Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
All I want for Christmas is a blockbuster
What’s a great holiday gift in a recession, yes a good old fashioned book. Random House just got its new Dan Brown bestseller on the shelves.
Pearson’s Chief Financial Officer admitted that its consumer publisher Penguin does not have a blockbuster for the holiday season but — in a rare glimpse of corporate honesty — said it sure would like to have one.
“ I think we’ve got some good books for Christmas,” Pearson’s Robin Freestone said at the Reuters Media Summit on the upcoming holiday shopping season.
“We haven’t got a blockbuster in the sort of Dan Brown mode or the Stephanie Meyer mode. We sort of pretend we don’t really want a blockbuster but that isn’t true at all.”
Watch out school kids, big brother will soon be watching you
By Paul Sandle
Sit back a minute and think back to your school days — doing homework on the bus, skipping double physics on a Friday afternoon…nice, huh? Well, no more if Pearson prevails.
The reluctant student skulking at the back of the class, copying homework at the last minute or taking a day off, like Ferris Bueller, could find school a lot tougher if his college starts using the publisher’s latest education products.
