TODAY'S NEWS

Quebecor Reorganization Plan Approved; New Directors Announced
By Jim Milliot
Creditors of Quebecor in both the U.S. and Canada have approved the printing giant’s reorganization plan, clearing the way for the company to emerge from bankruptcy in mid-July. The company reported that 86% of creditors in the U.S. approved the plan while 96% of Canadian creditors supported the plan. A joint confirmation hearing on the U.S. plan and the Canadian plan is scheduled for June 30 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Barring any last minute issues, Quebecor anticipates consummating both plans next month. Read on »

Among Calls for Collaboration, a Plea to Reinvent University Presses
by Sarah Gold
Collaboration and cooperation were the bywords at this year’s annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses in Philadelphia, June 18-21, while a call for radical change of a “broken” business model came from the AAUP’s outgoing president, Alex Holzman, who urged presses to embrace a comprehensive e-book publishing program.

Numerous sessions with titles such as “Library-Press Cooperation,” “University and Press Collaborations” and “The Mellon Collaborative Publishing Grants: Reports from the Presses,” underscored Holzman’s point that today’s university press business model—plagued by declining monograph sales, heavy returns and declining subsidies from parent institutions—is in need of serious revisions, which speakers saw as involving closer ties with other academic departments and institutes within the parent institution. Read on »

Chicago School Keeps Alexie Novel on Summer Reading List
By Claire Kirch
Despite public calls to do so from a group of parents, Sherman Alexie’s critically-acclaimed YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little Brown, 2007) will not be pulled as required summer reading for 400 incoming freshmen students at Antioch (Ill.) Community High School, located in a predominantly lower-middle-class Chicago suburb halfway between the Windy City and Milwaukee. In a closed meeting last night, school district 117 superintendent Jay Sabatino and the seven-member school board voiced their strong support for the book as an educational tool that engages young readers, but also decided to write a letter to all parents of incoming students, addressing any concerns they might have. An alternate required reading title also is being offered, upon request: Down River (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2007) by John Hart, a novel given a starred review by Publishers Weekly about a young man who returns to the hometown he was run out of five years previously after being acquitted of a murder charge. Read on »

ScrollMotion in Deal with LibreDigital
By Lynn Andriani
iPhone software developer ScrollMotion is partnering with dozens of book, magazine and newspaper publishers to create new digital content for the iPhone. Central to the announcement is an agreement with LibreDigital, which already handles Web applications for many major publishers. ScrollMotion will make LibreDigital’s entire library of books, newspapers and magazines from publishers and distributors including HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Baker & Taylor and John Wiley available on the iPhone. ScrollMotion is also entering into individual agreements to create “iPhone-friendly content” for houses including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, S&S, Random House, Tribune Company and Wiley. Read on »

Random House Audio Targets Florida Drivers
By Lynn Andriani
Random House Audio/Listening Library is on a mission to raise awareness of audiobooks around Orlando, Fla. Its Listen Up, Florida! regional summer marketing campaign encourages people to listen to audiobooks during their summer vacation drives. Focused in the Orlando Metro area, it began on Memorial Day and will run until Labor Day. The campaign includes ads on billboards along Interstate 4 in Orlando, local radio spots, and print ads in the Orlando Sentinel, Winter Haven News Chief and New York Times Book Review. Read on »

Blogs

MORE STORIES

Comings and Goings
If you've been laid off recently, left your job or landed a new position and would like to pass along your contact information to others in the business, send details to pwletters@reedbusiness.com. Please include your full name and former title/company.

Debra Mostow, former Publisher for Piggy Toes Press/Intervisual Books, is working as an editor-at-large and children's entertainment consultant. She can be reached at Debramzak@gmail.com.

Nicole Fortier, formerly with the Perseus Books Group, can be reached at 508-679-6841 or nfortier@verizonmail.com.

You can find a full list of all those who have appeared in Comings and Goings here.

The PW Morning Report
Tools of Change to Frankfurt; Apple Sells One Million iPhones Since Saturday; “Twitterature”; FTC to Crack Down on Bloggers for Taking Swag. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Catastrophe; Buzz Aldrin; Sandra Day O’Connor
This morning, the Today show hosted Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, whose Catastrophe (Harper, 978-0061771040, $26.99; HarperAudio CD, $29.99) pubs today. Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Hangin' at Dollywood
Dolly Parton recently introduced, on the opening of KidsFest at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., a new musical based on author Anna Dewdney’s Llama Llama Red Pajama and Llama Llama Mad at Mama (both Viking titles), which will run at the park’s Imagination Playhouse throughout the summer. Parton also read from her new children’s book, I Am a Rainbow (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). Pictured here (l. to r.) are Sara Zick, of Viking; Parton; and Dewdney. Submit your pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

PW VIRTUAL EDITION

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