but remember, they are French. |
Author group boosts dues| ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, July 7, 2002 -- Dues for the Text and Academic Authors Association were boosted 25 percent to meet "strains on the budget," the association said in a mailing. Budget specifics were not explained. The dues increase, to $75 a year, is the first in five years, the announcement said. |
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Text group cuts communication program| ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, July 7, 2002 -- The governing board of the Text and Academic Authors Association cut its member newsletter, The Academic Author, to quarterly. Once a monthly, frequency has been reduced in recent years. The revised newsletter will carry a front-page column by association President Michael Sullivan instead of Notable Author installments. The Notable Author biographical profile series will be dropped. E-mail news alerts will continue but be reduced to twice a month. The association's new web site, taaonline.net, remains a work-in-progress. |
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SA2 establishes charter
membershipsWINONA, Minnesota, July
6, 2002 -- The Society of Academic Authors invited recipients of its news alerts to join the society as charter members. John Vivian, society founder, confirmed that society membership is without dues until 2004 but that charter members may prepay their 2004 through 2006 dues for $26 -- less than $9 a year. "This is a token of appreciation to the people who have been so supportive of SA2 in its beta period," Vivian said. In 2004, parts of the SA2 site will become password-accessible, limited to members only. Charter members will lock in access for the coming four and one-half years. Other benefits of being a charter member will be detailed in an e-mail message.
What this means for authors: SA2 will become more influential as a collective voice for academic authors with a paid membership roster. Charter members will be on the ground floor. |
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| ABOUT sa2
CHARTER
MEMBER
DUES TO
Route 1
Box 32
Lewiston
MN 55952 | |
| 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. Worried about the fate of her contract in a pending merger, one author moved fast to wind up an agreement: "I made sure my outstanding contract was finished and signed before the merger, preferring to deal with the devil I knew rather than the one I didn't." It was a wise move, the author said. "The one contract I've done with the new publisher did not go smoothly -- a lot of game-playing and foot-dragging and, in my opinion, incompetence on their part," she said. "Eventually the contract was signed almost exactly as I had proposed it -- after months and months of nonsense and mounting legal bills for me." |
| ABOUT
sa2
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Vivendi dissident wary of bankersPARIS, July 6, 2002 -- A long-time critic of Vivendi leadership, shareholder activist Collette Neuville, said assets might be sold at panic prices as the global conglomerate's new leadership tries to raise cash to hold its lenders at bay. Noting the addition of French financial leaders to the Vivendi board, Nueville said: "The banks may try to sell the company's assets at prices that are too low." She sees a conflict of interest between the banks and the shareholders. The combative Neuville has a record of challenging the French financial establishment. Last year Neuville forced revisions in a proposed merger of two French companies, Schneider and Legrand, because, she argued, the deal favored the wealthy families who controlled the voting shares. Schneider executive Henri Lachmann now heads the new Vivendi strategy committee. |
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Reed joins U.S. school big leagueDARIEN, Connecticut, July 6, 2002 -- With its acquisition of Harcourt in 2001, Europe-based Reed Elsevier catapulted itself into the ranks of major U.S. el-hi publishers. The latest rankings by the trade journal Subtext place Reed school earning at $661 million -- 4-1/2 times more than in 2000. Pearson moved ahead of McGraw-Hill by a 3-1/2 percent margin. Here are 2001 revenues with the percentage of change from 2000:Pearson
McGraw-Hill
Vivendi
Reed
Scholastic
WRC Media
Thomson | $ 1,428 million
1,379 million
820 million
661 million
310 million
232 million
180 million |
34 percent
24 percent
9 percent
451 percent
Unchanged
6 percent
8 percent |
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New Vivendi chief lines up bankersPARIS, July 5, 2002 -- The election of Jean-René Fourtou to head Vivendi renews the French conglomerate's ties with money sources that can see the company through its pending cash crisis, observers said. Fourtou asked his close friend, insurance executive Claude Bébéar, to chair a new finance committee to sort through short-term cash problems. Bébéar, known as the Godfather of French Finance, is well-connected with the banking industry. Also in a pivotal post is Henri Lachmann, chair of a newly created strategy committee. Lachman, chair of Schneider Electric, a maker of automation devices and switches, has close ties to President Jacques Chira. Bébéar's friend, chairman Michel Pebereau of the BNP Paribas bank, responded to the changes at Vivendi by declaring the company healthy. "It's not under the threat of a solvency crisis," he said, noting that revenue flows are strong. Marc Vienot, chair of Vivendi's audit committee and former chief executive at Societe Generale, which has large loans to Vivendi, expressed confidence that lenders would give the company time to sell assets to pare down its massive debt. The alternative, to call in loans, could bankrupt the company and leave the banks with bad loans. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | Daniel D. Chiras (biology), University of Denver, wrote the sixth edition of Environmental Science: Creating a Sustainable Future (Jones and Bartlett). |
 | Susan Ko (online instruction), OnlineLearning.net, and Steve Rossen (University of California at Los Angeles), OnlineLearning.net, wrote Teaching Online: A Practical Guide (Houghton
Mifflin). |
| David Murphy, vice president for human resources at Ford Motor Company, was named executive vice president for human resources at McGraw-Hill. |
 | Belverd Needles (accounting), DePaul University, Marian Powers (accounting), Northwestern University, and Susan V. Crosson (accounting), Santa Fe Community College, wrote the 2002 edition of Financial and Managerial Accounting (Houghton
Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
|
Vivendi chooses drug executivePARIS, July 5, 2002 -- The vice chairman at the Franco-German pharmaceutical giant Aventis, Jean-René Fourtou, was elected to take over management of the battered conglomerate giant Vivendi, capping a tumultuous week. After the company's board elected Fourtou, he told employees at Vivendi's Paris headquarters that he will draw up a financial restructuring plan by September. Fourtou acknowledged that Vivendi faces a "short-term liquidity crisis." The flamboyant ousted chair of Vivendi, Jean-Marie Messier, had denied for weeks that the company faced a cash crunch. A detailed, new, post-Messier liquidity statement shows a possible cash shortfall of US $2.6 billion by January, expanding to as much as US$5.3 billion by mid-2003 unless bankers agree to a new credit line. It is believed Fourtou will lead a breakup of the company, selling off units to raise cash. The fate of individual components, like U.S. textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin, remains in speculation. |
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"Satisfactory manuscript" contract provisionNEGOTIATING TIPS: An author was negotiating a contract to produce Powerpoint supplements to a textbook. When he read the contract, he realized that it gave him no protection at all: Not only did the publisher have to a right to refuse to pay him based on a subjective judgment of what was satisfactory, the contract gave almost no guidance about what the publisher wanted. In no way would he have reasonable expectations of what would be satisfactory. The contract also said that the publisher could use whatever portion of the author's otherwise-unsatisfactory material it wanted. He responded that there was no way he would sign a contract that, legally speaking, permitted the publisher to keep all his work and pay him nothing. He crossed-out the provisions that gave the publisher this right. A compromise revision mainly did two things:It assured the author a pro rata payment, rather than a summary judgment, so that he would get paid for anything the publisher used.
It described "unsatisfactory" product as work that did not meet the specifications communicated to the author before the production and/or revision stage. "This did not protect me from wasted effort if they changed their minds about wanting to distribute the product," the author said, "but it did protect me from being manipulated or ripped off during the development of a real product." |
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AUTHOR
EXPERIENCE
FILE
Let fellow authors benefit from your experience
Tell your story
SA2
Confidentiality assured |
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Variety offers Houghton counterviewNEW YORK, July 5, 2002 -- In its pending slimmed-down corporate reincarnation, global conglomerate Vivendi might retain its profit-yielding U.S. textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin, the entertainment trade journal Variety ventured. The speculation, attributed to industry analysts and publishing executives, was counter to most expectations that Vivendi will out Houghton on the block to raise cash that's desperately needed to get bankers off its back. Variety said, however, that the corporate unit of which Houghton is part, Vivendi Publishing Group, may disappear. The group includes the French magazine publisher Havas and a small trade-book company that owns the T.R.R. Holkein rights. |
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| A Society of Academic Authors
survey found publishers negligent in keeping authors informed about corporate
acquisitions and mergers and their effect of authors' titles. One survey respondent, who learned of the pending sale of his publisher in the Wall Street Journal, called the developmental editor with whom he had a 10-year relationship on numerous books. "My D.E. informed me when I called her on my own initiative. She also asked me not to reveal that she had told me because, she said, she'd been told not to tell the authors." It was not clear from the respondent, who asked anonymity, whether there was a double standard -- one for the publisher's staff and another for authors. Whatever the facts, "interaction with staff at the publisher became extremely difficult until the total takeover was accomplished," the author said. |
| ABOUT
sa2
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Wolfram math opus soars to Number One| CHAMPAIGN-URBANA,Illinois, July 5, 2002 -- What perhaps is math genius Stephen Wolfram's opus, a self-published 1,200-page tome that resembles a heavily illustrated textbook, has become an instant best-seller. In one week A New Kind of Science was the Amazon.com sales leader. Wolfram proceeded with the project himself after publishers Addison-Wesley and then the Free Press canceled contracts with when he missed deadlines. The book took Wolfram 12 years to write. He insisted that he needed time to develop examples in diverse academic disciplines for his theory that all nature can be reduced to simple algorithms. He also insisted on elaborate production planning and 1,000 high-resolution illustrations that would break any conventional textbook budget. Wolfram, a millionaire from a science research software program, funded production and marketing himself. His problem: The production is so complex, requiring feeding one sheet at a time through the press, cannot keep up with demand. With unabashed bullishness, Wolfram shipped 50,000 copies to start -- an incredibly high number for an academic book. Then back orders began piling up. Still, the press hasn't caught up. |
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Translator walkout reported under way| VIENNA, Austria, July 5, 2002 -- A member of the academic journal Translator's advisory board, Franz Pöechhacker, resigned to protest the decision of the journal's owner to dismiss two Israeli board members and decline further articles from Israel. Pöechhacker called the actions of editor-publisher Mona Baker "completely misguided." Pöechhacker, of the University of Vienna, said he knew other members of the board were considering resigning too. He said that Translator, without access to Israeli scholars, will no longer be a premier journal in translation studies. |
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Where will Houghton land?BOSTON, Massachusetts, July 4, 2002 -- The new chief executive at textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin, Hans Gieskes, doesn't have any more answers than anyone else on how the company will emerge from the meltdown at conglomerate parent Vivendi. In an internal memo, Gieskes said he wished for "a period of peace and calm." The Boston Herald reported: "An unsettled atmosphere settled over Houghton's Berkeley Street offices yesterday, as employees wondered whether the venerable Boston publisher would be sold yet again." As analysts have tried to sort out Vivendi future, consensus is that Houghton Mifflin doesn't fit neatly with other Vivendi components. Who might buy Houghton? Speculation centers on Pearson, Wiley and Holtzbrinck, but nobody has a clear vision. Holtzbrinck, it was revealed this week, has its own debt problems. Pearson and Wiley, already with major U.S. textbook operations, would face severe anti-trust scrutiny. The other question is how much Vivendi could fetch by selling Houghton. Last year, it was generally believed, Vivendi overpaid $1.7 billion for Hougton, plus assuming $500 million of debt |
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Murdoch backs out of Vivendi deal| NEW YORK, July 4, 2002 -- The financial noose on Vivendi was tightened by rival media conglomerate News Corporation. Rupert Murdoch, chief of News Corporation, decided to back out of a deal to by Vivendi's Italian pay-television subsidiary. Cash-strappde Vivendi had planned on US$1.5 billion in the deal. |
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| VIVENDI
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It's show 'n' tell at Capitol| WASHINGTON, July 4, 2002 -- Fifty members of the U.S. House and Senate turned out when the Get Caught Reading photo-op campaign made its third appearance on Capitol Hill. A C-SPAN television crew recorded interviews with individual members about their favorite books. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska brought along a book by home-state novelist Willa Cather. Congressman Adam Schiff of Pasadena, California, brought constiuent Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451. Congressman Steve Rothman of New Jersey brought George Orwell's 1984, which he said affected him profoundly as an eighth-grader." |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | | Douglas A. Bernstein (psychology), University of Surrey and University of South Florida, Louis Penner (psychology), University of South Florida, Alison Clarke-Stewart (psychology), University of California, Irvine, and Edward J. Roy (psychology), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote the sixth edition of Psychology (Houghton Mifflin).
 | Ron Larson (math), Pennsylvania State University, Robert P. Hostetler (math), Pennsylvania State University, and Carolyn F. Neptune (math), Johnson County Community College, wrote the third edition of Intermediate Algebra Graphs and Functions (Houghton Mifflin). |
 | Paul Insel (nutrition), Stanford University, R. Elaine Turner (nutrition), University of Florida, and Don Ross (nutrition), California Institute of Nutrition, wrote Discovering Nutrition (Jones and Bartlett). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
|
About parachutes, Messier makes an exception| PARIS, July 3, 2002 -- Despite his stated disdain for golden parachutes for outgoing executives, Jean-Marie Messier negotiated a US$17.8 million severance package to leave Vivendi. The sum was triple Messier's 2001 salary and bonuses. Messier denied rumors that he needed $12 million to pay personal loans that he took out to buy Vivendi stock. The stock's value, meanwhile, plunged another 26 percent of the Paris exchange, its lowest in 13 years. |
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Translation journals join Israel boycott| MANCHESTER, Great Britain, July 3, 2002 -- Responding to an academic boycott of Israel declared by a group of European intellectuals in April, a journal publisher dismissed two Israel scholars from the editorial boards of The Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts. Both journals are issued by St. Jerome Publishing, which is owned by Mona Baker of the Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Dismissed were Miriam Schlesinger of Bar-Ilin University and Gideon Toury of Tel Aviv University. Baker also said her journals no longer will consider submissions from Israeli scholars. |
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Houghton authors in profitable Vivendi unitPARIS, July 3, 2002 -- The dismantling of the massive but motley Vivendi conglomerate is pending as the company implodes amid accounting doubts, huge debt, and the ouster of chief executive Jean-Marie Messier. The question for academic authors is what's ahead for their piece of the empire. Textbook authors with Vivendi subsidiary Houghton Mifflin are in a highly profitable unit called Vivendi Universal Publishing. The unit generated $4.9 billion in revenue in 2001, according to company reports -- 5.9 percent of the conglomerate's total. This is the Vivendi landscape with all six major units:Vivendi
Environmental | Water treatment, disposal; pipelines; public transit; 2001 revenue $28.9 billion (50%) | Vivendi
Universal
Entertainment | Movie studios, theme parks, USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel, "Law & Order," "Jerry Springer," French pay-TV channel Canal+; $9.4 billion (16.3%) | Telecom
Group | Phone companies in Morocco, central Europe, other countries; major interest in French phone network Cegetel; $7.9 billion (13.7%) | Universal
Music | Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Island Def Jam, MCA, other labels; $6.5 billion (11.2%) | Vivendi
Universal
Publishing | Houghton Mifflin; children's book; French magazine L'Express, others; $4.9 billion (8.5%) | Vivendi
Universal
Net | Internet portals, web site; $182.5 million (.32%) |
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Authors endorse SA2 news siteWINONA ,
Minnesota, July 3, 2002 -- Academic authors endorse SA2 news service. Here are
excerpts from the latest messages:"Your Web site
continues to be absolutely invaluable."
"I have been reading your
newsletters with interest. I've already made use of information from the newsletter. Keep up the good work!"
"I appreciate your work and have noted your web site and service to several colleagues."
"I appreciate your news."
"Finally someone is looking to my needs as an author. Thank you, SA2. I'mnot alone anymore."
"The web site is very
useful." |
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| ABOUT
sa2
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
 | Frank Dangello
(math), Shippensburg University, and Michael Seyfried (math),
Shippensburg University, wrote Introductory Real Analysis (Houghton
Mifflin). |
 | Joseph A. Gallian (math), University of Minnesota,
Duluth, wrote the fifth edition ofContemporary Abstract Algebra (Houghton
Mifflin). |
 | Bruce Crauder
(math), Oklahoma State University, Benny Evans (math), Oklahoma State
University, and Alan Noell (math), Oklahoma State University, wrote the
second edition of Functions and Change: A Modeling Approach to College
Algebra (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Vivendi tanks amid new accounting
doubts| PARIS, July 2, 2002 -- The
newspaper Le Monde reported that Vivendi used irregular accounting to
embellish its 2001 accounts by US$1.5 billion, triggering a massive drop in the media giant's stock on the Paris exchange. Also, Moody's Investors Service downgraded Vivendi bonds to junk status. Moody's cited "growing doubts" about whether the company can survive its debt. It was unclear how the meltdown would affect Vivendi's diverse holdings, which include U.S. textbook producer Houghton
Mifflin. By the end of the trading day, one-third of the value of the stock evaporated. The Paris stock exchange suspended trading four times. The New York Stock Exchange also suspended trading. The new declines came despite expectations that the weekend resignation of Vivendi Chair Jean-Marie Messier might restore investor confidence in the Paris-based company. About Le Monde's story about accounting irregularities in the sale of BSkyB shares, Vivendi issued a statement that it had "strictly applied" accounting rules to the sale and that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not object to its accounting treatment. LeMonde said the accounting was not consistent with French requirements. |
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Journalism educators honor text
author| COLUMBIA, South Carolina, July 2, 2002 -- The
author of the most-adopted college journalism textbook in the United States, Mel
Mencher, was named outstanding educator of the year by the Newspaper Division of
the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Mencher was
cited for crusading for "journalism of conscience" in a long career of teaching and writing. His News Reporting and Writing is entering its ninth edition. His Basic Media Writing is in its sixth edition. Mencher is retired from the Columbia Unversity faculty. Earlier he was at Kansas. |
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Magazine: Holtzbrinck debt running
high| STUTTGART, Germany, July 2, 2002 -- The
family-held von Holtzbrinck Group, whose diverse U.S. publishing holdings include St Martin's Press, Worth and W.H. Freeman, is carrying a debt load of US$1.2 billion, equal to more than half of annual sales, the magazine Der Spiegel reported. The article said Holtzbrinck recorded an operating loss last year of US$47 million, Under the headline "A Document of Horror," the magazine cited internal company sources for its information. The von Holtzbricks prefer to operate outside of public focus, but a European news service following up on the Der Spiegel article quoted Stefan von Holtzbrinck, company chairman, that debt is "well below" the reported level. He said, though that the company is moving to sell off television and radio properties. "We do not want to increase our debt further," he said. "Therefore it makes sense to sell some non-core assets," he said. |
Vivendi chief Messier quits| PARIS, July 1, 2002 -- The Messier Era at Vivendi ended in a
weekend realignment of the board of diretcors. The beleagured chair of the global conglomerate, Jean-Marie Messier, who assembled the giant company, lost his dwindling majority and agreed to resign. The resignation culminated months of drastic declines in investor confidence about the debt that Messier amassed to acquire a motley array of companies, which include U.S. movie and music giant
Universal and textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. Messier had already begun a
reorganization to put related Vivendi enterprises into coherent units, but observers said it was too little, too late. Messier's successor is expected to sell Vivendi components to raise cash to pay down somewhere about US$33 billion in debt. |
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MESSIER
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Mysteries rise in evolving Vivendi
board| PARIS, July 1, 2002 -- News
that Vivendi chief Jean-Marie Messier had offered critical shareholder activist
Colette Neuville a seat on the company's board surprised corporate observers.
The question: Why would Messier want an opponent on a board that is
demonstrating dwindling support for his leadership? Five Northern American
members on the 15-person board have campaigned to remove Messier, and five
of his French supporters have departed the board in the past two months. Some
departing members have been explicit that they were not unhappy learning
unpleasant news about Vivendi problems in the press and not from
Messier. |
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VIVENDI
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From Frank Silverman,
award-winning speech pathology author:
"At the end of the
production process for a textbook, the publisher ships me a box that contains,
among other items, the copy-edited manuscript. My first step in preparing a
new edition is to copy the chapter files for the current edition to a new diskette. Then I open the box from my publisher and incorporate the changes that the copy editor blue-penciled on the manuscript -- about 95 percent with which I
had agreed in the editing process. While doing so, I eliminate outdated
references, figures and non-essential material. These files on the new disk serve as the foundation for the new edition." |
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Publishers support Minnesota
Press| NEW YORK, July 1, 2002 --
The Association of American University Presses voiced strong support for the
University of Minnesota Press, the scholarly publisher that has recently been
criticized in the media for publishing journalist Judith Levine's book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Kids from Sex. AAUP issued a
statement championing the Minnesota Press's decision to uphold the
responsibility of scholarly publishers to disseminate significant and valuable
research. Said AAUP Executive Director Peter Givler: "All great universities
champion freedom of inquiry, but freedom of inquiry carries with it the
responsibility to publish its results. Otherwise the freedom is
meaningless." | 
|
June tally for SA2 site: 143
items| WINONA, Minnesota, July 1,
2002 -- In a monthly performance report to members of the Society of
Academic Authors, editor John Vivian said 143 items had been posted on the
SA2 news and information site in June. Seven e-mail alerts with links to 49
on-site items were issued to SA2 members, he said. Commentaries and how-to
materials from veteran authors Fred Fedler, Winkie Fordney, David Rees, Zick
Rubin and Frank Silverman joined the site. Vivian too added his own
commentary and analysis. Most important, Vivian said, was the new
longitudinal membership survey on authoring issues was conducted
successfully. The first in the SA2 series leading authors, a biographical profile on geographer Tom McKnight, was inaugurated. Because of heightened reader interest in the "satisfactory manuscript: provision in contracts after the Chodos v. West decision, the Law Section of the site was launched
ahead of schedule. "The best way to catch up on highlights is to review the
e-mail news alerts summary," Vivian said: Alerts Summary |
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| The much-abused
"satisfactory manuscript: provision in almost all book contracts should be
stricken. Instead, authors should insert a termination provision that allow either the publisher or the author to walk away from a project. If it's the publisher that walks away, the author should be allowed to retain advances already paid. For negotiation tips and arguments, see the latest section of the SA2 site's section
on Contracts.
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| |
| James Talaga. "Forecasting Methods
and Practices of Academic Textbook Publishers," Book Research
Quarterly, Volume 5 (Winter 1989-1990), Pages 58-67. Talaga, a marketing
scholar, surveyed textbook companies and discovered their sales forecasting
seldom had an epirical basis. Most chose "executive opinion" as the basis for
forecasts. Only about half of the respondents said the sales force input was
factored into forecasts. |
| Bill Honig, "California's Experience
With Textbook Improvement," 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.
|
| ACADEMIC AUTHORING
PEOPLE |
 | Ronald P.
Pfeiffer (health), Boise State University, and Brent C. Mangus
(health), University of Nevada, Las Vegas, wrote the third edition of
Concepts of Athletic Training (Jones and Bartlett). |
| Steve Hull, at Zoland Press, formerly an acquisitions editor at Allyn & Bacon, founded a publihsing house, Charles & Justin, in Boston. |
| William M. Pride (business), Texas
A&Yamp;M, Robert J. Hughes (business), Dallas County Community
College, and Jack R. Kapoor (business) College of DuPage, wrote the
seventh edition of Business (Houghton Mifflin). |
 |
Charles Brace (math), Regis University, and Corrine Pellillo
Brace (math), Arapahoe Community College, wrote the seventh edition of
Understandable Statistics (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
|
Holt announces Texas 6-12
series| BOSTON, Massachusetts, July
1, 2002 -- A new Texas social studies textbook series for grades 6-12 was
released by Holt, Rinehart & Winston. The series consists of both books
and online components. The series is aligned with the Texas Essential
Knowledge & Skills guidelines, with text questions keyed to TEKS skills.
The series has middle-school Spanish editions and supports materials, and it
includes a CD-ROM-based teacher management system. Internet support is
available for teachers and students. |
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Textbooks, well, they ain't as much fun
CORPORATE
PROFILE |
|
| Who knows what goes on inside the heads of
people like Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone and Jean-Marie Messier when
they assemble their global media conglomerates. Psycho-commentary suggest
that these gray-flannel suit deal-makers are dazzled by Hollywood glitz. Also, a
tad embarrassed by it all, they acquire some textbook companies along the way.
Educational publishing, it seems, would be a respectable anchor amid all the
dazzle of show-biz. Books too are media, right? Makes
sense. |
Inevitable, when income streams
sour, the newly minuted media moguls have become so hooked on Hollywood
that they can't let go of the glamor. So they shuck their textbook holdings.
Murdoch sold off Harper's textbook units, keeping the glitzier trade-book units
and their bestselling star authors. Redstone soon tired of the old Simon &
Schuster educational units, including Prentice Hall. He sold them, keeping the
trade-book operations.
The question now, with the starry-eyed
French conglomerate kingpin Jean-Marie Messier in deep trouble, is whether
his Vivendi will jettison Houghton Mifflin. He borrowed to pay heavily to pay
an inflated $2.2 billion for Houghton in 2001. Although Houghton amounts only
to 6.6 percent of Vivendi's horrendous debt, Houghton is reporting good
earnings and might attract top dollar on the auction block. Besides, textbooks
are not as glitzy and fun as Vivendi's Hollywood holdings. |
Writer's Digest company
expands| CINCINNATI, Ohio, July 1,
2002 -- The Cincinnati company that publishes Writer's Digest and
other how-to magazines and books, F&W Publications, bought Krause
Publications of Iola, Wisconsin. Krause publishes 46 periodicals and 750
reference and how-to books, including the weekly Sports Collector's
Digest. |
| A Society of Academic
Authors survey found publishers negligent in keeping authors informed about
corporate acquisitions and mergers and their effect of authors' titles. One author of a leading textbook in his field was tipped to a pending merger by friends who were former middle-mangement personnel and still had inside contacts. This author then pressed his editor, also a friend of longstanding. All the information, though, was limited, the author said: "Nobody in upper management told me diddlysquat." |
| ABOUT
sa2
|
| ACADEMIC AUTHORING
PEOPLE |
 | Tom
Bassarear (math education), Keene State College, wrote the second edition
of Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers (Houghton
Mifflin). |
 | Ignacio Bello (math), Hillsborough Community
College, and Jack R. Britton (math), University of South Florida, wrote
the second edition of Topics in Contemporary Mathematics (Houghton
Mifflin). |
| Constance Davis (media law
and technology), joined the faculty at Purdue
University. |
| David Irons, vice president and
director of sales at Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, was named senior vice president of
sales at Harcourt's Holt, Rinehart & Winston. |
| Pamela Nelson, senior vice
president of marketing and education strategy at PowerSchool, and earlier at
Mattel Interactive, Pearson Learning, and Computer Curriculum, was named
senior vice president of marketing at Harcourt's Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
|
| Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
| Philip G. Altbach. "The Unchanging
Variable: Textbooks in Comparative Perspective," 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. |
| Nat G. Bodian."Scientific and
Technical Book Advertising in Periodicals: A Concise Overview of Approaches,
Benefits, and Techniques," Book Research Quarterly, Volume 3 (Winter
1987-1988), Pages 54-57. Bodian, a retired Wiley marketing executive, cites a
variety of studies and anecdotal accounts to suggest that advertising in scholarly journals generates recognition and sales for scientific and technical books. He favors periodical over direct-mail advertising as more cost-efficient.
|
| Sara B. Sluss."Interpreting and
Applying the Acceptability Clause in Book Publishing Contracts," Book
Research Quarterly, Volume 6 (Summer 1990), Pages 29-36. Sluss, a
librarian, examines five trade-book court cases on the "satisfactory manuscript"
provision in boilerplate publisher contracts with authors. She also examines the
1981 Authors Guild recommendation for nonpartisan experts to resolve whether
a manuscript is satisfactory. Sluss concludes without any recommendation of
her own. |
Commentator: Vivendi investor voices
clear| NEW YORK, July 1, 2002 -- In a
commentary in the magazine Business Week, Paris-based financial
reporter Carol Matlack called on chair Jean-Marie Messier to resign. Matlack
said Messier has had a "tin ear" for investor relations, letting bad surprises leak from other sources time and again. Matlack said subsidiaries that don't generate media content must be shed. This would include a bevy of unrelated companies, including Moroccan and Polish phone companies, the French media distribution company Canal+, and a French mobile-phone company. Messier had acquired the motley group with a goal to convert a French utility company into a media content and distribution powerhouse, but the vision floundered. Wrote Matlack: "We've had enough. That's what shareholders have been telling ... Messier as they've driven shares down 40 percent since June 1. (T)he market is signaling it wants Vivendi to take a blowtorch to the global conglomerate Messier tried to weld onto the chassis of an old French water company." Does U.S. textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin fit into the mix of companies that should remain in an entertainment-oriented Vivendi? Matlack and most other commentators never get to details like Houghton in their macro-analyses. Houghton was in a chain of Vivendi acquisitions in 2001. |
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VIVENDI
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AAP to Congress: Help blind
kids| WASHINGTON, July 1, 2002 --
The president of the Association of American Publishers, Pat Schroeder,
tretsifying before a Senate subcommittee, urged quick passage of bi-partisan
legislation to speed the delivery of up-to-date instructional materials to blind and sight-disabled children. Schroeder noted that a current "hodge-podge of
confusing, often conflicting, state laws and regulations" means that it often
taking many months to get new learning materials into Braille and other
formats. "As a result, many blind and sight-disabled students don't get their
textbooks until many months after their sighted colleagues," Schroeder said. "In
some instances they don't receive them at all." The proposed law would level
the playing-field for blind and print-disabled students," she
said. |
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SCHROEDER
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