Borders Update
Last week Borders presented its reorganization plan to pubIishers, who remain skeptical that the plan is enough to rsecue the company from bankruptcy. Many said they were annoyed that the chain appears to have overstated how well they are doing by combining sales figures from going-out-of-business sales and sales from ongoing stores. A hearing at U.S. District Court in New York revealed Borders owes unsecured creditors somewhere in excess of $500 million, including over $300 million in trade claims and more than $200 million for landlord rejection claims. In addition, the U.S. trustee filed a formal objection to Borders’s plan to pay executive bonuses of about $8 million, calling the payouts “premature.”

Penguin Tabs Boyle
Aileen Boyle has been hired as associate publisher at David Rosenthal’s Penguin imprint. Boyle, who will start on July 1, became a publishing consultant after leaving her post as v-p and associate publisher at Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint, which Rosenthal ran before leaving S&S.

Ingram, O’Reilly Ink Inventory Deal
Ingram Content Group has struck an agreement with O’Reilly Media to manage most of the publisher’s print inventory. O’Reilly plans to move more of its printing to POD to free cash for content acquisition and to get titles to market faster. Although most frontlist titles will continue to be printed in the traditional offset manner, replenishment editions will likely be printed POD. O’Reilly has about 200 titles in the Ingram program.

Random House Invests in Flat World
Open Source textbook publisher Flat World Knowledge has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Random House Inc. FWK gives its online textbooks away free while selling digital products based on them. The investment is separate and in addition to the $15 million in funding FWK received in January from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, a unit of Bertelsmann, RH’s parent company, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Ruckus Media To Produce Hasbro Apps
Hasbro and Ruckus Mobile Media will jointly develop original mobile interactive storybook apps based on Hasbro brands. The deal covers all digital platforms worldwide in English. The deal will launch with three titles in May—Tonka Chuck and Friends, My Little Pony, and Transformers Prime.

Gotham Group To Rep Scholastic
The Hollywood management firm Gotham Group has been signed to be the exclusive representative for Scholastic’s literary projects in the film world. Scholastic has worked on a number of film projects in-house through its Scholastic Media division, including The Golden Compass and the forthcoming The 39 Clues. Scholastic Media will retain a first-look option on Scholastic books.

MoMA Releases iPad E-book App
The Museum of Modern Art has released MoMA Books, an iPad app offering five e-books from its publications department. The app lets readers see MoMA books in their original layouts and buy them, and provides a link to the MoMA Web site and online store for other content and services.

Readum Links Readers Across Platforms
BookGlutton.com founder Travis Alber has released Readum, a new social media application that allows readers to add comments and notes to books in their Google e­-Books library and post them on Facebook for the general public or to specific groups. The project uses the ReadSocial API, an application developed by Alber that can put a layer of social commentary and connection across multiple platforms and devices. While the initial project is not monetized, Alber plans to charge her platform partners to implement and maintain Readum.

Continuum Launches E-bookstore
Continuum has launched its own e-bookstore, Continuum e-Books, and plans to have 2,000 titles in the store by the end of April. The academic publisher will set prices to the lowest print edition. The company hopes to have 3,500 titles by June, and while the store will initially be open to individuals, Continuum expects to offer packages aimed at academic institutions starting at the end of June.

Watermelon Express Inks Content Deals
Watermelon Express, a startup developer of interactive apps for mobile devices focused on test preparation, has signed content deals with McGraw-Hill Professional and Cengage Learning. The new agreement will give the company deals with seven publishers whose content is focused across 20 subjects.