Houghton Mifflin confirmed this morning that it is being acquired by the Irish-based software publisher Riverdeep. Reports have been circulating for about a month that a purchase was in the works. Under the structure of the deal, a newly formed company, HM Rivergroup, will acquire both HM and Riverdeep, forming a new company that will be named Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. HM Rivergroup is paying $1.75 billion in cash for HM and will assume $1.61 billion in debt. The three equity groups that own HM bought the publisher from Vivendi in December 2002 for $1.7 billion.

“Riverdeep represents an excellent strategic fit with Houghton Mifflin, bringing its high-quality electronic courseware offerings to our core basal textbook and supplemental products business. This combination will differentiate us from our competitors and will enable us to participate as one of the leading players in the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. school education market,” said [Tony Lucki, chairman, president and CEO of HM]. The deal is expected to close before the end of 2006.

Link to the full Publishers Weekly article

Followup on yesterday’s post:

First-time author Iain Hollingshead scooped a dubious literary honour last night, winning the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction award for his novel Twenty Something.

Hollingshead beat established writers including Irvine Welsh, Will Self, David Mitchell and American literary maverick Thomas Pynchon to the prize, which aims to skewer “the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel.”

“Because Hollingshead is a first-time writer, we wished to discourage him from further attempts,” the judges said in a statement. “Heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon and Will Self are beyond help at this point.”

Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rock singer Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize’s youngest-ever winner.  “I hope to win it every year,” said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.

Link to the full Guardian article

Mark your calendar! The Nineteenth Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair - December 2 & 3, 2006

December 2 & 3, Independent and Small Press Book Fair hosts over 100 top-notch presses & leading authors from Nation Books, PEN American & New York’s literary & political scene, including: Pamela Aidan, Dore Ashton, Amiri Baraka, Jennifer Baumgardner, Colin Channer, T. Cooper, Michael Cunningham, Luis Francia, Steve Freeman, Matthea Harvey, Caren Lissner, Joe Meno, Jonas Mekas, Mark Crispin Miller, Eileen Myles, Greg Palast, Rachel Pine, Peter Plate, Katha Pollitt, Eyal Press, Paul Robeson, Jr., Martha Southgate, David Levi Strauss, Anne Waldman and much more. Free Admission ($1 suggested donation). For a complete list of panels and events please click here. To register as an exhibitor please click here

For more information, see the Small Press Center website. (Via Publishers Weekly)

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, manga author Tina Anderson discusses yaoi’s appeal and its future.

Tina Anderson is an ordinary American soccer mom who takes her kids to practice, empties the dishwasher from time to time for her husband—and writes boys’ love comics. Yaoi, also known as boys’ love or BL, are manga works aimed at female readers that depict love and often explicit sex between men.

PW Comics Week: What was your introduction to boys’ love?

Tina Anderson: My first time seeing it was in 1988—I was in a Jewish private school. My friend’s father had a store in New York City where he sold magazines, Asian magazines—imports as well, candies, gifts. He went on buying trips so she always brought backcool stuff. She brought back a BL doujinshi of Tsubasa—from Azaki—and it blew my mind. It really awakened something in me. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I’d never seen anything like it. Men and men and sex that didn’t compromise my gender awareness in any way. Some erotica is going to have you thinking second thoughts. If you can look at something that arouses you and you don’t have to identify with anyone—if you take the female out of the equation—it makes it more enjoyable. At least for me. Some women don’t like male-male erotica.

Link to the Publishers Weekly interview

HarperCollins is relaunching its line of large-print titles today with the debut of HarperLuxe. HC has redesigned the large-print titles to make them more appealing to readers, especially baby boomers, said publisher Liate Stehlik. “We want to move large-print titles beyond their traditional audience,” which typically has been the visually handicapped and older Americans, Stehlik said. “We want to give baby boomers and others a nicer reading experience.”The redesigned titles will have a 14-point font, slightly smaller than the 16-point used in traditional large-print books, and the leading will be the same size as traditional large print titles. The smaller font will be offset by a crisper design, Stehlik said.

Stehlik said she hopes to do about 100 titles annually under the HarperLuxe imprint, nearly triple the output in recent years. Fiction bestsellers will be a staple of the line, but the imprint will feature nonfiction titles and other works that might appeal to baby boomers, Stehlik said. “We won’t be doing Meg Cabot titles in large print,” she observed.

Read the full Publishers Weekly article here.

The judges for what used to be called the Whitbread prize have marked its shift to sponsorship by the Costa coffee chain by shifting their taste towards the thriller.Two of the four books picked for the novels shortlist released last night for the inaugural £50,000 Costa award are marketed by their publishers as “gripping”, “tremendously exciting”, “gritty” and “thrilling”.

Read the rest of the Guardian article and browse the shortlist here.

Eight authors, including Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell, best seller Mark Haddon and literary maverick Thomas Pynchon, were competing Wednesday for one of the world’s least-coveted literary prizes — the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

Now in its 14th year, the award was established by Literary Review magazine to celebrate truly cringe-worthy erotic writing.

Winners receive a “semiabstract statuette representing Sex in the 1950s” and a bottle of champagne — but only if they show up at the ceremony. In the past, most have.

“It’s a very jolly affair,” Womack said. “It’s not meant to humiliate.”

Last year’s winner was food critic and novelist Giles Coren for a memorable passage comparing a male character’s genitalia to a shower hose. In 2004, the prize went to Tom Wolfe’s novel “I Am Charlotte Simmons” for sex scenes the judges called “ghastly … inept … (and) unrealistic.”

From the Yahoo News article; Guardian Unlimited also has an article on the subject here.

Raul Guerra Garrido, known for novels set in Spain’s Basque region, has won one of the country’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Culture Ministry said Monday.

The National Prize for Spanish Letters recognizes the literary achievements of a Spanish author over the course of a career. The award, considered the most important national literary accolade after the Cervantes Prize, carries a cash stipend of more than $40,000.

Link to the Yahoo News article