The Big Five will soon become The Big Four or at least they are trying to do so. The department of Justice is trying to stop the merger to avoid a monopoly over the publishing world, which will result in control over what is published (and what becomes best seller), how much authors are paid, making it more difficult for first time authors to get published, among other issues. On the other hand others argue that there will be diversification within the merged companies by splitting into smaller units of publishing, like specialized branches. is that my impression or no one is taking seriously the myriads of small publishing houses? Is that due to the power of buying created by the brand power of the big publishing houses?
Seriously? Who are these "others"? They all have specialized subdivisions now. How is merging two of the Big Five going to result in a proliferation of smaller subsidiaries?
hahahahahaha, I seriously had no idea or forgot I had any idea at all!!! wait, is that old news that Stephen King has already testified too? and where do you get your publishing news? I need some pointers...obviously
Competition concerns scuppered the Random Penguin merger.. it now looks as though S&S are to be sold to private equity group KKR... supposedly they are to continue to operate independently https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66434690
$1.6 billion, huh? That seems low. Cheapest football team in the US is worth twice that. No ad or broadcasting revenue, I guess. But it probably doesn't cost too much in overhead to run a publishing house, relatively speaking. They only employ 1600 people, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
