If you are into books, than read Personanondata
But if you don’t read it now, start with these two guest post from Mike “Beware the end of Trade Publishing” Shatskin*. Read them, Here and Here.

But why read stuff like this you ask?
Basically because our industry is more global than we often realize day to day. For instance, Penguin, Hachette and Random House all now have offices in Ireland. That means a French, a British and a German conglomerate operate units in our territory not to mention the other German influence through Gill & Macmillan.

It’s vital to know exactly what their other units and worldwide operations are doing and thinking in order to do my job properly**. I imagine it would help author’s too to stay abreast, but certainly for publishers, these trend and opinion pieces are important.

Watching too much number crunching,
Eoin

* Links a bit funny but should work sometime.
** Alternatively I’m just a nerd, but I prefer the alternative explanation.