I received some information about BookPeople's chapter 11 from the lawyer today. On August 26, 2004 the courts accepted a plan that must be voted on by the creditors. All the details can be found in these PDFs:
http://www.bandblaw.com/bookpeoplecreditors/ What is the gist? A yes ballot means that no matter how much they owe a vendor, the vendor gets $100 and then they are considered paid in full. Vote no, it all starts over again and the lawyer gets more $$ for fees. Either way, the vendors are screwed. Life in the food chain...
Read the documents if you are interested, it is pretty interesting.