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 Pen with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello, creatives. I'm Joanna Penn. And this is episode number 653 of the podcast,

and it is Thursday the 3rd of November

2022 as I record this. In today's show, I'm talking to children's author, Ada R.E, about her

African language and storybooks, as well as how she publishes and markets in the USA, mostly

direct to customers and in stores and schools.

Adda is a new author and has built a fledgling business without knowing much of what a lot of

indie authors take for granted. So it was so interesting to hear about the way she's doing things

and also about her plans to grow and expand into more books and products for children.

So that's coming up in the interview section.

So in publishing and book marketing news, lots of news this week.

So I'm going to try and cover a lot of it.

So you might remember all the juicy insights about publishing that came up during the

Department of Justice case against Penguin Random House, PRH, taking over Simon and Schuster.

That happened a couple of months ago and I talked about some of the things that came up then.

Well, the ruling is in and the takeover has been blocked. Now, PRH will appeal, but if they don't take

over, Shyman and Schuster, the question is who will? Because the company is for sale, obviously,

but if it's not another publisher, because that will get blocked, then it'll be very interesting

to see what happens. So that is still ongoing, but yeah, the ruling is in.

...