The News As It Relates to Us

Culling through recent publishing news, two stories were of particular interest to us here in the Publishing Business Group. The first is about Seattle becoming a mecca for publishing. Hey, we knew that! We reported on Seattle's thriving publishing community in the June Book Business. See our story here and read Emily Parkhurst's interesting article here.

Our senior editor Denis Wilson says: "While it’s a little doubtful that Seattle-based tech companies would be able to thrive in publishing without having a significant East Coast presence—that is, being in physical proximity to two of the world’s most important financial, cultural, and political centers. But Parkhurst's article does point to some interesting changes underway and the emergence of new power centers in the industry."

We also came across a lovely musing about travel books, those heavy tomes we used to tote from place to place, stuffed into our backpacks alongside the Eurail Pass (I'm including the link in case you're tempted to revisit those days!). To lighten the load, my traveling companion and I used to rip out cities and discard them after we'd visit - sacrilege! Adam Penenberg talks about the slow and possibly inevitable decline of Lonely Planet here. We especially love this piece because Penenberg is going to be a speaker at our Publishing Business Conference & Expo in September. He has a new book coming out called Play at Work: How Games Inspire Breakthrough Thinking, and his conference talk is entitled: Games Are Serious Business: Using Game Design in Publishing.