Finance

Despite being one of the most important publishing and cultural stories of our lifetime, the news that the Department of Justice had approved the merger of Random House and Penguin yesterday would have been easy to miss. You’d have to do a search to find the New York Times story about it, for example, even though publishing is one of New York’s biggest industries. The Wall Street Journal report was similarly perfunctory, back pages stuff. Even PaidContent, which usually has the most insightful and detailed reportage…

We’ve known for some time that publishing behemoths Penguin and Random House were to merge, thus creating  a truly colossal book publisher. Well, that deal has been given one more seal of approval, with the US Department Of Justice giving the greenlight to the deal.

Random House’s parent company – German mass media corporation Bertelsmann – and Pearson confirmed the go-ahead earlier today, with the DoJ officially closing its regulatory investigation, with no conditions stipulated.

Companies very rarely warn twice in 40 days about the same problem. When it happens, it usually indicates that something so unexpected is taking place that executives just cannot wrap their minds around it. One example is HTC’s string of warnings last winter when its Android success story suddenly unraveled. Another is Barnes & Noble (BKS) and its Nook warnings on January 2nd and February 13th.

Impelsys, a global leader in providing electronic content delivery solutions, today announced the commercial launch of a new title acquisitions system for libraries that enables library staff to order eBooks for their collections directly from participating publishers. Impelsys' new eBook Ordering System was developed in partnership with Douglas County Libraries (DCL), a seven-branch public library system in Douglas County, Colorado. The eBook acquisition dashboard was beta tested by DCL's professional staff and system modifications were made prior to commercial launch this week.

Steve Earle wrote: “The revolution starts now / when you rise above your fear / And tear the walls around you down / The revolution starts here.”

Thankfully, time has finally brought us companies (big and small) that are re-thinking traditional content distribution business models. They’ve done this based on shifting technologies, shifting culture, sinking economies, new demands, and have begun creating new approaches. There are many out there, I wanted to mention a few examples.

There is no such thing as a dog-eared e-book — each copy is forever perfect. But a new Amazon patent could go a long way toward making the digital media in our lives a lot more like the physical version.

Last week, Amazon patented a way to sell “used” e-books, music, videos, apps and other “digital objects.” The marketplace described in the patent would let such exchanges take place by cutting off the seller’s access to a piece of digital content once the buyer paid.

Macmillan, the last remaining publisher holdout in the Department of Justice’s ebook pricing antitrust lawsuit against five publishers and Apple, has decided to settle about ten months after the lawsuit was originally filed. Following Penguin’s settlement in December, Macmillan CEO John Sargent had said  Macmillan wouldn’t follow suit, but he acknowledged Friday in a letter to authors and agents that “the potential penalties became too high to risk even the possibility of an unfavorable outcome.” The settlement means that Apple is the only remaining party fighting the DOJ lawsuit.

Amazon has announced Amazon Coins, a virtual currency for use with its tablet, the Kindle Fire.

Scheduled to launch in May for US customers, the currency is being billed with an exchange rate of one Amazon Coin to one cent, although Paul Ryder, Vice President of Apps and Games for Amazon is also promising that the company will give customers tens of millions of dollars' worth of free Amazon Coins to promote the service.

Standard & Poor's Rating Services (S&P), a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MHP), issued the following statement in response to the civil lawsuit filed last night by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and related state lawsuits regarding S&P ratings in 2007 on certain U.S. collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and S&P's rating models for residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS):

"The DOJ and some states have filed meritless civil lawsuits against S&P challenging some of our 2007 CDO ratings and the underlying RMBS models. Claims that we deliberately kept ratings high when we knew they should be lower are simply not true. We will vigorously defend S&P against these unwarranted claims. S&P has always been committed to serving the interests of investors and all market participants by providing independent opinions on creditworthiness based on available information. At all times, our ratings reflected our current best judgments about RMBS and the CDOs in question. Unfortunately, S&P, like everyone else, did not predict the speed and severity of the coming crisis and how credit quality would ultimately be affected.

Tim Ferriss is an entrepreneur, lifestyle hacker, and author who writes about how to optimize aspects of your life.

His newest book is 4-Hour Chef, and while there are plenty of recipes in it, it's actually about about how to maximize your learning ability. Ferriss teaches the reader the techniques he used to go from being indifferent towards cooking to becoming a kitchen warrior.

Ferriss' previous books, 4-Hour Workweek and 4-Hour Body, were released through conventional publishers, but he's one of a growing number of A-list authors opting to go with Amazon's publishing model instead.