With this week’s books news assignment topic looking at trade publishing, I came across this article that does a bit of a deep dive into the aftermath of the proposed merger of ‘Big Five’ publishing giants Penguin Random House (PRH) and Simon & Schuster (S&S)…

So rather than going into a deep dive into the many problems in new media industries and news, for this week’s book news assignment I figured I’d kind of not actually quite follow the assignment and just throw some options out for publishing alternatives to the conglomerates and chains and monster media corporations…

So my main selection for this week’s book news article – on the topic of “the digital turn” in publishing – goes full on scholarly rather than mass market news, with an excellent snapshot of the state of print versus ebook, published in the midst of the pandemic…

With this post being the first to serve double duty for a library school course – part of a “current news e-book or website” assignment for LIS 591 Publishing for our Head Alien – our inaugural article and topic of the week is a broad discussion of the relationship between publishing and contemporary society…