New York Times Archives

Publishers win a bout in eBook Price Fight

With the impending arrival of digital books on the Apple iPad and feverish negotiations with Amazon.com over e-book prices, publishers have managed to take some control–at least temporarily–of how much consumers pay for their content, reports the New York Times. Now, as publishers enter discussions with the Web giant Google about its plan to sell digital versions of new books direct to consumers, they have a little more leverage than just a few weeks ago–at least when it comes to determining how Google will pay publishers for those e-books and how much consumers will pay for them.

Google has been talking about entering the direct eBook market, through a program it calls Google Editions, for nearly a year. But in early discussions with publishers, Google had proposed giving them a 63 percent cut of the suggested retail price, and allowing consumers to print copies of the digital books and cut and paste segments. After Apple unveiled the iPad last month, publishers indicated that Apple would give them 70 percent of the consumer price, which publishers would set.

According to several publishers who have been talking to Google, the book companies had balked at what they saw as Google’s less generous terms, and basically viewed printing and cut-and-paste as deal breakers……Read More

Nooks Will Be Available at Barnes & Noble Stores Beginning Wednesday

Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest book-selling chain, said that its Nook electronic reading device would be available for purchase in its stores starting Wednesday, reports The New York Times.

The Nook, which has been selling through Barnes & Noble’s Web site since late November, has only been seen in demonstration form in bookstores. Analysts had originally said that one of Barnes & Noble’s competitive advantages against Amazon.com’s Kindle device was that the bookstore had physical outlets through which it could sell the Nook.

Barnes & Noble sold out of its initial supply of Nooks before the holiday season, citing higher than expected demand.…Read More

Electronic books now come in snack sizes

Who has time to read a whole book anymore? That’s the thinking behind a new publishing venture by the FT Press, a unit of Pearson, which has introduced two series of short, digital-only titles for professionals who want quick snippets of advice for $2.99 or less, reports the New York Times. The publisher, through a new imprint named FT Press Delivers, has quietly begun selling what it is calling Elements and Shorts through the Kindle electronic bookstore on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore. The Elements, which the publisher has priced at $1.99, are stripped-down, 1,000- to 2,000-word versions of already-published books, while the Shorts are newly written essays of about 5,000 words, priced at $2.99. Titles include “Reengineering the Rules of Management,” by James Champy, the co-author, with Michael Hammer, of “Reengineering the Corporation,” one of the biggest business best sellers of the 1990s, and “Keeping It Honest, From Kitchen to Coca-Cola,” by Seth Goldman, co-founder and chief of Honest Tea, the maker of organic drinks. “It’s a good idea to be able to provide people with shorter, more expedient, more time-sensitive” content, said Timothy C. Moore, publisher of the FT Press…

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A federal effort to push junk food out of schools

The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries, and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years, reports the New York Times. In legislation soon to be introduced, candy and sugary beverages would be banned and many schools would be required to offer more nutritious fare. To that end, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will deliver a speech Feb. 8 at the National Press Club in which he will insist, according to excerpts provided to the Times, that any vending machines that remain in schools be “filled with nutritious offerings to make the healthy choice the easy choice for our nation’s children.” But Republican support for the initiative is far from certain, with many Republicans saying they will wait to see legislation before signaling whether they would put aside long-held views that local school boards should control food offerings…

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Industry lobbying imperils overhaul of student loans

Four months ago, it appeared all but certain that the White House and Democrats in Congress would succeed in overhauling the student loan business and ending government subsidies to private lenders. But an aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation’s biggest lenders has now put one of President Obama’s signature plans in peril, reports the New York Times, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings, and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business. Obama called the idea a “no-brainer” last fall, predicting it would take billions of dollars from the profits of private lenders and give it directly to students, and many colleges already have moved to get loans directly from the federal government in anticipation of the next move by Congress. But House and Senate aides say that the administration’s plan faces a far tougher fight than it did last fall, when the House passed its version of the bill. The fierce attacks from the lending industry, the Massachusetts election that cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and the fight over a health-care bill have all damaged the chances for the student loan measure, said the aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But they said the administration had recognized the threat and was beginning to push back in an effort to get the plan approved…

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Journal retracts 1998 paper linking autism to MMR vaccine

A prominent British medical journal on Feb. 2 retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline in vaccinations after the paper’s lead author suggested that vaccines could cause autism, reports the New York Times. The retraction by The Lancet is part of a reassessment that has lasted for years of the scientific methods and financial conflicts of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who contended that his research showed the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine might be unsafe. But the retraction might do little to tarnish Dr. Wakefield’s reputation among parents’ groups in the United States. Despite a wealth of scientific studies that have failed to find any link between vaccines and autism, many parents fervently believe that their children’s mental problems resulted from vaccinations. Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the retraction of Dr. Wakefield’s study “significant.” “It builds on the overwhelming body of research by the world’s leading scientists that concludes there is no link between MMR vaccine and autism,” Skinner said…

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Obama to seek sweeping change in NCLB rewrite

The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law’s 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to proficiency, reports the New York Times. Educators who have been briefed by administration officials said the proposals would eliminate or rework many of the provisions that teachers’ unions and other education groups have found most objectionable. Yet the administration is not planning to abandon the law’s commitments to closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and to encouraging teacher quality. The White House reportedly wants to change federal financing formulas so that a portion of the money is awarded based on academic progress, rather than by formulas that apportion money to districts according to their numbers of students, especially poor students. The current system issues the equivalent of a pass-fail report card for every school each year—an evaluation that administration officials say fails to differentiate among chaotic schools in chronic failure, schools that are helping low-scoring students improve, and high-performing suburban schools that nonetheless appear to be neglecting some low-scoring students. Instead, under the administration’s proposals, a new accountability system would divide schools into more categories, offering recognition to those that are succeeding and providing large new amounts of money to help improve or close failing schools…

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Type A-plus students chafe at grade deflation

When Princeton University set out six years ago to corral galloping grade inflation by putting a lid on A’s, many in academia lauded the school for taking a stand on a national problem and predicted that others would follow. But the idea never took hold beyond Princeton’s walls, and so its bold vision is now running into fierce resistance from the school’s Type A-plus student body, reports the New York Times. With the job market not what it once was, even for Ivy Leaguers, Princetonians are complaining that the campaign against bulked-up GPAs might be coming at their expense. “The nightmare scenario, if you will, is that you apply with a 3.5 from Princeton and someone just as smart as you applies with a 3.8 from Yale,” said Daniel E. Rauch, a senior from Millburn, N.J. The percentage of Princeton grades in the A range dipped below 40 percent last year, down from nearly 50 percent when the policy was adopted in 2004. The class of 2009 had a mean grade-point average of 3.39, compared with 3.46 for the class of 2003. In a survey last year by the undergraduate student government, 32 percent of students cited the grading policy as the top source of unhappiness (compared with 25 percent for lack of sleep)…

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