The Wall Street Journal reports (July 19, 2012) that Penguin (owned by Big-6 publisher Pearson) has announced that it will acquire the self-publishing company Author Solutions, Inc. for $116M in cash.
It seems that the publishers want to make money from writers as much as from readers. In addition, Author Solutions has “..a trove of information about what authors want to write and what customers want to read.” I’d love to know what the M&A (mergers and acquisitions) of Penguin valued the acquisition, was the data worth as much as the $ from the writers? In an era where companies are scrambling to collect as much information as possible about their customers, the Author Solutions data does seem to offer a new dimension for data collection.
Link to Wall Street Journal article below:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577537092288601370.html
kelleytjansson 