July 1, 2018, marked the fifth anniversary of the completion of the Penguin Group-Random House merger, a deal that created the world's largest trade publisher, which had $3.4 billion in global sales in 2017. Read more
The shutters are banging on the Random House ‘house’ now. Tumbleweed is blowing across its courtyard. Weeds are already growing out of cracks in the walls.
Andre Schiffrin, veteran American publisher, expresses his anxieties in The Nation aboutthe recently announced merger of Penguin and Random House, which, he says, sent shock waves throughout Western publishing.
Adam Davidson in the New York Times: 'When you see a merger between two giants in a declining industry, it can look like the financial version of a couple having a baby to save a marriage. At least that was my thought when Random House and Penguin, two of the world's six largest publishers, announced that they were coming together last month.'
Publishing teeters as Random House and Penguin plan to merge. It's time for a government policy to protect the arts argues Scott Timberg in Salon, in a wide-ranging article which takes a long look at US publishing.
‘I always quote Kurt Vonnegut. He said in the early part of his career he was dismissed as a science fiction writer and that critics tend to put genre books, including sci-fi, in the bottom drawer of their desk... It's true. I get the New York Times every Sunday. In 37 novels, I've never had a stand-alone review. I'm always in the crime round-up.
A survey of 787 members of the Society of Authors (SoA) has found that a third of translators and a quarter of illustrators have lost work to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Translators are also more likely to use AI to support their work, with 37% of respondents saying they have done so, followed by 25% of non-fiction writers.
The author Lynne Reid Banks, known for her novel The L-Shaped Room and her children's book series The Indian in the Cupboard, has died at the age of 94.
I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn't want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are ... yech. Read more
Until we have a mechanism to test for artificial intelligence, writers need a tool to maintain trust in their work. So I decided to be completely open with my readers
'You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear through the search.'