Melville House Books

After days of silence from the press and the principals in the W.H. Smith – Penguin deal, the head of the UK’s Society of Authors has “voiced his concerns in a letter to Penguin Group chairman and chief executive John Makinson” and asked him to reconsider the deal for the good of the industry.

According to a report from The Bookseller by Victoria Gallagher, SOA head Mark Le Fanu told Makinson the deal was “another retrograde and regrettable step, narrowing further the choice available to customers, damaging the interests of other publishers and their authors, and likely to have an adverse effect on the quality and variety of books published in this genre.”

Earlier, the SOA wrote a letter to W.H. Smith but has yet to recieve a reply. Likewise, Melissa Shales, head of the Brtitish Guild of Travel Writers, has also written to both companies, neither of which has responded.

Meanwhile, returns have started coming in to trevel book publishers excluded in the deal. One anonymous publisher tells Gallagher that in the end “It will cost us quite a bit of money . . . tens of thousands of pounds. It certainly will be that much and it certainly will be that much for other publishers as well.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.