Miscellany

By Cheryl Morgan

Just in case anyone hasn’t heard, the good news is that the Office of Fair Trading has referred the proposed takeover of Ottakar’s by Waterstone’s to the Competition Commission. The bad news is that they didn’t pay much attention to the complaints of authors and publishers — their primary concern was consumer issues. However, this does mean that nothing will happen for about 6 months while the Competition Commission makes its enquiry. If you have a local Ottakar’s you should go and support it between now and then.

Kevin headed off to SMOFcon earlier this month and came back with some news on the current Worldcon bids. It would seem that the Columbus bid for 2008 is not going well. They were not at Interaction, and they have not turned up at SMOFcon either. Joni Dashoff (of Philadelphia) did her best to represent them, but the signs are not good. Shame.

The Chicago and Denver bids for 2008, and the Kansas City and Montreal bids for 2009, all seem to be moving along nicely. Who was it said that No Zone would inevitably result in all bids being uncontested?