News of the Day

Since yesterday closed a fiscal quarter for many companies -- and April is traditionally the beginning of spring and new ventures -- there are, as usual, a plethora of amazing and unlikely announcements today from all over our connected world.

Here are some of the ones I've seen, which are as true as can be expected on this particular day:

• Shelf Awareness reports that the Big 6 US trade publishers have come to an agreement to all merge
• SA also follows up on Amazon's recent acquisitions, including the CIA
• Further stories are also available from Shelf Awareness today, including HMH's sale on overstock e-books, the new Book Tour reality show for authors, and a review of the indispensable new edition of Book Reviewing for Dummies.
• Your new way of searching: GoogleNose.
• YouTube's eight-year project to find the single best online video ends tonight -- watch as many videos as you can before the others are all deleted!
• Charles Stross to produce a killer-bug movie.
• Locus reported on Detroit's attempt to rebrand itself as "Boilertown," the nation's first all-steampunk city
•  There was apparently some other Locus post which was offensive for some reason to some people -- I haven't seen it, and all the reports I have seen so far are vague -- so we're all free to imagine how horrible it was.

And, more news, which I didn't see and/or catalogue until after the eventful day was over:

• Comics creator Ty Templeton was thrown in jail.
• DC Comics fired its entire writing staff.
• We may be able to experience John Scalzi's Shadow War! of the Night Dragons! as a stage musical, the way God intended.

Still finding more, even now that the champagne has gone flat and all of the jokes are unfunny:

• Congress proposes a tax on text messages.
• 100 literary rumors.
• Twitter announced a new plan to charge for vowels.
• Virgin Atlantic's new glass-bottomed plane.
• REI introduces a line of gear for kittens.