Montreal publisher Pierre Turgeon – who pleaded guilty last March to charges of fraud – appears to have rebounded from the bankruptcy of his old publishing firm, Trait d’union. Not only is he back with a new publishing venture, called Transit Publishing, he may well have hit the jackpot with one of his initial releases: a new biography of Michael Jackson, which will include about 50 pages of material pertaining to the pop star’s death.

According to Turgeon, the book, originally titled Michael Jackson: Return from Exile, was submitted to the printer last Wednesday, the day before Jackson died. On the following evening, Turgeon stopped the presses so that author Ian Halperin could have a few days to whip up additional material about the last weeks of Jackson’s life and the circumstances surrounding his death. The revised version, which goes to press today and is likely to arrive in stores late next week, is titled Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson.

Turgeon says that Halperin – an investigative journalist who has published unauthorized bios of Kurt Cobain, Céline Dion, and several other celebrities – spent five years researching and writing the book and had intimate access to Jackson and his entourage. A lengthy excerpt of the new material has been published online by the U.K.’s Daily Mail and will reportedly be excerpted in a future issue of US magazine.

Turgeon’s former creditors, who were left in the lurch for at least $1.7-million when Trait d’union went bankrupt in 2005, must have been shocked to see his name in the headlines so soon after the unseemly demise of his last publishing venture. In March, when Turgeon pleaded guilty to fraud charges in a Quebec court, he was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and to do several hours of community service. (Incredibly, the judge in the case decreed that Turgeon should spend time teaching the value of reading to schoolchildren.) Turgeon’s former partner in Trait d’union, Julien Beliveau – who successfully sued Turgeon for more than $600,000 but has yet to see a penny – said he is appalled that Turgeon is allowed to be back in business. “It is just beyond belief,” he told Q&Q. Beliveau added that because Transit Publishing is an entirely separate company, he is unable to bring a new lawsuit against it. “[Turgeon] can do whatever he wants. He is off the hook.”

Remarkably, this isn’t the first time that Transit has been in the news since it was founded in February. Another of its titles, a controversial biography of the founder of Cirque du Soleil, entitled Guy Laliberté: The Fabulous Story of the Creator of Cirque du Soleil (also written by Halperin), recently landed Turgeon in legal trouble over the unauthorized use of a photo of a trapeze artist on the front cover, and had to be reissued with a new cover. An excerpt from the book generated significant controversy when it was printed in Maclean’s earlier this month.

Transit currently employs four full-time staffers, including Turgeon and his son, François.

Kathy Lowinger, publisher of McClelland & Stewart kids’ imprint Tundra Books, will be retiring at the end of this year, according to a press release issued by M&S this morning. Lowinger has been a major force in kids’ publishing since 1996, when she joined Tundra in the role of executive editor.

Based on the release, it looks as if no one will be replacing Lowinger, exactly. Instead of naming a new publisher, M&S president Doug Pepper has promoted Tundra director of marketing and sales Alison Morgan to the position of managing director, and promoted Tundra senior editor Kathryn Cole to the position of editorial director.

Look for further details on Q&Q Omni later this week.

The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against Simon & Schuster today, saying that the publishing firm violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in its advertising campaign for Stephen King’s horror novel The Cell. According to PRNewsChannel:

In an unprecedented ruling, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit announced that publishing giant Simon & Schuster could be on the hook for as much as $90 million for sending unwanted text messages to tens of thousands of people. The unanimous decision, which was announced on Friday, held that text messages were under the purview of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which makes it unlawful to make automated calls to cellular telephones.

The court based its ruling on a prior interpretation by the Federal Communications Commission:  “The FCC has explicitly stated that the TCPA’s prohibition…‘encompasses both voice calls and text calls to wireless numbers including, for example, short message service (SMS) calls,’” the opinion explained, “[W]e find that the FCC’s interpretation of the TCPA is reasonable, and therefore afford it deference to hold that a text message is a ‘call’ within the TCPA.”

The case was brought by Laci Statterfield, whose young son received a text in the middle of the night warning him that the “next call you take may be your last.” It turned out the text message was a promotion for the Stephen King horror book The Cell. The district court initially dismissed the case, finding that the TCPA did not apply to these text messages and further that Satterfield had consented to receive text messages by downloading a free ringtone from an unrelated website.  The appellate court rejected both arguments.

While the publishing industry frets about Google’s looming supremacy over the written word, Google itself just continues on its merry way, scanning books and fine-tuning the presentation of them. Yesterday, Google announced a number of tweaks to its Book Search product, which include improved word search functionality, improved page-turn functionality, and newer, faster ways of jumping back and forth in the text.

You can read about all the changes here.

John Freeman, the new acting editor of Granta magazine, weighs in on the state of litmags in an article in today’s Independent. Interestingly, the piece begins by looking at the recent blow dealt to litmags here in Canada:

Bad things happen up north in the winter, when no one is looking. Like last February, when Canada’s heritage minister James Moore gave a speech which poorly disguised the fact that his office was effectively preparing to clear-cut many Canadian journals. Under his directive a literary journal in Canada must now sell at least 5,000 copies each year to be eligible for government assistance. This may seem like an abstruse piece of bookish trivia, until one remembers that most journals are lucky to reach half that number of readers, and that this radical cutback in funding is happening in a country whose tiny journals supported the early work of Michael Ondaatje, Anne Michaels, and Alice Munro, let alone talented newcomers such as Pasha Malla.

But it’s not just Canada leading this retreat. Fearful capitulation has been the norm in so much English-language literary publishing over the last four years. Newspapers in the U.S. and England have slashed book review supplements, and watched dumbfounded as readers upchucked their subscriptions.

(Thanks to the National Post for calling our attention to Freeman’s piece.)

As many of you probably already know, the state of California is dealing with one of its worst ever fiscal crises, and governator Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing a number of emergency measures to deal with the $24-billion deficit. His latest idea, according to The Daily Mail, is to join the digital publishing revolution by banning the use of textbooks in schools.

Jokingly telling a press conference that large books are now only suitable to be used for weightlifting (biceps curls in particular), he said: “Textbooks are outdated, in my opinion. For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach the kids exactly the same way. Our kids get their information from the internet, downloaded onto their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their cell phones … Basically, kids are feeling as comfortable with their electronic devices as I was with my pencils and crayons.”

“So why are California’s school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?”

State officials say the average price of a textbook is $75 to $100, whereas digital media can be distributed cheaply if the required infrastructure is in place.

Unfortunately, Arnie never addresses the matter of having to buy handheld reading devices for all of the state’s less well-off children, nor does he address the costs of digitization and who will be paying for it. Also, why stop at textbooks? Why not close down all the schools and have teachers instruct their pupils via BlackBerry?

Canada AM tech reporter Kris Abel was casually chatting with Indigo CEO Heather Reisman this morning – she had just got through doing an interview about her annual “summer reads” selections – when she revealed that Indigo is currently in final talks with a number of e-book reader manufacturers about adopting one of their devices and launching it here in Canada – under the Indigo name – by the end of this year.

The link to Abel’s post is currently broken, but the gist of it is as follows:

While chatting with myself back-stage she divulged the company’s plans, willing only to confirm that it won’t be the Sony Reader, already available and supported by Sony’s own online E-Book store, nor Amazon’s Kindle, which has yet to find a launch in Canada. Instead the retailer will launch their own service, one that will follow on the heels of their successful ShortCovers service, launched earlier this year.

No one from Indigo has verified Abel’s report, as of yet. Keep checking Q&Q Omni for further updates.

Earlier today, the international publishing giant Hachette Book Group announced that it will be moving Canadian sales and distribution of its U.K. lines to its U.S. offices. The decision will have major ramifications for several players in the Canadian publishing scene, including HarperCollins Canada, Penguin Canada, and H.B. Fenn and Company.  No one, however, will be more affected than McArthur & Company, which currently represents the bulk of Hachette’s U.K. lines in Canada, including Orion, Hodder & Stoughton, Hodder Headline, John Murray, and Hachette Children’s Books. According to a press release sent out by Hachette, McArthur will continue representing those lines until Dec. 31, 2009, after which point Hachette will take over permanently. This will be a major blow to McArthur, as the lines make up approximately two thirds of its business.

Look for a more detailed report later today on Q&Q Omni.

This weekend, Doubleday Canada will be mounting one of the most elaborate – and crazy? – sounding book promotions we’ve ever heard of. According to a press release the company sent out today, it has partnered with the National Post to give away 10,000 copies of Joy Fielding’s new-to-mass-market 2008 thriller, Charley’s Web, by bundling it into subscriber copies of the paper in the Greater Toronto Area. The giveaway is intended to promote Fielding’s new novel, Still Life, which was released in hardcover earlier this week. From the press release:

“Our hope is to use this direct-to-consumer marketing campaign to encourage existing fans to read her latest work and revisit Fielding’s extensive backlist, while also building an even broader fan base for this wonderful author,” says Randy Chan, Director of Marketing at Random House of Canada.

We’re not sure what to think about this. Free books are swell and all, but 10,000 copies?! Who’ll be left to actually buy one in a bookstore? And not to get all finger-wagging, but think of the paper wastage! How many of those National Post subscribers will actually read the book? One in 10, at best?

And finally, what of the backs of all those poor newsboys?

Ontario bookseller Richard Bachmann has released some comments on the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction shortlist, which was announced earlier this week. In full: