Simon and Schuster Inc.

What will book publishing bring in 2015? Shrouded as the industry is behind a veil woven of billions and billions of dollars, it's difficult to say. But if you look hard enough - at the bestseller lists, the court cases, the controversies - you can glimpse through the metaphorical keyhole and into the back rooms where the deals are made. With this in mind, here is a somewhat reliable predictor for the publishing industry in 2015.

Let's begin with what we do know: 

Simon & Schuster has seen an "especially" productive year in business, with "encouraging" sales seen after joining US and UK subscription platforms.

In an end-of-year letter to staff and authors, Carolyn Reidy, president and c.e.o of Simon & Schuster in the US, said the publisher had had a successful year when it came to "the business of our business", naming the publisher's multi-year agreement with Amazon as one of its highlights.

Reidy said: "We made our backlist e-books available through subscription services in the US and abroad, and the results were immediately encouraging

Now that Amazon AMZN has swept away its competition in the $3 billion U.S. e-book business through years of aggressive discounting, it's starting to make peace with publishers, which should mean more profits at the world's largest bookseller.     In recent months, Amazon has signed new contracts with three of the world's five largest publishers: Legardere's Hachette, CBS Simon & Schuster and most recently, Macmillan. Those contracts return much of the pricing control of e-books back to the publishers. Not long ago, Amazon fought hard for

I sometimes feel like I'm the only guy in town (NYC, but I'd include London too) contemplating out loud how Penguin Random House might use its position as by far the biggest commercial trade publisher to make life a bit more difficult for its competitors, which in the first instance means the Following Four: HarperCollins (which is much bigger than the other three), Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. What I mean, of course, is that PRH could use its position to either improve its margins in relation to everybody else

Amazon and Hachette announced Thursday morning that they have resolved their differences and signed a new multiyear contract, bringing to an official end one of the most bitter publishing conflicts in recent years.

Neither side gave details of the deal, but both pronounced themselves happy with the terms. Hachette gets the ability to set the prices on its e-books, which was a major battleground in the dispute.

"This is great news for writers," said Michael Pietsch, Hachette's chief executive. "The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come.

Last Friday Michael Tamblyn, president and COO of ereading platform Kobo, took to Twitter with a 32-tweet manifesto on the Amazon-Hachette dispute. Tamblyn's tweets were meant to sway self-published authors from so heartily supporting Amazon, as many have throughout Hachette's negotiations. (Here's a link to the first in the series, but you can trace the whole monologue on Twitter starting on the morning of October 17th.)

Under terms of the S&S-Amazon deal, the publisher gets back the right to set the prices on its e-books - a privilege that it has not had since 2010, when the Justice Department claimed that the big US publishers were guilty of collusion in setting e-book prices. Five big consumer publishers paid multimillion-dollar sums to settle the claims. Now the new deal restores S&S's right to set its own e-book prices. The formula for selling ink-on-paper books that Amazon carries for S&S will not change appreciably. 

Simon & Schuster has negotiated a multiyear deal with Amazon for both print and electronic books, the publisher told its writers Monday.

The agreement "is economically advantageous for both Simon & Schuster and its authors and maintains the author's share of income generated from eBook sales," said a letter signed by Carolyn Reidy, the publisher's chief executive. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.

"With some limited exceptions," the new contract gives control of e-book pricing to Simon & Schuster, the letter said.

Carole Mallory has led quite the life. Though the 72-year-old woman now lives quietly in Norristown, Pennsylvania, her earlier years were nothing short of exciting.

In addition to being a Pan Am stewardess (back when they were actually called stewardesses), actress (she was in Looking for Mr. Goodbar and The Stepford Wives), scantily clad model (she graced the covers of Newsweek, Cosmopolitan and New York magazine), and, oh, fiancee of Pablo Picasso’s son, she also played the paramour to an impressive roster of famous men.

Milq is partnering with Simon & Schuster on the launch of Books as a new content category for its culture sharing app and site. Starting today, users can share audio and video around their favorite books on Milq, organizing them into collaborative, interactive playlists called Beads.