Heads-up readers! It’s time for a news post! Quick and dirty before I dive back into work on an as yet untitled short for Parliament of Wizards (see yesterday’s post), but a news post all the same!

Okay, first and foremost (and most important for many of you who are regular readers) episode two of Fireteam Freelance, titled Blackout, drops this Saturday! That means it’s time to find out what Adah, Owl, Ursa, and Anvil are up to after the Kamchatka job, and what new threats lie in front of them!

This one was a lot of fun, so I hope you’ll come Saturday to check it out!

Now then, onto this second bit of news. Long-time followers of the site know that I’ve been one of the authors saying that the big traditional publishers couldn’t last with their current approach to the market. As recently as last week I’ve talked about how indie authors and publishing are a storm breaking over the industry and that the next decade would see a lot of interesting changes, most likely including some of the big five trad pubs changing completely or ceasing to exist.

Well … as of yesterday … it’s happened. Viacom CBS, owners of Simon & Schuster (yes, that S&S, one of the big five) have announced that the publisher is on the chopping block. They’re looking to offload it. Which means someone could buy it wholesale or  (and personally this is more likely) it’ll get chopped up into pieces and sold off.

That’s right, one of the big five is being sold off. Maybe even chopped up.

You can read more about that here, where the article notes that one of the reasons offered by the parent corporation is that S&S has suffered over the last three decades, seeing shrinking sales and revenue.

Personally, the fact that their methods of operation feel several decades out of date might have something to do with that, but that’s just me.

Still, S&S being one of the big five makes this a titanic shakeup for the industry. Even if the publisher changes hands but stays completely intact it’s still a very large shift for things, personally, as it means their foundation has just been completely upended.

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this over the coming months. Will they be split up and sold off piecemeal? Will a company take a chance on the whole thing? Will they then split up and sell off what they buy?

There are no answers yet. We’ll just have to wait and find out. But this, I think, does mark the beginning of what I previously referred to as ‘a storm about to break over the publishing world in the next decade.’

It’s time to ride the waves, authors!