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News Shorts Staff -- 10/2/00 *Note: Images throughout taken at NYIBC 2000 Wertheimer to Head Rodale Book Group | Stanford University Press Adds Business Line Nine Writers Win Lannan Awards | Vellios Succeeds Spurgeon at Zany Fatbrain, netLibrary Ink Partnership | Informata in Pacts with ibooks.com, DigitalOwl Total Sports Management Buyout Completed | Versaware Inks Pacts With NBCi, ABC-CLIO Corus Buys Nelvana For $540 Million Wertheimer to Head Rodale Book GroupAs part of the restructuring of Rodale Inc., Neil Wertheimer has been named v-p, publisher, of the newly formed Rodale Books Group. Wertheimer had been v-p, publisher for the company's Active Living
The Rodale Books Group is one of five content groups created under the restructuring initiated by company president Steve Murphy. The other groups are Women's Health, Men's Health, Organic Living and Sports and Fitness. In tandem with the restructuring, Murphy named a number of new executives to Rodale's upper management. Claudia Morf, formerly corporate treasurer at CBS/Westinghouse, has been appointed chief financial officer, while Michael Carroll has been appointed chief administrative officer. He had been v-p of human resources and communications at Disney Publishing Worldwide. Murphy has also established a new corporate strategy and development group that will be headed by Alan Klavans, a former Simon & Schuster executive who has run a consulting and investment banking firm since 1990. --Staff Expanding Stanford University Press Adds Business LineStanford University Press has launched a new business book imprint which plans to publish between 10 to 20 titles annually in both hardcover and trade paperback formats. Stanford, which sits in the heart of Silicon Valley and whose alumni have founded a number of technology companies, will focus its first list on events and issues related to new technology. The press released its first title, Understanding Silicon Valley by Martin Kenney, last month with a first printing of 3,000 copies in trade paperback and 600 in hardcover. Its second title, The Silicon Valley Edge,edited by Chong-Moon Lee et al., will be published in November with a first run of 9,000 trade paperback copies and 1,000 hardcovers. Also set for release in November is Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, C volution, and theOrigins of Personal Computing by Thierry Bardini. Stanford's last title in its first list will be From Silicon Valley to Singapore by David McKendrick et al., set for a December release. Bill Hicks, who recently joined Stanford University Press as senior acquisitions editor, will oversee the business book program. Future titles will cover business matters beyond the Valley and include The Human Organization of Time and Advances in Organizational Justice. The business titles will be distributed to the trade by the press's distributor, Cambridge University Press. --Staff Prizes Nine Writers Win Lannan Awards The Lannan Foundation has awarded a total of $700,000 to the nine writers selected to receive the annual Lannan Literary Awards. P t, novelist and nonfiction writer Evan S. Connell was awarded the foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award of $100,000. Connell's works include the novels Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, the nonfiction Son of the Morning Star and the epic p m Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel. The eight other winners each received individual awards of more than $72,000; they are p ts Herbert Morris and Jay Wright; fiction writers Robert Coover, David Malouf, Cynthia Ozick and Leslie Marmon Silko; and nonfiction authors Bill McKibben and Carl Safina. Over the last 12 years, the Lannan Foundation (www.lannan.org) has awarded more than $5.7 million to 105 writers "who show potential for outstanding future work." --Staff Personnel Vellios Succeeds Spurgeon at ZanyAfter a disappointing second quarter in which losses increased and comparable store sales fell by 9% (News, Sept. 11), Zany Brainy chairman and CEO Keith Spurgeon resigned last month and was replaced by company president Thomas Vellios, who was named acting CEO. Vellios said his immediate goal is to focus on delivering a strong holiday fourth quarter. Zany Brainy's bottom line has been hurt by losses incurred by its Web site, ZanyBrainy.com. Under Zany Brainy's agreement with its partner in the online venture, Online Retail Partners, ORP agreed to assume all losses up to its capital investment of about $20 million. As of July 29, the losses at ZanyBrainy.com exceed the agreed-upon total, and Zany Brainy recorded a pretax loss of $5.8 million in the second quarter. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Zany Brainy said it expects to incur losses from the site through the remainder of fiscal 2001. Through the end of July, Zany Brainy's total investment in the site was $11.9 million. --Staff Deals Fatbrain, netLibrary Ink PartnershipLess than a week after announcing it will be bought by Barnesandnoble.com, Fatbrain.com has partnered with netLibrary to combine e-book and bound-book sales to corporations. The agreement is a reciprocal arrangement that calls for Fatbrain to pass corporate sales leads on to netLibrary, and vice versa. Brian Bell, spokesperson for netLibrary, told PW, "So far, we've been very active in selling to libraries. Now we're most interested in selling virtual libraries to corporations. Working with Fatbrain gives us the opportunity to do just that." --Edward Nawotka E-Publishing Informata in Pacts with ibooks.com, DigitalOwlInformata.com, Baker & Taylor's business-to-business e-commerce venture, has signed agreements with
Ibooks.com's online collection of 1,400 IT reference books will form the core of Informata's eBook Library service, scheduled to launch in January 2001. The company will use DigitalOwl's secure digital packaging, marketing and syndication software to provide library patrons with the opportunity to search, access and use its collections online as well as to download books for viewing on Palm and other PDA devices. Robin Gridley, Informata's marketing director, said the agreements with ibooks.com and DigitalOwl "puts an infrastructure in place that will make it easier to develop other partnerships." B&T is the company's first wholesaler partner, and Gridley said the company hopes to sign agreements with other wholesalers as well. --Jim Milliot Acquisition Total Sports Management Buyout CompletedExecutives at Total Sports Publishing Inc. have completed a management buyout of the book publisher from its parent company, Total Sports Inc., an online sports media company based in Raleigh, N.C. Total Sports sold its book unit in order to focus its efforts on developing its B2B Internet business. John Thorn, publisher of TSP, led the management buyout and will remain publisher of the new entity, which will be located in Kingston, N.Y. The acquisition included approximately 40 backlist titles plus author contracts and the company database. In addition, TSP will continue its relationship with Sports Illustrated, publishing new books under the Total/Sports Illustrated and Total/Sports Illustrated Classics imprints. TSP will also continue to publish the official encyclopedias for the National Football League (Total Football), Major League Baseball (Total Baseball) and the National Hockey League (Total Hockey). Publishers Group West remains TSP's distributor. "It's pretty much business as usual," TSP spokesperson Wes Seeley said. The company will publish 12 titles this fall led by The Life of Reilly by SI senior writer Rick Reilly and The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing by Ferdie Pacheco. TSP's database will also be used to expand its efforts in digital publishing. "We will be very active in the emerging digital publishing arena," said Thorn. --Jim Milliot Versaware Inks Pacts With NBCi, ABC-CLIOE-book and digital publishing services provider Versaware announced new electronic publishing agreements with entertainment Web portal NBC Internet and reference-book publisher ABC-CLIO. Versaware and NBCi will create a co-branded library of free and for-pay Versaware e-books on NBCi's newly revamped portal. The new portal will integrate NBCi Web entertainment subsidiaries Xoom.com and Snap. com into the NBCi site and provide access to thousands of e-books with Versaware's proprietary technology. Registered NBCi members will receive a free, customizable My Library account that will provide access to a free electronic reference center (including the online multimedia Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, the Random House Webster's Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, daily news updates and more) and a wide variety of free and for-pay e-books. Versaware e-books offer many search and annotation functions. The e-books can be stored and viewed online or downloaded to a user's hard drive to be read offline. Edmond Sanctis, president and COO of NBCi, said
Beginning in December, reference publisher ABC-CLIO (www.abc-clio.com) will use Versaware to offer in simultaneous print and online editions two new reference titles, the Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War and the Encyclopedia of the American Civil War. The reference publisher will also present a selection of reference titles from the ABC-CLIO backlist in online, multimedia editions. Vince Duggan, v-p of sales and marketing at ABC-CLIO, said the deal with Versaware shows how "the Web and other digital formats are fundamentally changing the way people access and understand information." --Calvin Reid Canadian Publishing Corus Buys Nelvana For $540 Million In order to position itself for further international growth, Corus Entertainment, a Canadian radio and television company, acquired Toronto-based Nelvana Limited in a stock and cash deal that values the children's entertainment company at $540 million (US$362 million). The deal is slated to close in November. Nelvana, famous for its television and feature film properties such as Franklin, Little Bear, Babar and Pippi Longstocking, acquired children's publisher Klutz this spring for US$74 million in a bid to become a worldwide children's entertainment company (News, Apr. 17). According to Nelvana co-CEO Michael Hirsh, Nelvana's relationship with Corus remains consistent with that goal. "In joining forces with Corus, Nelvana has cemented a strategic alliance with one of Canada's most important and successful channel owners and access to greater capital to build the world's premiere independent children's entertainment company," said Hirsh. He and Patrick Loubert will remain co-chief executive officers of Nelvana, and Clive Smith will remain senior executive vice-president. In addition to Klutz, Nelvana's properties include Kids Can Press, making it the leading children's publisher in Canada. --Leah Eichler | ||||
News Shorts
Oct 02, 2000
A version of this article appeared in the 10/02/2000 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline:
