Eoin Purcell
With big ones on their doorstep
Hachette is launching a Scottish division. BookBrunch comments:
In non-fiction, Hachette Scotland will be a rival to houses including Mainstream (half-owned by Random House), Birlinn, and Black & White. It will have the clout to put greater marketing efforts behind commercial fiction than would be possible at the independent houses.
On the surface this might seem like a fine idea. In truth it heralds a weakening of the independent sector of the Scottish Publishing industry, and they have been very impressive folk in recent years. I’ve a piece kind of related to this (as in it references Ireland not Scotland) in the forthcoming Bookseller so I’ll wait till that is out and about before commenting too much.
So more to follow,
Eoin
Eoin Purcell's Blog 
Hm. On one hand it’s nice to see a launch in the publishing industry at a time like this, when we’re hearing of closings and profit losses.
At the same time, it’s like hearing that our own small village is getting a Tesco…on one hand folks would be overjoyed about the advantages, but the changes it would bring long-term aren’t really what we would have wanted, given the choice.
Interesting development; thank you for passing it on.
Looking forward to the bookseller piece Eoin!
Thanks for the comments folks! I’ll post the link when the story goes live@