Publishing News Briefs

Sandy Cochran has resigned as president and CEO of Books-A-Million to take a position with Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. She has been succeeded by Clyde Anderson, the retailer’s executive chairman of the board, who served as CEO from 1992 to 2004, when he was replaced by Cochran.

Discovery Communications has sued Amazon, accusing the online retailer's Kindle of infringing its patent on electronic book technology. The lawsuit claims that the technology related to e-book security used by Amazon in the Kindle and Kindle 2 infringes one or more of the claims on a patent that Discovery founder John Hendricks received in 2007. Discovery is seeking damages and royalties to compensate it "for any future infringement" of the patent, but is not seeking an injunction to prevent future sales of the e-reader.

Baker & Taylor is closing its Woodland, Calif., distribution center and moving its inventory into its Indianapolis facility. The California warehouse is home to Baker & Taylor Marketing Services, the wholesale club division consisting mainly of the assets acquired two years ago from AMS. B&T said it will continue to service the wholesale clubs from Indianapolis. It expects the move to be completed by May 15.

Running Press has inked a deal for two ambitious multi-platform YA series from the author/game developer who wrote the house’s 2006 bestseller, Cathy’s Book. The first series, Nanovor, will be linked to a separate handheld game—the device and the game will be sold separately—and will launch in December 2009 with Hacked. The second series, tied to an online game and packaged with a board game and game pieces, is called Lost Souls and will launch in spring 2010 with Burning Sky.

Stephen Rubin, executive v-p and publisher-at-large for Random House, has signed former president George Bush to write a memoir that will focus on Bush’s major decisions in his personal and professional life. The Decision Points will be published by Crown. Rubin acquired world, audio, electronic, and first and second serial rights from Robert Barnett of Williams & Connolly, who represented the former president. The book is scheduled for release in the fall of 2010 and will be edited by Sean Desmond, Crown senior editor.

Scribd Inc., the “social publishing site” that posts a variety of written documents (PW, Mar. 2), has signed deals with a number of publishers to post novels, chapters and other content on scribd.com. Among the publishers working with Scribd are the Random House Publishing Group, Simon & Schuster and Workman. According to the company, more than 50,000 new documents are uploaded daily using Scribd’s iPaper reader.