Cao is right; Penguin did not buy ASI. Its parent company, Pearson did--and yes, there's a substantial distinction between the companies. Penguin is a trade publisher. Pearson is an education and technology publishing company that owns a slew of other publishers, including Dorling Kindersley and Harcourt Education. I'm starting to get annoyed at the way so many reputable news sources are headlining "Penguin buys Author Solutions."
ASI will be "folded into" Penguin, so Penguin is obviously heavily involved, but from reading the coverage, it sounds to me as if this was a strategic investment decision by Pearson, which has bought and sold a large number of publishing, educational, and technology companies over the years--not some nefarious plan on Penguin's part to become a stealth vanity publisher by directing all authors into pay-to-play publishing and then cherrypicking the successful ones (as some conspiracy theorists are already suggesting).
I do think it may not be a wise investment--I wonder if the ASI business model hasn't peaked--and I think Pearson and Penguin urgently need to address several serious problems at ASI, including customer service and payment systems. And they're going to take a lot of heat from the same people whose heads exploded when Book Country added self-pub services (which does raise the question of where Book Country fits into the new scheme). It'll be interesting to watch where it all goes from here.
- Victoria
