There's something exciting - and reassuring - about publishers using terms such as ‘hackathon' and ‘open-source': everyone knows they have the content but releasing it wild into a environment they may not be able to fully control can be difficult. It seems to be in this spirit that Pearson has embraced an open-source approach to digital content, making its proprietary content available to third-party dig Read more »

Few can argue with the proposition in the government’s response to the Hargreaves Report that enabling medical and scientific research is a good thing, both for social and economic reasons. What is more controversial, however, is how this should be achieved, and what the implications will actually be in practice. Read more »

I think all creative businesses should be asking themselves: should my core medium be the focus of my business, or should I be developing and exploiting my creative content in several media? And assuming the answer is yes, they should then ask how do I go about taking my content and brand into a new medium? It is a question being asked by TV production companies, magazine publishers and record labels as much as by book publishers. Read more »

2003 was an incredible year for licensed publishing—and terrific for Penguin. It was the year of Finding Nemo. The Disney/Pixar film catapulted tie-in books into the top of the children’s charts worldwide. Penguin’s records were broken again in 2008 when In the Night Garden books had their debut. But times are quickly changing. Read more »