Tom Clancy Inks Pact

Pearson plc today announced a long-term strategic agreement with best-selling author Tom Clancy and his Red Storm Entertainment and Virtus Corporation.

The Penguin Group, a Pearson subsidiary, will partner with Red Storm to market RS's multiplayer online games and other mult-media products.

As part of the agreement, Putnam Berkley, Tom Clancy's longtime publisher in the US (and now part of Pearson's Penguin Group) will obtain the global English language rights to two major novels which will be published in England by Penguin UK.

Red Storm has four titles in development. The first, Politika, a multiplayer strategy game about power struggles in the former Soviet Union, is expected this fall. Clancy's new novel of the same name will be bundled with the game.

Mindscape, a subsidiary of Pearson, will distribute Red Storm's retail products, and Headland Digital Media, the online division of Mindscape, will develop online software distribution strategies.