Jamie Oliver

M&C Saatchi has launched a collaborative campaign between publishers, bookshops, authors, and agents aimed at booklovers across the UK and Ireland. The national movement - 'Books Are My Bag' - has aimed to celebrate the cultural importance of books and bookshops with a wave of promotional activity around the release of a branded canvas bag.

June 28, 2013 — Disney and Hachette Book Group (HBG) announced today Hachette’s agreement to purchase Disney’s adult trade publishing imprint, Hyperion. When the acquisition is completed, HBG will become the publisher of more than 1,000 books published by the Hyperion adult trade book division since its inception in 1991, as well as approximately 25 books scheduled for future publication. Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW), the world’s largest publisher and licensor of children’s books, will retain all of its Disney and Disney-Hyperion branded children’s and young adult book titles, and will publish franchise-based titles from Disney/ABC Television Group upon completion of the transaction.

As we mentioned yesterday, the marketplace of ideas around what the Random House/Penguin merger all means is heating up. The Financial Times' Robert Cookson looks at bigness vs. smallness and might vs. agility as competing strategies for success in an increasingly digital world. In smallness' corner is indie house Salt Publishing's Christopher Hamilton-Emery:

“I don’t think big necessarily means better." The rise of digital publishing, he argues, is likely to lead to an “explosion” of smaller, more focused publishers that can harness technology to establish relationships directly with consumers.

Profits at the book publisher Penguin slumped by almost 50% in the first six months, thanks in part to the runaway global success of EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey, which is published by a rival, Vintage Books.

The runaway success of Fifty Shades and The Hunger Games helped cut sales at Penguin by 4% to £441m and its adjusted operating profit down 48% to £22m.

Penguin's digital book sales account for 20 per cent of its revenue in the United States Digital ebooks accounted for 12% of revenues at publishing giant Penguin last year after download sales doubled on a year ago, owner Pearson has announced. The books business, whose UK division published 78 top 10 best-sellers last year, grew overall profits by 5% to £111 million in 2011, despite the collapse of two major customers, including Borders in the United States. Since the beginning of 2008, digital downloads of apps and ebooks across Penguin have totalled approximately 50 million, with revenues from ebooks

This year's US and UK non-fiction bestseller charts tell a fascinating story - and UK readers don't emerge well from the comparison. The bestselling ebook of the year in the UK? Not James Patterson, not Lee Child, not even Stieg Larsson. No: the Bookseller reports that Benjamin Daniels's Confessions of a GP, "a witty insight into the life of a family doctor", is our ebook number one for 2011.