The European Commission has approved the merger of Penguin and Random.

The Commission ruled that they were not concerned with unfair competition, “because the merged entity will continue to face several strong competitors.” This was one of the major hurdles facing the merger of the publishing companies owned by Bertelsmann and Pearson. Here’s more from the release: 

The Commission assessed the impact of the transaction on the upstream markets for the acquisition of authors’ rights for English language books in the European Economic Area (EEA) and worldwide, and on the downstream markets for the sale of English language books to dealers in the EEA, in particular in the UK and Ireland. The Commission found that on both types of markets the new entity Penguin Random House will continue to face competition from several large and numerous small and medium sized publishers. As regards the sale of English language books, the merged entity will furthermore face a concentrated retail base, such as supermarkets for print books and large online retailers for e-books, like Amazon. In addition, the Commission’s investigation revealed no evidence that the transaction would lead to risks of coordination among publishers in relation to the acquisition of authors’ rights and the sale of English language books to dealers.

Brooklyn-based publisher Melville House will open a British publishing company in London called Melville House UK.

Founders Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians announced the news, hiring 4th Estate marketing executive Zeljka Marosevic as director of marketing. The company will begin with the publisher’s U.S. books, but should be acquiring new books by the end of the year. Here’s more from Johnson:

Our classics line, The Art of the Novella, has always done well in Britain, but sales of our other U.S. titles have grown explosively there over the last few years, some of the best writing we’ve published lately has been by British writers, such as Lars Iyer and Lee Rourke; we’re winning British book awards, I hear more and more from British booksellers and media about our books … And so rather than simply expand our US company’s operations here, we wanted to form a distinctly British company that would respond more particularly to that kind of welcome. It’s not a branch, nor an office. It’s a distinct, British company.

A number of publishers announced new hires and promotions this week.

Tracy Behar has been promoted to executive editor and VP at Little, Brown and Company. She has been with this imprint for eight years.

Lania Adler now holds the title of vice president and senior director of marketing at HarperOne.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 6-3 opinion that “ first sale doctrine” applies to books purchased overseas.

The court decided that Supap Kirtsaeng did not violate copyright when he purchased textbooks overseas to sell to friends and families in the United States. Textbook publisher Wiley had sued Kirtsaeng for reselling these books.

You can read the complete Supreme Court decision at this PDF link. First sale doctrine applies to the sale of copyrighted goods, letting the buyer’s copy be “resold or otherwise redistributed without the copyright owner’s authorization.”

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We showed you Weldon Owen’s satirical How a Book Is Born infographic. But HarperCollins and author Lauren Oliver have created a video series showing how a book actually gets made–to pull ”back the curtain about the publishing process” for children, teachers, and aspiring writers.

We’ve embedded the first installment of this seven-part series above–what do you think? Several publishing executives and Oliver herself discuss all the behind-the-scenes details that went into creating the hit middle-grade novel, The Spindlers.

Depending on the viewers’ response, the publisher could make more of these videos featuring different authors and genres. Follow this link to view all the videos.

Evatopia has launched an imprint called Evatopia Press. This new venture specializes in acquiring new-adult and young-adult books for a female audience.

The imprint re-released Lizzy Ford‘s Dark Summer this month as its inaugural title. Ford will write three more books for this series over the next two years. Here’s more from the release:

The theory behind this program is that social media marketing is most effective when it provides consumers with interesting and useful information without blatant self-promotion. Authors in the Evatopia Press family will work together to cross-promote their books and each other through social media marketing and other platforms, which will even include printing excerpts of each other’s work within their own novels. The program works because of Evatopia Press’ specific genre focus, ensuring that each author’s books will appeal to their already developed fan base.

The Association of American Publishers criticized Amazon’s bid for “closed generic Top-Level Domains” (gTLD), an attempt for “exclusive” control of the new .book domain name.

Click here to read a PDF copy of the letter. Nine different companies have applied to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for access to the undoubtedly useful Internet domain name extension, including Amazon and R.R. Bowker.

AAP general counsel Allan Adler explained in a letter to ICANN:

In short, Amazon makes clear that it seeks exclusive control of the “.book” string solely for its own business purposes, notwithstanding the broad range of other companies, organizations and individuals that have diverse interests in the use of this gTLD or its second-level domains by others or themselves. AAP believes that ICANN approval of such an application would not be in the public interest.

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The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has collected birthday wishes for the legendary author, Judy Blume.

The Giver author Lois Lowry, former National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature Jon Scieszka and Internet Girls series writer Lauren Myracle all contributed messages.

Scieszka and Myracle shared photos of themselves posing with Blume. Read all the messages on the NCAC blog.

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In an essay in the Independent Book Publishers Association’s monthly Independent magazine, Ingram content acquisition VP and IBPA board of directors member Kelly Gallagher showed why small and medium-sized publishers are “the industry’s healthiest and fastest-growing segment.”

The article noted that small publishers (the presses that need fewer than ten ISBNs every year year) have increased 69 percent between 2006 and 2011. Bowker now counts almost 21,000 of these scrappy publishers.

What do you think? Is this rapidly expanding segment the future of the publishing industry?

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Algonquin Books, a division of Workman Publishing, will be launching a children’s books imprint called Algonquin Young Readers. This venture has been in development since 2011.

This new imprint will publish both fiction and narrative nonfiction titles for readers ages seven to seventeen. Veteran children’s publishing executive Elise Howard will serve as editor and publisher.

Algonquin Books publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt gave this comment in the release: “This is an exciting step toward Algonquin’s future, a logical way for us to grow while still keeping our adult list small. We’ve been thinking about attracting younger readers for a long time and now the time is clearly right. More thrilling, though, the books themselves are extraordinary, just dazzling.”