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The proposed merger of Penguin and Random House has been given the go-ahead by the European Commission. Brussels said the merged business - which will be the world's largest book publisher - would not raise competition concerns, because it will "face several strong competitors".

When you see a merger between two giants in a declining industry, it can look like the financial version of a couple having a baby to save a marriage. At least that was my thought when Random House and Penguin, two of the world’s six largest publishers, announced that they were coming together last month. Ever since Amazon began ripping apart the book business, the largest houses have been looking for a way to fight back. If this merger is any indication, they have chosen an old-fashioned strategy: Size.

Education and publishing group Pearson Plc and Germany's Bertelsmann said on Monday they have agreed to combine their publishing divisions, Penguin and Random House, with Bertelsmann holding the upper hand in the new entity.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the parent company of HarperCollins, is exploring a cash bid for Pearson PLC’s Penguin book division, a step that could ignite a bidding war for Penguin as the publishing industry begins to move toward consolidation.

Google and U.S. publishers have settled a longstanding dispute over Google's book-scanning project. A lawsuit filed by authors remains, though, leaving the project in question.

Cheaper e-books from three publishers could return within one to three months, in the wake of a judge's approval this week of the antitrust settlement between the publishers and the Justice Department.

Three major U.S. e-book publishers have agreed to a deal that will see them pay a significant sum for alleged e-book price-fixing. Connecticut State Attorney General George Jepsen yesterday announced that he, "along with 54 attorneys general in other states, districts, and U.S. territories," have signed a $69 million deal with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster (which is owned by CBS, the same company that publishes CNET) to settle antitrust claims over an alleged conspiracy to artificially inflate e-book prices.

A New York federal court has ordered a rare default judgment in favor of John Wiley & Sons, one of the world’s largest book publishers. Robert Carpenter from Poughkeepsie, New York, has been ordered to pay the publisher $7,000 in damages for sharing a copy of “WordPress All-in-One For Dummies” on BitTorrent. According to Judge William Pauley, the man is guilty of both copyright and trademark infringement.

Google has reached a deal with a publishing group to allow the scanning and publishing of books online - ending a six-year legal battle. A court ruled in 2009 that the search company was in breach of copyright infringement after it digitised a number of French books.

Barnes & Noble told the U.S. Justice Department that a proposed price-fixing settlement with several major book publishers will hurt the company and consumers.