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Louisiana College to screen textbooks| PINEVILLE, Lousiana, November 30, 2003 -- Trustees of Louisiana College, which operates under Southern Baptist auspices, voted to bar professors from individually selecting their textbooks in an effort to keep material deemed un-Christian out of the curriculum. Textbook choices now must be approved by department chairs and the academic vice president. The new policy was a vote of confidence for college President William Rory Lee, who removed books required for a philosophy and a religion course from the campus store. Lee objected to profane language in the self-help book The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, and a love scene in the novel A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines. The content, Lee said, clashed with the Christian values. Lee praised the trustees for supporting "academic quality and the spiritual growth of the students of our institution." |
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Willliamsburg to flavor Scott Foresman | NEW YORK, November 29, 2003 --
El-hi publisher Scott Foresman will draw on the Colonial Williamsburg museum to develop American history materials for its school books. The content and presentation will be age-and grade-specific, Scott Foresman said. A CD-ROM-based resource will include primary sources and information on historical research practices. | | | 
SCOTT
FORESMAN |
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Worth plans web-bound econ hybrid| NEW YORK, November 28, 2003 -- In a new tack on the textbook industry's used-book problem, the publishing house Worth is putting out a new introductory economics text not only as a typical $100 hard copy but also as a $60 online version. The book, Economics by spouses Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, with online accoutrements by Paul Romer, is the first major textbook launch of such a hybrid. Elizabeth Widdicombe, president of Worth, said the project is a new model for textbook publishing, aimingto deal with rising textbook prices, the erosion of new book sales by used texts, and recently students buying online from abroad. Widdicombe said economics is "well suited to interactive explanation." She noted, for example, the back-and-forth movement of supply and demand lines. "Some subjects are more oriented to lectures than an interactive model," she said, citing sociology. |
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TECH-
NOLOGY
MARKET-
ING
USED
BOOKS |
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Teaching students to doubt the author| NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, November 27, 2003 -- College students are too uncritical of what's in black and white, including textbooks, English lecturer Allyson D. Polsky wrote in the journal Pedagogy. "They have often been educationally and culturally conditioned to grant authors too much authority," Polasky wrote. "For the most part they are quite aware of their position in the knowledge hierarchy." Polsky said she identifies weaknesses in an author's arguments and data for students to encourage them "to question and work through an author's claims while developing and supporting their own viewpoints." Students need to recignize that they are active agents in education, she said. |
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Taylor & Francis buys Marcel Dekker| NEW YORK, November 26, 2003 -- The Taylor & Francis publishing group bought STM publisher Marcel Dekker of New York, which specializes in science, engineering and medicine, reference books, textbooks, encyclopedias, journals, newsletters and e-learning products. The price: $138.6 million. Marcel Dekker publishes 78 journals and about 200 new book titles per year. The backlist is more than 3,000 titles. Thesed will be folded into the Taylor & Francis investory of T&F, a specialist publisher of 880-plus journals and 2,500 new titles a year. |
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TAYLOR & FRANCIS |
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2003 e-book sales pass 1 million| NEW YORK, November 25, 2003 -- The number of e-books sold for the first three quarters of 2003 topped one million in units, for the first time in a single year, according to the Open eBook Forum. "Double digit growth shows the strength of this industry," said Nick Bogaty, the Forum's executive director. The statistics were compiled from data submitted by 30 eBook publishers and retailers, including education publishers Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill and Wiley. The total number of n ew e-titles in 2003 was 2,159. |
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Reed expects slower growth| LONDON, November 24, 2003 -- Journal and academic publisher Reed Elsevier expects 2004 earnings to slip into the high-single-digit range for 2004 because of continuing poor economic conditions, a soft education market and increased investment, financial sources said. Also,a downtown is expected in the U.S. education market. Earnings for 2003, meanwhile, are on track to be double digit. |
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REED ELSEVIER |
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Geography's future? Scholar: Get with it| EAST LANSING, Michigan, November 23, 2003 -- As anacademic discipline, geography must become more relevant to contemporary society or it will disappear as irrelevant, said geograopher Jay R. Harman in the journal the Professional Geographer. "No discipline is automatically worth society's resources just because we think so or happen to have found satisfying careers laboring within its confines," Harman said. A field must solve practical problems, asisst in redefining public policy, or deal with significant issues, he said: "Geography's long-term future... turns largely on the ability of geographers to connect their research agendas with our needs as humans." Instead, he added, geographers have been focusing on recruitingstudents to their courses and majors and pushing high-school geography "as if they were synonymous with disciplinary value." |
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Nominations open for SA2 Talby PrizeWINONA, Minnesota, November 22, 2003 -- The Society of Academic Authors' recognition for the excellence in visuals in textbooks and other learning materials is accepting nominations. Nominations for the William Henry Fox Talbot Prize, the "Talby," will accepted from SA2 members through January, the association said. The prize is named for the Talbot, a photography pioneer, who was the author of the important 1844 text The Pencil of Nature. The book is considered the single most important book of photographs ever produced. The Pencil of Nature, published in London by Longman, was the first commercially published book illustrated without the aid of an artist.
2003
WINNERS |
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| Steve Ackerman
Peter C. Jurs
John Knox
Frederic H. Martini
John W. Moore |
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| Conrad L. Stanitski
Robert B. Tallitsch
Michael J. Timmons
John Webber |
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TALBOT |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
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| Jacques Bazun (history), and Henry F. Graff (history), Columbia University, wrote the sixth edition of The Modern Researcher (Wadsworth).
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| Jean-Pierre Jeannet (business), Babson College and International Institute for Management Development, Switzerland, and H. David Hennessey (business), Babson College and Ashridge Management College, wrote the sixth edition of Global Marketing Strategies (Houghton Mifflin).
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| Philip C. Kolin (business), University of Southern Mississippi, wrote the seventh edition of Successful Writing at Work (Houghton Mifflin). |
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Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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BREATHING NEW LIFE
INTO YOUR BOOKS:
If a publisher is waffling on whether to revise your textbook, understand why and then decide what to do. Walking away may be the best answer, but there also may be proactive responses. Mary Ellen Lepionka, a veteran development edittor, suggests possibilities for revitalizing interest in your book, including self-publishing and also going with a different publisher.
HER COMPLETE COLUMN |
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LEPIONKA |
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Kaplan builds California faculity| VISTA, Californa, November 21, 2003 -- Education test company Kaplan opened a 50,000-square foot faculty for its CEI/San Marcos and Maric College/Vista campuses. The facility includes two medical laboratories, radiology and pharmacy technology labs, eight computer labs and 12 lecture halls. | | | |
Satire defended by libel suit foes| DALLAS, Texas, November 20, 2003 -- A coalition of book organizations filed a brief supporting the Dallas Observer against a libel suit by two government officials who didn't see the humor in a satirical article about a zero-tolerance school violence policy. The brief defended comic exagerration "to draw attention to the misuse of authority." Although not a litigant, former Governor George W. Bush, now president of the United States, is among those quoted in the mock article. Among signatories to the friend-of-the-court brief were media organizations, First Amendment advocates and the Association of American Publishers. |
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Two printers scoring with ed titles| NEW YORK, November 19, 2003 -- One barometer of the textbook business, the revenue that printers derive from educational publishers, is positive for the latest quarter. Printing giant Von Hoffman reported a 6 percent gain from a year earlier in its core four-color educational business. Courier, another major book printer, reported 6 percent growth in its overall educational business, with college printing stronger than el-hi. At both Von Hoffman and Courier, however, much of the educational growth was offset by declines in other genres of books. |
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Houghton: Rosier outlook ahead| BOSTON, Massachusetts, November 18, 2003 -- The new president of Houghton Mifflin, Tony Lucki, told shareholders that they can look forward to greater revenue at the Boston-based publishing house. Lucki promised "new iniatives and new products." Lucki said the company's latest quarterly results were on target, although sales were flat at $559 million The company's cost structure continues under review, he said. For the quarter, Houghton recovered from earlier operating losses that were related to the acquisition of the firm fromVivendi of France by two U.S. equity investment partnerships. |
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Wiley adds chem-engineering journals| HOBOKEN, New Jersey, November 17, 2003 -- Education and academic publisher Wiley will publish three journals of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, as well as all of the institute's publications, under a new agreement. The agreement includes AIChE Journal, Environmental Progress and Process Safety Progress. Online editions will join the Wiley InterScience package, Wiley Vice President Patrick Kelly said the partnership with the 50,000-member association of chemical engineers "advances Wiley's presence in chemistry and engineering publishing." |
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K-12 market's recent growth 5.2%| ROCKAWAY PARK, New York, November 16, 2003 -- The K-12 school market in the United States, including books, is growing at an average annial rate of 5.2 percent to an expected $12.3 billion this school year, according to Education Market Research. Data over seven years shows average annual growth of 7.9 percent for trade books, periodicals and tests, 7.4 percent for supplements, 5.9 percent for textbooks, and 3.8 percent for computer software and hardware. Bob Resnick, of EMR, predicted the textbook market will grow 4 to 6 percent in coming years, supplements 4 to 8 percent, and technology products 7 percent. |
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Washington Post corraling Kaplan stock| WASHINGTON, November 15, 2003 -- The Washington Post Company, the majority owner of education company Kaoplan, is buying back 55 percent of the shares held by the management under a stock option arrangement. The Post said it will spend $138 million for the shares. The stock option plan was implemented in 1997 as an incentive to improve Kaplan management. The buyback offer represents about 6 percent of Kaplan's total stock. | | | |
Pearson buys web-based test system| BOSTON, Massachusetts, November 14, 2003 -- Education publiusher Pearson acquired Scholar Inc., whose web-based Scholar Suite data management system allows schools and administrators at state and district levels to evaluate student performance on 140 different tests. Terms were not announced. Scholar Suite is designed to help K-12 educators meet federal mandates in the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. | | | |
Brief: Don't kill anti-Patriot Act suit| DETROIT, Michigan, November 13, 2003 -- Several free-speech associations, including the Association of American Publishers, is suppporting a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The suit, by the American Civil Liberties Union, was filed on behalf of six Detroit organizations that believe they would be likely targets for investigation under Section 215. The provision allows government agents to go into library and bookstore records secretly to see what people are reading. Responding to a U.S. Justice Department proposal to throw out the case, the publishers and other free-speech advocates said in their brief: "Given the secrecy that pervades the Patriot Act generally, and Section 215 specifically, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to safeguard core First Amendment rights unless this case proceeds to the merits." The brief asserts that the Patriot Act should be struck down because it gives the government "unchecked and unprecedented power" to obtain materials protected by the First Amendment. Signatories, besides AAP, are the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Association of University Presses, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and PEN American Center. |
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Barzun into sixth edition| NEW YORK, November 12, 2003 -- The historical methods textbook The Modern Researcher, a classic by historians Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff, was issued in its sixth edition. The book originally came out of a course that Barzun and Graff taught at Columbia University 30 years ago. The Modern Researcher has long stood as the standard-bearing book for the field, said publishing house Wadsworth in announcing the new edition. Said Graff. "We are delighted that The Modern Researcher, which first appeared when the ballpoint pen was barely established, remains as lively and important as it ever was." The book includes sections on web-based research while retaining the full coverage of traditional print-based research and clear writing that made it a classic. Case studies include Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, Abner Doubleday and the "invention" of baseball, Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address, and appearances by Gustave Flaubert, Woodrow Wilson, Edward Gibbon and Clement Clark Moore. |
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| BARZUN / GRAFF
 WADSWORTH |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
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| Henry Assael (business), New York University, wrote Consumer Behavior: A Strategic Approach (Houghton Mifflin). |
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| William Boyes (business), Arizona State University, wrote The New Managerial Economics (Houghton Mifflin). |
| Ted Sanders, president of the Education Commission of the States, was named to the Plato Learning board. |
| Frank Wong, managing director for China at Pepsico, was named president of Schoastic Asia. . |
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Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Study: Ed publishers top productivityDARIEN, Connecticut, November 12, 2003 -- In a new index of publishing productivity, the book industry newsletter Subtext lists Pearson Education at second in revenue per employee. Pearson generated $290,093 in revenue per its 12,610 employees, according to the index in Fiscal 2003. The leader by far was Reader's Digest at $526,600 -- the only company not in educational publishing to make Subtext's Top 10. The index for educational publishers, with figures rounded:Pearson Education
Houghton Mifflin
McGraw-Hill
John Wiley & Sons
WRC Media
Wolters Kluwer
Reed Elsevier
Scholastic
Thomson |
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| $ 351,900
336,600
290,100
255,000
233,900
210,400
208,600
197,900
180,400 |
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DATA BANK INDEX
Boxer, Apex in math linkup| CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, November 10, 2003 -- The BoxerMath online progrfa, for Grades 3-2, a product of Boxer Learning, io being added to the Apex Learning line in a distributuon agreement. The Box-Apex deal allow Apex to extend its offerings from elementary through high-school levels. |
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| Courier: Sales grew 0.5 percent to $202 million for the latest fiscal year, despite a 4 percent decline in the final quarter. Fiscal-year earnings grew 18 percent to $19.3 million.
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| Houghton Mifflin: Sales were flat in the third quarter at $559 million, compared to a year earlier. K-12 sales grgew 1 percent to $390.3 million. College sales grew 8 percent to $115.3 million. Trade and reference sales fell 20 percent to $38 million.
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| Scholastic: Education sales rose 19.9 percent to $105.8 million in the latest quarter, compared to a year earlier. The growth was attributed mostly to the Read 180 intervention program, early-childhood sales in Texas, and classroom library sales in New York City.
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| Von Hoffmann: Sales grew a little less than 1 percent to $108.1 million for the latest quarter, compared to a year earlier. There was a net loss of $400,000.
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Glencoe puts Passkey onlineNEW YORK, November 9, 2003 -- Educational publisher Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. isssued an online version of its computer based Passkey: A Prescriptive Lwarning System, for Grades 7-8. The program includes basic skills and test preparatio in math, reading, science, social studies and writing. GLENCOE |
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Dictionary into new printing| NEW YORK, November 9, 2003 -- The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, issued in July, was ordered into a second prining of 200,000 copies. The first printing was 500,000 in July. Still includes will be multi-media with a CD-ROM packaged inside the cover and one-year subscription to an online version, a thesaurus, an encyclopedia, and a Spanish-English dictionary. |
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Theory offered on Ashcroft discrepancy| WASHINGTON, November 8, 2003 -- Government agents may have used Patriot Act provisions to probe into library and bookstore records without the top brass in the Justice Department being informed, Congressman Butch Otter, an Idaho Republican, said. Otter made the statement in an effort to explain how Attorney General John Ashcroft could have claimed there had been no forays into book-reading and book-buying habits when there is evidence that there has been. The Patriot Act binds librarians and booksellers to secrecy when agents show up and want to go through records. A Univerity of Illinois survey of more than 1,000 libraries in 2002 found, however, that federal or local agents had gone to 85 libraries in a two-month period seeking information on patron reading habits. Also, the American Library Association has reported numerous inquiries for help from member librarians. |
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WRC poises self for new marketsNEW YORK, November 8, 2003 -- Amid stagnant sales, supplemental publisher WRC Media announced the creation of a new corporate unit, WRC Consumer and Sponsored Publishing. The new unit will allow WRC "to adapt and focus on our many brand and market opportunities, consistent with our heritage, creating new, accelerated growth in educational publishing and media," the company said. There no specifcs in the announcement. Chief executve Martin Kenny said the "uncertain environment" in the K-12 market was a factor. WRC
MEDIA |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
| Kelly Conlin, president and chief executive of International Data Group,, was named vice president of national sales at Scholastic. |
| Valerie MacLeod, senior vice president for sales at Thomson's Gale, was named president and chief executive at Scholastic. |
| Dean Nelson, interim chair at Primedia, was named chair. |
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| A. Parasuraman (business), University of Miami, Dhruv Grewal (business), Babson College, and R. Krishnan (business), California Polytechnic and State University, wrote Marketing Research (Houghton Mifflin). |
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Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Holt, Thinkwell co-branding math texts| NEW YORK, November 7, 2003 -- A co-branding agreement was announced between Holt, Rinehart & Winston and Thinkwell for multimedia calculus and precalculus textbooks for Holt's math series. The deal includes the high school books Calculus: A Multimedia Course and Precalculus: A Multimedia Course. The co-branded products, based on a CD-ROM and web hybrid, will be available in January. |
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Cliggot, Oncology Grouop journals sold| NEW YORK, November 6, 2003 -- Journal publisher SCP Communications sold its publishing subsidiaries, Cliggott Publishing and Oncology Group, to United Business Media. In the transaction are the Cliggot journal Consultant and other clinical journals edited for primary-care practitioners and medical and surgical specialists. Also going to United Business Media are the Oncology Group journals Oncology, Oncology News International and other journals for cancer physicians and other healthcare professionals who work with cancer. The sales price: $37.5 million. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
| Simon Allen, managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at McGraw-Hill Education, was named senior vice president, International English Language Publishing. |
| Carol Franco, vice president and director at Harvard Business School Press, was named editor-at-large. |
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| William M. Pride, (business), Texas A&M University, and
O. C. Ferrell (business), Colorado State University, wrote Foundations of Marketing (Houghton Mifflin). |
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Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Ebrary offers engineering database| NEW YORK, November 4, 2003 -- Web content provider ebrary will offer library subscriptioons for an interactive, full-text database of more than 4,000 chapters, articles and technical papers from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. The database, called SME Source, includes nine-volume SME Tool and Manufacturing Engineers Handbook series. New titles will be added quarterly. |
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Text, scholarly book sales slog fowardWASHINGTON, November 3, 2003 -- Sales of text and scholarly books improved modestly in September, compared to a year earlier, according to the latest data compiled by the Association of American Publishers. The biggest percentage gains in September were for the relatively small univesity press hard-bound category. Here are 2003 domestic net sales through September for genres in which academic authors do most of their work:
University press (hard)
University press (soft)
El-hi
College
Professional, scholarly | 16.7%
11.7%
2%
0.8%
-0.5% |
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Harcourt offers Stanford tests online| ORLANDO, Florida, November 2, 2003 -- Online versions of the Stanford diagnostic R\reading and math Tests were introduced by Harcourt Assessment. The tests are designed to provide teachers with feedback for placement and instructional planning. Design elements of the Stanford 10 achievement test are included from a print-version release earlier in the year. |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
| Carlos Davis, president at Santillana of Spain, was named senior vice president, Latin/Hispanic Language Publishing, at McGraw-Hill Education. |
| David Goehring, vice president and publisher at Perseus, was named vice president and director of Harvard Business School Press. Earlier he was with Addison Wesley Longman; Lytle, Brown; and Simon & Schuster. |
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| Scot Ober (business), Ball State University, wrote Fundamentals of Contemporary Business Communication (Houghton Mifflin). |
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Please
tell
us
about
your
latest
project:
EDITOR |
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Copyshops settle infringement suit| DANVERS, Massachusetts, November 1, 2003 -- Settlement of a copyright infringement case against coursepack producer Paradigm Books of Austin, Texas, and Paradigm Course Resource of Minneapolis, Minnesota, was announced by the Copyright Clearance Center. Terms were not announced. The suit accused Paradigm of "substantial unauthorized photocopying" of materials owned by CCC publisher-members HarperCollins, Wiley, Pearson, Princeton University Press and Sage. |
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