Borders Cuts 274; Sells International

As part of its turnaround effort, Borders eliminated 274 positions last week. The majority of the cuts came in its Ann Arbor, Mich., headquarters, where 156 jobs were eliminated. An additional 118 spots were eliminated in Borders’s distribution centers, field marketing organization and corporate sales division. The cuts represented about 20% of Borders’s corporate positions, but only 1% of its total workforce.

Borders also raised some much-needed cash last week, reaching an agreement to sell the 30 stores in its Australian/New Zealand/Singapore group to A&R Whitcoulls. Earlier this year, talks between the two companies broke off at the last minute. Under the new agreement, Borders will receive $90 million upon the closing of the transaction—expected this week—and another $14 million if certain performance targets are met.

SAGE Buys CQ Press

Professional and educational publisher SAGE has acquired CQ Press from Congressional Quarterly Inc. CQ Press publishes about 100 titles annually for the library, education and professional markets and will remain a separate division under the direction of current publisher John Jenkins, who has also been named president.

Farley Stays At Holt

Former Harcourt Trade publisher Dan Farley has been named to run Henry Holt & Company. Farley has been heading Holt in an interim capacity since February, when he took over for John Sterling, who moved into a corporate role with Macmillan. Farley will divide his time between his home in California and Holt’s New York office.

HMH Completes College Sale

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has completed the sale of its college division to Cengage Learning for $750 million. The sale was announced in December and has cleared all regulatory hurdles.

Ingram Consolidates Lightning and Book Group

Ingram is bringing Lightning Source and its book group under one umbrella. The new division, Ingram Lightning Group, will be overseen by David “Skip” Prichard, who was named president and CEO of Ingram Book Group in January. As part of the realignment, Kirby Best’s position, president and CEO of Lightning Source, has been eliminated. David Taylor has been bumped up to head Lightning Source within the newly formed division—he’s been promoted to president of Lightning Source. Taylor was v-p of global sales and managing director at Lightning and managing director of Lightning UK.

ESPN Partners with Ballantine

ESPN Books, which has gone through a number of expansions and publishing partners over the years, has struck a deal with Ballantine to copublish 10 to 12 titles a year. First book will be Tom Coughlin’s A Team to Believe In. Under the agreement, ESPN still has the ability to do its own books, with Random House acting as the distributor. In addition, some titles previously published by ESPN will be distributed by RH.

Obituary: Christina Figel, 40

Christina Figel, director of diversified sales for Random House’s special markets group, died June 2 after a two-year battle with breast cancer. She was 40. Figel joined Bantam Doubleday Dell in 1997 to manage its then direct-marketing sales channel. In 2003 she took over Random House’s diversified channel, selling to all of the company’s display-marketer and direct-seller accounts. “It was an honor to be her colleague,” Andrew Stanley, Random’s special market’s head, wrote in a staff memo.