P.M. BRIEFING : Time Warner Sells Text Company

Time Warner Inc. said today that it has agreed to sell its Scott Foresman & Co. textbook publishing subsidiary for $455 million to a unit of Harper & Row Publishers Inc. and will take a $175-million pretax loss on the sale.

It is Time Warner’s first major sale of assets following Time Inc.’s agreement last summer to buy Warner Communications Inc. for $14 billion.

But Time Warner said that although proceeds from the sale would help it reduce its debt, it sold the school and college textbook publisher because it was not one of its core businesses.

The deal makes Harper & Row, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., a major player in the educational publishing arena.

Time Warner had said repeatedly that it had no plans to sell assets within its core businesses of magazines, filmed entertainment, records, cable and pay television and consumer-oriented books.