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12 November 2012 - What's new

12 November 2012
  • 'Things are settling around the idea of Random House and Penguin merging, but there are plenty of dire predictions. Some think it will change the nature of publishing as we know it, others that it will lead to further consolidation. The combined group will have 25 to 30% of the global books business. This sounds a lot and already there is talk of whether the merger will be referred to the regulatory agencies in various countries...' News Review reports.
  • Links to this week's top stories this week we follow up on the Random House/Penguin story - Authors Guild asks for “close scrutiny” of Penguin Random House merger and Bertelsmann's pickup of Penguin shows the poor state of British publishing.
  • Our 23 lists of recommended links have been updated with many new links to sites of special interest to writers. these range from Writers Online Services to Picture libraries and Writers Magazines & Sites and many more.
  • 'Thematically this email is a microcosm of publishing now and tomorrow. Mega-mergers, new devices, Amazon growth (and losses) and established players seeking to re-adjust for the digital age through innovation and restructure. The Penguin Random House story suggests that the phoney war is now over, digital is here, it is driving our thoughts and strategies, and will come to dominate this content led business as it has other content sectors.' Philip Jones in the Bookseller's Futurebook, quoted in our Comment column.
  • Michael Legat's Factsheets are a series of specially commissioned information-packed Factsheets for WritersServices, which cover the essentials for writers from a former publisher, novelist and author of 12 books on writing. For a quick update on Write about What You Know, Literary Agents or Shall I be Famous? Shall I be Rich?, and much more, this is the place to look.
  • There's still just time to go for our Writing Opportunity this week, which is The Complete Works, a mentoring opportunity for advanced Black and Asian poets, before it closes on 22 November.
  • 'I think I can boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.' Jane Austen in our Writers' Quotes.