High school and college students are usually leagues ahead of their elders, technologically speaking. As they're dizzyingly texting and Tweeting and multitasking to their hearts' content, they're reading far fewer books than students of previous generations. No wonder some institutions are adopting drastic measures to stay on the cutting edge.

To that end, Blyth Academy in Toronto is claiming to be the first school to wholly replace textbooks with e-readers. Blyth contracted with Sony to provide its Touch Edition device to all of its students. The school has a kindred spirit in Cushing Academy, an elite Massachusetts prep school that this fall threw out 144 years of tradition and replaced its entire library collection with all-digital offerings, including e-books. "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books," headmaster James Tracy told The Boston Globe in September.

It seemed mighty curious when billionare Ron Burkle's private equity firm Yucaipa Cos. suddenly doubled its stake in Barnes & Noble (BKS) between November 10 and 13. Burkle last week scooped up more than 4 million shares of the bookseller -- boosting his stake from 8.3% to 16.3% -- at an average price of $20.05.

And Burkle's stock spree wasn't finished. On Monday, he bought another 457,000 shares, at an average price of $20.48, The Wall Street Journal reported -- boosting his stake to 10.2 million shares, or 17.8%. That makes him B&N's second-largest shareholder, after CEO and founder Len Riggio, who's been on a quiet grab campaign of his own, boosting his stake over the past year to 36.8%.

Jane Friedman sounded bullish at a lunchtime lecture on Tuesday. Speaking about the state of her field, the CEO of Open Road Integrated Media said to members of New York University 's Master of Science Publishing Program: "This is the most exciting time for publishing. There are more books, more diverse formats, and more opportunities to serve customers in a whole new way."

Friedman has reason to be excited. She made waves this year by launching an e-book publishing venture after departing mysteriously from HarperCollins, where she was CEO from 1997 to 2008. But the opening of her short keynote speech and the lengthy Q&A that followed underscored the nagging sense that, at least publicly, Open Road is more about buzz and less about specifics.

A rule of thumb for companies preparing to strike a deal: if you're going to do business together, it's probably not such a great idea to undermine your new colleagues before they've handed you a pot of cash from them. But a $20 million breach-of-contract suit filed yesterday by Cengage, the textbook company formerly known as Thomson Learning, complains of some dirty pool by publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which unloaded its college textbook division to Cengage last year for $750 million in cash.

Cengage's 14-page complaint charges that, prior to the closing on May 30, 2008, HMH "dramatically increased sales of its college textbooks in an unprecedented manner (particularly in India, South Korea and Taiwan)," with full knowledge that the "unprecedented" sales spike that inevitably followed suit would flood the American market through "unauthorized distribution channels." Meaning that HMH would make a killing on export sales -- and deprive Cengage of post-deal revenues.

Love her or hate her, Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate, is always a hot topic of conversation in the media. Her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, slated for release by News Corp.'s (NWS) HarperCollins next Tuesday, November 17, is no exception; it's been making news since the ink dried on the deal made last May.

Going Rogue was one of 10 books selected for massive discounting by Amazon (AMZN), Walmart (WMT), and Target (TGT) in their ongoing price war. Palin made headlines last month when she revealed that HarperCollins had paid her a $1.25 million "retainer" sometime between January 1 and July 26, the day she stepped down as Alaska governor. Oprah Winfrey has her booked on her show next Monday, which the author will follow with a bus tour to far-flung corners of the country (or as she famously called them during the 2008 campaign, "the real America"). No less than three books about Palin are slated for publication around the same time, including a parody called Going Rouge: An American Nightmare.

For a publisher celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Harlequin has been thinking ahead. Much of the voluminous catalog from the romance publisher is available for digital download in multiple formats, so fans of steamy novels can access all they want on their Kindles, iPhones, and netbooks at the ready, without worrying that particular titles will disappear from bookstores when the next month's titles arrive.

Harlequin's longstanding policy of acquiring worldwide rights in all formats means it has the means to reach a global audience with whatever reading format they choose: print, digital, audio, or something that doesn't exist yet. So it seems like a no-brainer that Harlequin, a division of Toronto-based Torstar Corp. (TORSF), would launch an imprint devoted exclusively to digital books. But Carina Press, which will operate independently of Harlequin, might pave the way for major publishers to put their money where their e-book mouth is.

Borders (BGP) announced Thursday afternoon that it will close 200 of its Waldenbooks stores by early January, cutting as many as 1,500 jobs, most of them part-time. The move is intended as part of Borders's ongoing plan to streamline costs and find its way out of a money pit that's plagued it for years and led to a flurry of executive shuffles.

The shutdown will leave 130 of the mall-based WaldenBooks stores in operation; 45 branches had closed since the end of May.

"We believe there remains an opportunity to profitably operate a much smaller Waldenbooks segment that complements our core Borders superstore business and continues to serve readers in their communities," Borders CEO Ron Marshall said in a statement. The closings, he said, "will reduce the number of stores with operating losses, reduce our overall rent expense and lease-adjusted leverage, and generate cash flow through sales and working capital reductions."

Media and newspaper companies have had dismal fortunes last year, and book publishing is no exception. Layoffs, mergers of imprints, declining sales, rising costs -- all put the biggest publishing houses deep in the red in the last two quarters of 2008. But the latest quarterly numbers coming in tell a more optimistic story for their massive parent conglomerates.

Lagardere's (LGDDF) preliminary Q1 earnings report, released Wednesday, won't have anyone popping Champagne bottles. Consolidated revenues for the first nine months of 2009 fell 3.7% (or 3.9% on a like-for-like basis) to €5.8 billion ($8.6 billion); the magazine and broadcast divisions alone fell 19.1% for the first quarter. But the publishing division, including Hachette Book Group USA, has been a rock for Lagardere -- thanks to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels, which have been a rock for Hachette.

When a price war erupted last month among Amazon (AMZN), Wal-Mart (WMT), and Target (TGT) on select anticipated blockbuster books -- new titles by Sarah Palin, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Barbara Kingsolver -- it seemed like independent bookstores would be taking a beating. But the real victims may turn out not to be those mom-and-pop shops but their wholesalers and distributors.

The big-box retailers have been playing a game of limbo this fall, pricing hardcover editions for as little as $8.98. It's textbook loss-leader economics, the theory being that pricing these few titles so low should entice customers to buy other products at full price.

Barnes & Noble (BKS) last month introduced its e-book reader Nook (pictured), a competitor to Amazon (AMZN)'s Kindle, that it's slated to begin shipping around Thanksgiving. The Nook announcement overshadowed that of a competitor called Alex, from Spring Design, a little-known Silicon Valley company.

When Spring Design announced Alex, tech site Engadget dismissed it as a "desperate" also-ran that, like Nook, features a combination six-inch e-ink screen and three-inch LCD screen, has Wi-Fi capability, and uses Google's Android as its operating system. But Spring Design says Nook, not Alex, is the copy-cat -- and it's suing Barnes & Noble for violating non-disclosure agreements and misappropriating trade secrets.