YEAR IN REVIEW 1996: MEDIA-AND-PUBLISHING

BOOK PUBLISHING The European book industry continued to suffer a period of considerable uncertainty in 1995. In the U.K. a variety of strategic responses were adopted in response to sluggish sales, the breakdown of the Net Book Agreement (NBA), rapidly increasing paper prices, and bad debts arising from the Dillons book chain receivership. In July Reed Elsevier offered for sale its consumer book publishing business, including the Hamlyn, Octopus, and Heinemann imprints. This reflected a decision to concentrate on the relatively profitable specialist imprints such as Butterworth and on-line information services. By contrast, Hodder Headline announced its intention to expand the number of titles published in 1995 by 55%, targeting nontraditional outlets such as supermarkets and gasoline (petrol) stations. Dorling Kindersley successfully built up its CD-ROM business, and HarperCollins restructured into two superdivisions while shedding roughly 100 staff members. Layoffs also were announced at Penguin. The independent publishing sector in the U.K. was again reduced in size. The largest independent, Macmillan, agreed in April to sell 65% of the company to Holtzbrinck, one of Germany's biggest publishing groups, and in July Andr Deutsch was bought by the VCI video group. The longer-term prospects for reference books and other traditional strengths of established imprints appeared to be in question as multimedia versions took their place. In 1995 the trend toward electronic publishing was apparent everywhere, with Bonnier of Sweden, for example, setting up a multimedia operation. Even the print version novel was under threat from new technology; Penguin published its first electronic version in November. The cult of the author began to bridge the divide between "literary" and "popular" fiction. The payment of a $750,000 advance to Martin Amis appeared to indicate a fresh impetus to market "highbrow" authors in a manner little seen since the days of Charles Dickens. A further sign of the times was the decision by the Booker Prize-nominated author Timothy Mo to publish his new novel on his own. Access to Dickens through libraries or cheap paperback reprints remained secure, but the same could no longer be said of H.G. Wells or George Orwell. The combination of rising paper prices and the extension of copyright protection in the European Union from 50 to 70 years looked certain to spell the end of the cheap paperback classic, of which Wordsworth Editions, which pioneered the concept in the U.K., had sold 30 million since 1992. Needless to say, the U.K. NBA remained constantly in the news. With investigations under way by the European Commission and the U.K. Restrictive Practices Court, Hodder Headline chose in May to discount John Le Carr's new hardback novel, Our Game. Stocked by many supermarket chains at discounts of up to 50% off the list price, the book sold well enough to induce Hodder to follow up with a new Rosamunde Pilcher novel. Hodder's determination to move to the top of the publishing industry was also reflected in its purchase of Moa Beckett of New Zealand in January for $5.3 million. (PETER J. CURWEN) In June 1994 the publishing community had been shocked by the ouster of Richard E. Snyder, Simon & Schuster's legendary chief executive officer, by Viacom, the company that took over Simon & Schuster's parent company, Paramount Communications, Inc. In September 1995 Snyder sought to make a comeback by acquiring a majority interest in Western Publishing, the largest children's book publisher in the U.S. The collapse of the deal in October, combined with Western's poor earnings performance, caused the company's share price to fall precipitously. The sensational murder trial of O.J. Simpson, the former football star who was accused of stabbing to death his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, ended with Simpson's controversial acquittal in October. The intense scrutiny propelled a number of titles. Nicole Simpson's friend Faye Resnick started the frenzy off with Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted (Dove Books), which became a national best-seller. Then Simpson himself wrote (with Larry Schiller) from his cell I Want to Tell You (Little, Brown), which also was a best-seller, though his second book, with the working title Now I Can Tell You, was unable to find a buyer even after the asking price of $6 million reportedly had been reduced by half. Raging Heart: The Intimate Story of the Tragic Marriage of O.J. and Nicole Brown Simpson by Sheila Weller (Pocket Books) was published at the same time in January and rose up the best-seller lists. Barbara Cochran Berry, the ex-wife of Simpson's legal team leader, Johnnie Cochran, weighed in with Life After Johnnie Cochran: Why I Left the Sweetest-Talking, Most Successful Black Lawyer in L.A. (Basic), which accused him of physical abuse. Still to come were books on the case by noted authors who were under contract with various houses: Dominick Dunne (Crown), Joseph Bosco (Morrow), Joe McGinniss (Crown), and Jeffrey Toobin (Random House). Los Angeles prosecutor Marcia Clark sold world rights to her memoir to Viking for $4.2 million, while HarperCollins bought the memoir of Clark's legal partner Christopher Darden for $1.3 million. Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (see BIOGRAPHIES) also grabbed a few headlines when, in January, he signed with HarperCollins to write two books for $4.5 million. Following a storm of criticism surrounding speculation that HarperCollins' owner, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, was angling for political favours, Gingrich refused the advance, opting instead for $1 against royalties. The House Ethics Committee began looking into the matter. The first book, To Renew America, was expected to net Gingrich $1.4 million. Gingrich raised a storm again when he was asked to speak at the American Booksellers Association (ABA) convention in June. Members of the ABA events committee sent a letter of protest to ABA management over the selection. During Gingrich's speech at the convention, a bookseller was arrested for distributing leaflets, but criminal charges against her were later dropped. In 1994 the ABA had filed an antitrust suit against five publishers, claiming they had offered illegal "secret" deals, prices, and promotions to various chain bookstores and discount outlets. A week before the suit was to be heard in a New York court, the ABA settled with one of the publishers charged, Hugh Lauter Levin. While denying wrongdoing, Levin agreed to abide by the Robinson-Patman Act in terms of its pricing. Houghton Mifflin settled with the ABA in late October, agreeing to pay $270,000 and revise its discount and display allowance structure. Penguin USA later settled on similar terms, but the remaining cases were still in litigation. In another major lawsuit the seven authors of the textbook Merrill Mathematics won a $3.2 million suit against a variety of publishers, including Macmillan and Macmillan/McGraw-Hill; it was thought to be one of the largest settlements ever won by authors in a suit against a publisher. (Because of several mergers, Macmillan, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, Merrill, and Bell & Howell were all named in the suit.) The conflict arose when Macmillan decided not to publish the third edition of the book and refused to return the manuscript to the authors, which thus prevented them from finding another publisher. In addition, the company held that the noncompetition clause in their contracts prohibited them from working on similar projects with other publishers. The authors then filed a lawsuit charging breach of contract and alleging that the publishing companies refused to publish the third edition in order to eliminate market competition. An out-of-court settlement was reached with Maxwell Proceeds Trust, which handled monies resulting from sales of Maxwell companies, including Macmillan. The authors also were given back their publishing rights and production materials. Setting off fears for the survival of the Canadian book trade industry, Borders, the U.S. bookstore chain, announced it would open its first Canadian superstore in Toronto in the spring of 1996. The 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to Carol Shields, author of The Stone Diaries (Viking). (See BIOGRAPHIES.) Jonathan Weiner won for nonfiction for The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (Knopf). Fiction best-sellers for 1994, as reported by Publishers Weekly, were The Chamber by John Grisham (3,189,893), Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy (2,302,529), and The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (2,092,526). The nonfiction best-sellers were In the Kitchen with Rosie by Rosie Daley (5,487,369), Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray (1,853,000), and Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II (1,625,883). Total book sales in the U.S. rose more than 4% in 1994 to $18.8 billion. The National Book Award for fiction went to Philip Roth for Sabbath's Theater, for nonfiction to Tina Rosenberg for The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism, and for poetry to Stanley Kunitz for Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected. David McCullough received the 1995 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. (BETH S. LEVINE) See also Literature. This updates the article publishing. MAGAZINES There was only limited growth in new magazines in 1995, with launches generally aimed at exploiting existing gaps. Wired, the U.S computer magazine, had a troubled launch in the U.K. and had to revise its format and marketing. The American magazine Men's Health, owned by Rodale, launched a customized U.K. edition, while the U.K. computer magazine company Dennis Publishing launched Maxim, also aimed at mainstream male readers. Rather than risking start-ups, large publishers such as Cond Nast sought new business by taking on contract publishing. Cond Nast set up a U.K. on-line editorial team to establish computerized versions of its products. National Magazines, the U.K. arm of the Hearst Corp., changed the editors of five of its six titles. (MAGGIE BROWN) Americans traveling abroad were more likely to find their favourite magazines on a European newsstand. Companies like Reader's Digest, Cond Nast, Playboy, and Hearst published their titles in more than 80 countries and more than a dozen languages. Most of the articles were generated by local editorial staffs, with translations of material that had appeared in the original American editions. Many U.S. newsstand magazines, including Time and Newsweek, offered both on-line and print copies in 1995. Less popular magazines, from esoteric underground titles to more than 300 scholarly and literary journals, were available only as computer journals. More items became available on the Internet, and some libraries were checking in e-journals just as they did printed journals. Publishers saw this as the beginning of what would develop into centralized information sources for periodicals. Several publishers, librarians, and editors warned, however, that the rush to go on-line often overlooked the need for careful planning for the new format. Others expressed fears that the new technologies threatened the future of all magazines, on- or off-line. There might be, such critics said, so much information available that the traditional magazine would be crowded out altogether. According to the Faxon Co., the prices for U.S. magazines would rise by about 15% in 1995-96. By mid-1995 the average annual price of a physics journal was $1,126, contrasted with an average price of $35.58 for a popular newsstand magazine. The hikes were caused by increases in the costs of paper and postage and by a shaky U.S. dollar. Faced with a 12% increase in postal rates as well as close to a 40% jump in paper prices, Hearst decided to control its costs by producing fewer copies, thereby reducing the number of readers; some 15 titles, from Good Housekeeping to Cosmopolitan, had their circulation cut. Other publishers were expected to follow the Hearst lead. Two new political magazines appeared in the U.S. in 1995: The Weekly Standard, a conservative journal edited by William Kristol and backed by Rupert Murdoch, and the liberal entertainment-oriented George, edited by John F. Kennedy, Jr., and supported by the Paris conglomerate Hachette. With all of the money behind them, both were expected at least to last out 1996. Among other new titles were Double Take, a documentary magazine with photographs introduced by the child psychiatrist Robert Coles; Civilization, a bimonthly from the Library of Congress that had a multicultural approach; and Legacy, an Afro-American history magazine published by American Heritage. The highest honours in the 1995 National Magazine Awards went to GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly) for special interest and features. The general excellence award for magazines with a circulation of more than one million went to Entertainment Weekly, followed by The New Yorker (400,000-1 million) and I.D. Magazine (less than 100,000), a publication on culture and design. Among other winners were The Atlantic Monthly for reporting and The New Republic for public interest. (WILLIAM A. KATZ) This updates the article publishing.