Supreme Court OKs Bono extension

McGraw puts smallpox data online free

NEW YORK, January 15, 2003 -- Experts' content on smallpox is available free on the McGraw-Hill Harrison's Online web site, the company announced. The material was compiled by Anthony Fauci, who helped draft U.S. government policy on smallpox vaccination. Harrison's Publisher Mikael Engebretson said: "As a possible agent for bioterrorism or biological warfare, there is a dramatic urgency for smallpox to be fully understood by both the medical community as well as the general public." Both subscribers to Harrison's and non-subscribers can find relevant parts of the 15th edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine on the site, as well as articles from the New England Journal of Medicine, the Center for Disease Control, MedLine, the National Library of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

HARRISON'S ONLINE

Name changes ordered at Pearson

UPPER SADDLE RIVER, New Jersey, January 14, 2003 -- As part of a global brand-name initative ordered from headquarters in London, Pearson Education is appending the name "Pearson" to most of its product lines. Hence, said President Peter Jovanovich, Prentice Hall will become "Pearson Prentice Hall." Similar brand-name adjustments are also underway in London-based Pearson's trade book divisions. Jovanovich noted that Pearson Education has been in existence four years: "We've built our identity around the names that were already well-known and respected at the time Pearson Education was formed," he said. "Now, we think the time is right to give greater meaning to the name 'Pearson.' It will help us to create greater awareness among our customers, authors and partners of the value of our combined enterprise and give them a better understanding of the full range of what we offer." Pearson Education imprints include Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, Longman, Addison Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, and more than 50 others. Exceptions to the new "Pearson" prefix, he said, include Addison-Wesley Professional, Adobe Press, Peachpit Press, and Cisco Press. Even so, he said, all company logos will now integrate the Pearson name into their design.

C. Donald Ahrens (meteorology), Modesto Community College, wrote the seventh edition of Meteorology Today: An Introduction to the Weather, Climate and the Environment (Brooks.Cole). Donald L. Niewyk (history), Southern Methodist University, wrote the third edition of The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (Houghton Mifflin). Richard Wingell (music), University of Southern California, wrote the third edition of Writing About Music: An Introductory Guide (Prentice Hall).

Please tell us about your latest project: EDITOR More academic authoring people

Holiday best-seller sales off

Harcourt slashing elhi, supplements jobs

ORLANDO, Florida, January 13, 2003 -- The Harcourt Education subsidiary of global publisher Reed Elsevier, is eliminating jobs, perhaps hundreds, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Reed has issued no announcement on the extent of cutbacks from its London or Amsterdam offices, but the Sentinel reported that Tony Lucki, Harcourt Education president, has sent letters to the unit's 3,000 U.S. employees that early retirements are being encouraged by a Jan. 21 deadline. About 450 emloyees are eligible for early retirement. Lucki's letter did not specify the extent of the cutbacks but stated: "Some involuntary terminations will likely be required." Employees will be notified of layoffs Jan. 27, the letter said. Lucki said that educational publishers face a "difficult business climate." Harcourt Education, headquartered in Orlando, has two divisions -- Holt, Rinehart & Winston, which publishes high school textbooks, and Steck-Vaughn, which publishes workbooks and supplemental materials. Harcourt Education is part of the old Harcourt that was sold to Reed in 2001. Reed kept the Harcourt el-hi and academic journal business but sold most of the college unit to Thomson Learning. The Thomson component is not part of the Reed cutbacks.

HARCOURT EDUCATION

Nominees sought for publisher award

WASHINGTON, January 12, 2003 -- The Association of American Publishers invited nominations for the 28th annual Curtis Benjamin Award for Creative Publishing. The award, to a living book publisher in the United States who has demonstrated exceptional creativity and innovation, last year went to Barney Rosset. The award in May at BookExpo America in Los Angeles. Contact: Amy Gwiazskowski at AAP

EARLIER ARTICLE Publishers honor Barney Rosset finally

College sales lead U.S. book industry

WASHINGTON, January 12, 2003 -- College textbook sales led the U.S. book industry in November, shooting to $181.9 million for the month, 16.5 percent ahead of the same month a year earlier. For the year, college sales were runmning 11.6 percent ahead. The Association of American Publishers, which gathers data from its membership, said November was "a cold month" in several categories, including univerity presses. El-hi sales were at $92.6 million, up 3.6 pecent from a year earlier, but lagging 4.7 percent for the year. Here are the year-to-date AAP data through November, extrapolated from 74 member-publishers, for genres in which academic authors write: College STM, professional University press (soft) El-hi University press (hard) 11.6 percent 8.0 percent -1.2 percent -4.7 percent -5.5 percent

EARLIER DATA

Talby Prize judges work is done

WINONA, Minnesota, January 11, 2003 -- The judges' ratings and comments are being tabulated for the Talby Prize, the Society of Academic Authors recognition for excellence in visuals in textbooks and learning materials. The process should be complete in a few weeks. "The largest panel of judges ever assembled to evaluate textbook excellence has done its work with great care and attention to detail, truly an impressive job" said John Vivian, SA2 founder. The judges all are veteran authors themselves, representing diverse academic disciplines and experiences. "They acknowledged the difficulty in sorting through the superb enrtries to decide the most worthy of the Talbot honor." He said the Talby has a special distinction as a prize awarded by authors to fellow authors. "It's peer recognition of the first order," he said.

TALBOT BACK- GROUND About the Talby

Houghton transition called smooth

BOSTON, Massachusetts, January 10, 2003 -- Although the front office's attention at Houghton Mifflin was focused on the company's sale by Vivendi to the Lee-Bain partnership in the second half of 2002, the book business was unaffected, according to chief executive Hans Gieskes. "We didn't lose one author," Gieskes told the trade journal Publishers Weekly. The sales staff proceeded in a busines-as-usual mode, he said. The company is well positioned to move into 2003, he said.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN EARLIER ARTICLE Houghton owners: We're hear to stay

Portland State creates book curriculum

SA2 site carried 82 December items

New Houghton owners in it for long term BOSTON, Massachusetts, January 8, 2003 -- The Boston equity-investment companies that bought Houghton Mifflin want the world to known that they see their acquisition as a long-term investment. In separate announcements, Thomas Lee Partners and Bain Capital said they intend to keep Houghton as a single entity -- not break it into chunks to sell for a quick profit. Rumors about a break-up have been persistent since Lee-Bain's offer to buy Houghton from the French conglomerate Vivendi was accepted in October. Lee-Bain paid US$1.7 billion -- US$1.3 billion in cash and US$380 in debt assumption. Vivendi had bought Houghton only 19 months earlier for a lot more -- US$2.2 billion. It was part of Vivendi chief executive Jean-Marie Messier's rapid expansion that went awry when it was discovered how much debt he had amassed. Messier was fired, and his successors chose to sell Houghton as among the first of many divestitures in a desperate bid to raise case to make debt payments. That Thomas Lee Partners and Bain Capital are investment firms without publishing experience fueled the rumor-mills that they would try for a quick turn-around to score investment gains.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN EARLIER ARTICLE It's over: Houghton back in U.S. hands

Agent Ike Williams makes move BOSTON, Massachusetts, Janaury 7, 2003 -- Superstar agent-lawyer Ike Williams, caught in the dissolution of his home at Hill & Barlow, has moved across town to the intellectual property firm Fish & Richardson. With Williams went colleagues Brettne Bloom, Jill Kneerim, Patricia Nelson, Rob McQuilkin and Elaine Rogers. Background: Venerable Boston law firm dissolves

CON- TRACTS WILLIAMS Fish & Richardson

Report: Bertelsman omitted Nazi details

NEW YORK, Janaury 6, 2003 -- Although Germany-based media giant Bertelsmann has owned up to suppressing its Nazi links in World War II, the company's official revision still falls short, the Wall Street Journal reported. Reinhard Mohn, who still controls Bertelsmann, helped cover up the company's Nazi links at a crucial time after the war when Bertelsmann was trying to gain a British publishing license, the Journal said. Mohn initialed the cover page of a dossier prepared by his father falsely claiming that the firm had suffered from Nazi persecution. Mohn's direct role in the misrepresentation was omitted from a Bertelsmann-commissioned report of the facts that the company touted last October as a complete coming clean on its long-rumored Nazi connections. Bertelsmann said at the time that the report was prepared independently, but the Journal suggests a self-serving omission: "There was more to Reinhard Mohn's role that the report doesn't discuss: He presented the British with a fictional account of Bertelsmann's resistance conceived by one of his father's associates that would later serve as the basis for the firm's resistance claim," the Journal said. Th newspaper based its report on documents from the state archive in Düsseldorf. The Journal reports too that the company tried to silence the freelance historian who first unearthed the Nazi connections.

EARLIER ARTICLE Bertelsmann castigated: Too little, too late CORPORATE PROFILE Bertelsmann

TO EARLIER NEWS TO TOP TO HOME TO NEWS ARCHIVE

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David R. Henderson (economics), Hoover Institution, wrote The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey (Prentice Hall). Jeffrey Ogbar (history), University of Connecticut, wrote The Civil Rights Movement (Houghton Mifflin). Reinhard G. Pauly (music), Lewis and Clark College, wrote the fourth edition of Music in the Classic Period (Prentice Hall).

Please tell us about your latest project: EDITOR More academic authoring people

Encyclopedia in "modest revival"

Analysis: No big book mergers in 2003

Wiley waxes enthusiasm on leading tests

HOBOKEN, New Jersey, January 4, 2003 -- The Wiley publishing company reported its college sales grew 5 percent in its fiscal year that ended in October. Driving the growth, Wiley said, were: Gerard Tortora and Sandra Grabowski's Principles Of Anatomy and Physiology, in its 10th edition. Donald Kieso's Intermediate Accounting in an update of its 10th edition. David Halliday, Robert Resnick and Jenel Walker's Fundamentals of Physics, in its sixth edition. Deborah Hughes-Hallet's Calculus, in its third edition, with Andrew Gleason, William G. McCallum, David O. Loman, Jeff Decosky-Foldman, Thomas W. Ticher, David A, Flat, Joe B. Thrash, Karen I. Rhea, Andrew Pasquale, Sheila P. Gordon, Douglas Galloway and Patti Frazer Lock. John D. Cutnell and Kenneth W. Johnson's Physics, in its seventh edition. Titles acquired last year from Thomson Learning also factored into the gowth, Wiley said. The company listed several new editions a successes: Raymond A. Barnett and Michael A. Ziegler's Analytic Trigonometry with Applications, eighth edition. David B. Botkin's Environmental Science, fourth edition. Harm J. deBlij's Concepts and Regions in Geography. DeBlij's Human Geography, seventh edition. Simon J. Haykin's Signals and Systems second edition. Kieso's Fundamentals of Intermediate Accounting. John R. Schermerhorn Jr. and David Chappell's Organizational Behavior, eighth edition. Mary Stern and Robert A. Stern's Cobol. The company noted that it maintains more than 2,000 subsites to support and supplement its college texts.

JOHN WILEY & SONS

2002 IN REVIEW The State of Academic Authoring Just when many authors were feeling relief that the horrors of publishing industry consolidation were over, Vivendi imploded. The overextended French conglomerate, whose U.S. properties included Houghton Mifflin, fired its master-mind, Jean-Marie Messier, and began desperate flailing for survival. As Vivendi hunted for buyers for its sundry subsidiaries, Houghton authors entered bleak uncertainty about their fate under whatever new ownership Vivendi might persuade to take over their venerable Boston house. Meanwhile, other major publishing houses were in a new post-consolidation stability. There was nothing left for merging. The industry had boiled itself down to a handful of major players, all of them too big for acquisition -- Pearson, Thomson, McGraw-Hill, Vivendi, Reed Elsevier, and Wiley. None had the cash to buy out the other. Perhaps more to the point, lenders emerging from the dot.com meltdown and amid recession were wary of media deals. Publishers were mindful too that anti-trust agencies in the United States and Europe would be obstacles to a mega-merger. Even so, consolidation continued, with small houses combining and some being acquired by the majors. Except for the Vivendi mess, however, 2002 was a calm year in the infrastructure of the book industry. BY JOHN VIVIAN SA2 EDITOR TOP 10 STORIES NEXT 1. HOUGHTON DIVESTED A hometown equity investment partnership, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, both of Boston, bought book publisher Houghton Mifflin from French conglomerate Vivendi in a distress sale. The buyers, each with a 50-50 interest, have no experience in publishing. Their goal: To nurture Houghton into an attractive property for sale either in whole within two to four years or, if it would be more profitable, to sell in chunks. Thomas and Bain paid US$1.7 billion. A good deal? Less than 1-1/2 years earlier, Vivendi paid $2.2 billion, but it was widely believed that Vivendi had overpaid. Whatever the financials of the deal, Houghton authors breathed relief. The new owners promised stability for at least a few years. NEXT VIVENDI HOUGHTON MIFFLIN 2. AN AUTHORS' VOICE Academic authors, historically without an effective voice in the United States, flocked to the new Society of Academic Authors. Within six months, the society had 1,200 members, easily the largest organization of its sort. The society promised members an unparalleled news and information web site and a broad range of professional services and recognitions. The society launched an information campaign against the college used-book industry, which has deprived authors of income and driven the price of textbooks to astronomical levels. The society took strong author-friendly positions on major issues. These included opposition to White House attempts to seal official records from scholars, support for the University of Minnesota Press against government intimidation, and support for federal legislation for speedy conversion of new learning materials to Braille for pupils with visual handicaps. The society began in-depth online commentary and counsel for authors to improve their effectiveness in contract negotiations. The society also launched longitudinal author surveys on authoring issues. NEXT sa2 SOCIETY OF ACADEMIC AUTHORS 3. NEW TECH Even with the web into its second decade, textbook publishers failed in 2002, again, to embrace the new technology. Yes, college publishers piled ancillary materials on the web, but not a single major house produced a text for download delivery to e-book readers. Stuck in old-tech mud, publishers so far have used the web only as a vehicle to push sales of traditional printed, bound, warehoused and trucked products. Publishers have not seen beyond cheap razzle-dazzle promotional applications of the technology. Futurologists continued in 2002 with upbeat forecasts that the Age of the E-Book Reader is almost here, but e-reader sales were slow, and only a relatively miniscule number of titles, all of them trade books, were developed for e-book reading. Even so, there were new-tech initiatives, though not many. Upstart college publisher Atomic Dog issued titles in both print and download formats in more fields. El-hi publishers placed more content online. More academic journals added e-editions. The British Journal of Surgery went further, issuing articles online as much as two months ahead of the print edition. "It is no longer sufficient to publish solely on paper," said Chris Russell, chair of the society that publishes the journal. The promise of print-on-demand technology, which can produce a single copy at a time, each customized to the reader, remained in the backwaters. Notably, however, Harvard University Press began a POD program to produce short runs quickly for books whose sales exceed press runs. NEXT 4. UNFRIENDLY ACTS Powers assumed by the federal government after the Sepember 11 attacks in 2001 worried many scholars, including academic authors. Federal agents used the USA Patriot Act, hurriedly passed within weeks of the attacks, to slip quietly into library and bookstore records to see who was reading what. The U.S. Justice Department refused to answer questions from Congressional oversight committee extent of the investigative incursions. The law itself forbid libraries and stores from disclosing even that their records had been tapped. Civil libertartians objected. There were also new objections to President Bush's 2001 executive order to delay scholars from access to presidential papers. At the President's option, delays could be indefinite. At local levels there were renewed attempts to block reader access to reading materials. During its annual Banned Book Week the American Library Association said the year's most challenged titles were Harry Potter books and perennial censorship targets: JohnSteinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War, and Maya Angelou's Why the Caged Bird Sings. NEXT 5. AUTHOR REVOLT To protest exorbitant library subscription rates, some running thousands of dollaers a year, leading scientists called for contributors to boycott scientific and scholarly journals. More than 30,000 academic scientists from 177 countries signed on, demanding that articles be available online free within six months of publication. Alas, few of these scientist-authors stopped submitting articles, in part because a scholar's career progress almost always is judged by publishing productivity. As a result, the journal publishers, incluidng giants Reed, Kluwer and Wiley, felt no pain. Except for some showcase albeit modest drops in subscription rates, the boycott failed. But the movement to share scientific articles at low cost, especially for low-budget libraries in the Third World, didn't die -- hardly. After it was clear that the boycott wouldn't work, organizers won a a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to launch scholarly journals that would be available free on the web. The first journals, Public Library of Science: Biology and Public Library of Science: Medicine, will appear late in 2003. Both will be peer-reviewed and edited according to the highest standards. Meanwhile, journal publishers reported substantial income. Revenues at Wiley for the second quarter were 27 percent ahead of a year earlier, propelled in part by its scentific, techical and medical publishing units. NEXT 6. TEXTBOOK PRICING California legislators turned a sharp eye to school book pricing after an exhaustive San Jose Mercury News examination found quantuum price hikes that begged for an explanation other than what-the-market-will bear gouging. Reporter Jessica Portner said the price of some books purchased had tripled over 10 years, including a sixth-grade English book that soared from $20 to $57, far outstripping the pace of inflation and also trade books. Portner also found publishers had set prices higher in California than Texas. She found key people in the California adoption process who admitted no concern about pricing, as well as some cozy and even financial relationships between adoption people and publisher lobbyists. College publishers, meanwhile, pushed prices higher and found only minor market resistance. Discount publishers, including Atomic Dog and Morton, widened their niches. Among major houses, Allyn & Bacon issued three-hole punch versions of year-old editions to match used-book prices, but the initiative fizzled amid a lack of sales rep enthusiasm. The reps opted to hawk new editions of competing books. NEXT 7. ROYALTY-ROBBING SALES Two gutsy authors, Ken Englade and Patricia Simpson, pushed HarperCollins into settling a class-action suit about in-house book sales that deprived authors of royalty income. The authors focused on Harper in challenging a widespread practice among major publishers of selling books amid subsidiary units at discount prices. The upshot of the practice was that authors earned royalties only on a substantially diminished sale prices. In settling the suit, Harper agreed to compensate authors who had been deprived in a legally recoignized six-year window from 1993 to 1999, which included some academic authors who had published with Harper before it abandoned the text and academic market. More important, it is believed that other major houses that had engaged in the same in-house deep-discounting had picked up vibes from the Englade-Simpson suit and quietly quit the practice. NEXT 8. RE-INVENTING THE U-PRESS University presses picked up lost ground in hard-back sales, which were up 7 percent for 2002, according to prelimiarty data, but u-press softback sales were, well, soft -- off more than 2 percent. The sales data, however, mask the desperate state of university presses. Subsidies from their sponsoring universities continued to erode and in some cases not dry up entirely. What happened at Stanford was typical. Humanities editor Helen Tartar was let go to save costs. Depending on who's talking, 10 to 50 percent of the Stanford list will be phased out. The University of California Press began winnowing its history, anthropology, sociology, religion, biology and natural history lists, and refusing manuscripts in architecture, archaeology, geography, philosophy, and political science. There will be fewer titles accepted in literature and literary theory. The Harvard Business School Press laid 14 off employees and emphasize "cross-platform" projects with broader market appeal. The short of it is that university presses, sans subsidies, need to pay their own way. The answer, said California Press acqusitions editor Reed Malcolm, will be "scholarly trade books" with broader market appeal than the dissertation-based monographs that once dominated the output of university presses. What will happen to mongraphs. They're dead, says Malcolm: "Get over it." NEXT 9. SALES What recession? College textbook publishers saw no signs of the economy's distress as they carted wheelbarrows of cash to the bank in 2002. Peliminary data showed revenue grew 10 to 11 percent. In the el-hi segment, however, publishers struggled. It was a slow year in the adoption cycle, and some cash-strapped states delayed choosing replacement series and works for another year. Overall, according to preliminary data, el-hi sales are off 7 to 8 percent. Are el-hi publishers gloomy? Terry McGraw of giant McGraw-Hill said that state financial woes are temporary and that there are no signals that the American people are losing the value they place in education. Give the economy a couple years, said McGraw, and the school market will be back to its old robust self. NEXT 10. TRIMMER BOOKS Growing concern over child spinal injuries prompted the California Board of Education to consider weight standards for school books by 2004. Too many kids are suffering from overweight backpacks. Publishers weren't keen on reconfiguring their products into slimmer, lighter versions, but they said it could be done. More content is expected to go online. Some books may be divided into trimmer multiple volumes. Meawhile, some school districts have taken to buying two sets of school books, one set for kids to use at school and one set to keep at home for homework. One downside of the duplicate sets is that school budgets are depleted at twice the rate, resulting in less frequest purchases of replacement texts to keep learning current. For a complete directory of SA2 coverage of academic authoring in 2002, see our News Alert Index.

Pearson sees solid 2003

LONDON, January 3, 2003 -- The chief executive at publishing giant Pearson, Marjorie Scardino, sees solid growth for the company in 2003. College revenues will top the 7 percent projected for the industry, Scardino told investors. Modest growth is expected in el-hi sales because of more adoption opportunities, she said. Scardino noted there will be more back-office efficiencies resulting from the continued integration of the company's education and trade divisions.

EARLIER ARTICLE Pearson: Turnaround at hand

Scholastic: Revenue grew 4 percent to $660.3 million in the second quarter, compared to a year earlier. Net income grew 13 percent to $75 million. Education sales were off 2 percent.

Texas book watchdog group issues report

LexisNexis buys Dutch online firm

COLUMBUS, Ohio, January 2, 2003 -- Reed Elsevier's LexisNexis Group, which offersl legal and business data bases, bought FactLane, an online news service for the Netherlands. Judy Vezmar, chief executive for LexisNexis in Europe and Africa, called the deal "a key component in our European expansion plans." Terms were not announced.

REED

Merger-acquisition pace slows in 2002