LEXINGTON — A deal to sell ecampus.com for about $2.5 million will be closed early next week after a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of former Gov. Wallace Wilkinson's online bookstore company.

        The new owner will be Book Acquisitions LLD, a company controlled by George Valassis, who was a major shareholder in ecampus.com. Although it will become, in effect, a new company, ecampus.com will continue to operate under the same name and out of the same headquarters in Lexington.

        All that will remain of the former ecampus.com will be a series of legal steps to collect and distribute to creditors what remains of the company's assets.

        The company is “gearing up for the fall season,” when it expects to do a brisk business selling textbooks to college students, ecampus.com president Matt Montgomery said Thursday.

        Ecampus.com filed for bankruptcy June 8, claiming debts of $8.9 million. It quickly was put up for auction in an effort to sell it while it is still an active business. Although one party offered $800,000 for the company's book inventory, only one bidder, Book Acquisitions, submitted a bid for all of ecampus.com's assets, including its operating equipment and software contracts.

        Another Valassis company, Franklin Enterprises, already had loaned ecampus.com $2.1 million to help it keep operating, and that amount will be deducted from Book Acquisitions' bid price so only about $400,000 cash will be paid for the company.

        Ecampus.com is the second Wilkinson company put up for sale since the former governor filed for personal bankruptcy in early February.

        Unlike Mr. Wallace's, ecampus.com, which was formed in 1999, will survive bankruptcy as a going business.

        In another Wilkinson-related bankruptcy case Thursday, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge William Howard ruled that Wallace's Bookstores will have to pay $25,000 a month to cover interest on two loans on its Lexington headquarters.

        Thomas Bunch, an attorney for Area Bank of Owensboro, said the building on Nandino Boulevard had been appraised recently at $4 million and that the bank had outstanding loans on it of about $3.9 million, including interest.

        Mr. Bunch asked that the building either be sold or that Mr. Wilkinson's company start making “adequate protection payments.”

        Attorney Tim Robinson, representing the bookstore company, said the building is being used as a scaled-down corporate headquarters and as a warehouse to store items that will be sold at auction next month.

        Mr. Robinson said Wallace's will decide after the auction whether to sell its headquarters and warehouse or turn the building over to Area Bank.

        Very little is expected to be left for Wallace's unsecured creditors, who are owed $111.5 million.

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