Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, publishing options and marketing ideas for your book.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more information at

TheCreativepen.com. And that's Penn with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello creatives. I'm Joanna Penn. And this is episode number 521 of the podcast. And is Saturday the 5th of December 2020 as I record

this. In today's show I have an interview with Jesse Crack on from chaos to creativity

building a productivity system for artists and writers and we give some specific tips and

tricks around productivity and getting your writing done.

But we also talk about some of the deeper questions like,

how do you decide what really matters?

Because all the productivity in the world doesn't matter if you are working on the wrong thing.

So that is coming up in the interview.

In publishing news, of course the biggest news in traditional publishing world is that

Penguin Random House owner Bertelsman is going to buy Simon and Schuster in a $2 billion

deal.

So Bertelsman already owns Penguin Random House and so this acquisition of another major publisher is inevitable

as these big companies take each other over and it's happening. So it's expected to close in

2021 subject to regulatory approval. Now, and this has been reported in a lot of press, obviously.

Now, in Publishers Weekly, the Authors Guild laid out its opposition to the proposed deal.

The sale would mean that the combined publishing house would account for approximately 50% of all trade books published,

creating a huge imbalance in the US publishing industry.

But this is what is almost hilarious.

...