McGraw-Hill Companies
February 5, 2013
Standard & Poor's Rating Services (S&P), a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MHP), issued the following statement in response to the civil lawsuit filed last night by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and related state lawsuits regarding S&P ratings in 2007 on certain U.S. collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and S&P's rating models for residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS):
"The DOJ and some states have filed meritless civil lawsuits against S&P challenging some of our 2007 CDO ratings and the underlying RMBS models. Claims that we deliberately kept ratings high when we knew they should be lower are simply not true. We will vigorously defend S&P against these unwarranted claims. S&P has always been committed to serving the interests of investors and all market participants by providing independent opinions on creditworthiness based on available information. At all times, our ratings reflected our current best judgments about RMBS and the CDOs in question. Unfortunately, S&P, like everyone else, did not predict the speed and severity of the coming crisis and how credit quality would ultimately be affected.
January 30, 2013
The digitization of books has facilitated the rerelease of a spate of nonfiction works years or decades after their initial publication, and in some cases the common interpretation of their subject matter has evolved or changed significantly.
Melville House confronted this situation with its decision to reissue in December a 1964 book by A. M. Rosenthal, “Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case.” The book was originally released just months after the murder in March 1964 of 28-year-old Catherine Genovese, known as Kitty…
January 28, 2013
With a focus on “Innovative Solutions for Historic Challenges,” the Association of American Publishers 2013 General Annual Meeting will feature speakers who are addressing longstanding industry issues with new strategies that are creative, novel, sometimes provocative and always thoughtful. AAP’s annual event will be held on Thursday, February 28 at the McGraw-Hill Conference Center, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, 9:00am-1:00pm. General registration here (Media details below)
January 8, 2013
Who ever said the best way to read a textbook was from the start to finish?
At the Consumer Electronics Show Monday night McGraw-Hill Education MHP -0.51%, a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies, will demonstrate its new adaptive e-book for students dubbed “SmartBook,” which promises to “break the centuries-old tradition of books as linear experience.”
January 8, 2013
Almost 40 percent of K-12 and higher education schools are storing or throwing away textbooks that are dated, damaged or have otherwise reached the end of their productive life, leaving significant potential to increase book recycling programs across the country, according to a new study by the National Wildlife Federation.
The report concludes more education about the benefits of textbook recycling is needed to help schools identify options for recycling of unused textbooks. While the report highlights a number of pilot textbook recycling programs being conducted by higher education institutions such as the University of Wyoming, Columbia College, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, there are few K-12 school districts participating in similar efforts.
December 4, 2012
[PRESS RELEASE] NASHVILLE, TN Vital Source Technologies, Inc., Ingram Content Group's leading e-textbook solution for publishers, academic institutions, and students, today announced that sixty new publishers have added more than 35,000 new digital textbooks and online course materials to its VitalSource Bookshelf® platform. "The students of today are using technology to their advantage, and we are experiencing significant growth in the number of publisher, institutional, and reseller customers using the VitalSource Bookshelf platform," said Kent Freeman, Chief Operating Officer, Vital Source Technologies, Inc. "We will continue to nurture our publisher relationships and expand and diversify our title selection to provide the digital content that's in demand by students and educators worldwide."
October 23, 2012
Impelsys, a global leader in providing electronic content delivery solutions, is powering the innovative new Bowker(R) "Book as an Android App," with its award-winning iPublishCentral software platform.
"Book as an Android App" allows authors and small publishers to use Bowker's popular
to create Android-compatible eBook apps from any PDF or ePub document, opening new sales channels such as Google Play and the Amazon App Store.
"We've partnered with Bowker to make available to their customers a simple option for creating their own eBook app, which helps authors and small publishers better market their titles to potential readers," said Sameer Shariff, founder and CEO of Impelsys.
October 8, 2012
On Thursday, Google and five publishers settled a long-standing legal battle over whether scanning university-library books and using snippets in search results can be done without the permission of copyright holders. While the agreement lets Google continue its work, both sides deliberately avoided tackling the issue at the heart of the conflict: What does fair use mean in the digital age?
Fair Use an exception to the copyright law that gives authors exclusive rights over their creative works. In passing the limitation, Congress tried to balance the rights of copyright holders with the need of academia
October 8, 2012
Google’s deal to settle a seven-year conflict with five major publishers over the search giant’s book-scanning initiative is a milestone in the publishing industry’s grinding transition from print books to e-books. The pact, struck by Google and the Association of American Publishers (AAP), does not address the underlying question of whether Google violated copyright law by scanning millions of books over the last several years. Both sides, apparently weary of legal wrangling, have agreed to disagree on that point. The deal also doesn’t affect an ongoing lawsuit filed against Google by the Authors Guild, which represents thousands of authors.
September 23, 2012
Are students getting gouged? The outcry from a group of first-year students forced to buy an expensive art history book that has no art in it has focused attention on an issue as perennial and seemingly as intractable as fall back-to-school jitters: the cost of college and university textbooks.
Most everyone agrees textbooks can be a significant financial burden for students and their parents but there’s less agreement on what can or should be done to bring the price down.
