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We'd like to thank all of you who attended our "New Think/Old Publishers" panel two Sundays ago, and apologize for the confusion over the purpose of our visit to SXSW. We are particularly grateful to all of you who stayed to share your ideas, concerns and, most important, your frustrations regarding access of information and connecting with our publicity groups and authors.

We heard all of you who chose to speak up ­ at the panel and online ­ and are taking your suggestions seriously back here in New York.
 
Our goal in Austin was to open up communication between the blogging community and our book publicists, and begin to flesh out best practices for making our very diverse lists of books and authors available to you.  This continues to be our goal-- and to that end, we view the SXSW panel as just the first of what we hope will be a number of conversations.  In the coming months, we are going to host some online forums to establish clearer ground rules for how we can best work with the blogging community (including such basic concerns as when you need advance copies of a book in order to cover it), and create direct lines of access to Penguin's various marketing and publicity groups.  This will not be a conversation about the greater publishing business model ­that's another conversation for others in the industry ­ but a brass tacks discussion tailored to help us better serve you. 
 
Our first forum will be scheduled for the week of April 20 (date to come), and an agenda of subjects for discussion will be forthcoming. We hope you'll join us.
 
If you would like to be invited to participate in Penguin's online discussions, please send your email address and suggested publicity/marketing questions, to online@us.penguingroup.com.

Penguin Online, SXSW, Penguin Bloggers, Penguin Books