Reed Elsevier is selling its Harcourt division.  Information World Review asks:

Has Reed handed Thomson an Education bonus?

The rush to exit the Education publishing market – once so lucrative but now so uncertain and volatile – has turned into a stampede.

…maybe Davis [Reed's CEO] is inadvertently putting around an idea that will have great appeal to private equity firms – two significant players in the same market will have lots of potential overhead overlap. Bring the two assets together, ruthlessly strip out overhead costs, and sweat the business for the two or three good years it has ahead of it (by Davis’ own calculations, by the way)…

…by entering the market now, Reed Elsevier may have, in effect, helped drive up the price of the Thomson Learning business.

Unless, of course, insiders at Reed know that Thomson is too advanced with negotiations to benefit from the latest development. Then, Davis’ words would be like daggers.

The rest of this post can be found at the IWR blog.  The idea of a “volatile” education publishing market seems like a prophecy coming true – is the market really moving away from high-priced print textbooks?

CNN This Is Money adds: “From Einstein’s publisher to the the horse-racing ‘bible’ and lads’ magazines, publishing assets are flooding on to the market.”  It discusses the sale of Springer Science (a “specialist publisher of science and business media”) but I wonder if it’d affect the price of the Science & Math side of Thomson Higher Ed.

I recall an exchange between me and a coworker, when we heard of the sale:

Me: “I’m reminded of the Chinese proverb: ‘May you live in interesting times.’”
Him: “I believe that’s a curse, not a proverb.”