At her recent retirement party, Margaret Bluman, the redoubtable Penguin editor and contracts supremo, reminisced about some of the mavericks she had worked with and wondered if publishing was now too fixed on recruiting graduates who would fit the corporate mould. It's a fair point, although my own memories of Penguin are of an outstanding...

HarperCollins US is offering voluntary retirement packages to employees aged 55 or over who have at least five years' experience, Publishers Weekly has reported.

The offer was announced yesterday, with the publisher requesting a response by February 3rd from those who are interested.

PW said a company spokesperson...

Perhaps the least surprising news of the week is that publishing is now experiencing a recruitment slow-down. Given that we have just experienced a period of financial turmoil not seen since October 1929, anything else would be remarkable.

Although publishing has been virtually untouched by the wider slowdown so far, the mood is clearly...