More Consolidation in the Publishing Business

The recent news that Rakuten is acquiring OverDrive, as Gary Price reports on Infodocket, is, or is not, news. It's news if you didn't see this coming (shame on you!), but not news if you have been observing the industry of late. As I have noted on the Kitchen before, the environment is ripe for consolidation. We will see more of it in the months ahead. Sometimes consolidation is simply a matter of buying up market share, a tried and true strategy in mature markets, and sometimes there is a deeper component to it