Yesterday — in this MobyLives story — we asked for tips about the status of a month-old bid for the trade publishing unit of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, first reported by the Wall Street Journal. One commenter tells us that there is a rumor that the offer is from Hachette, owner of Little Brown (which just had a really good year selling books about vampires). This makes some amount of sense—parent company Lagardère is cash rich. The rumor echos the reporting of the Boston Globe, which could not get anyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to deny the rumor.

As our commenter notes, however, trade publishing “only makes up about 5% of sales for HMH as a whole. How much of a dent can a few million dollars make in that 7 billion dollar pile of debt?” Well, not much. But we are still interested given HHM’s reputation and collection of literary talent. Maybe it’s best to separate HHM’s legendary backlist (and skilled staff) from a sinking ship?