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The good news is that Penguin Random House can’t buy all the other publishers
Now for the bad news.
Correction: An earlier draft of this article characterized Frederic Wertham as “a far-right conspiracist.” That was incorrect. While Wertham was a conspiracist, he was not far right. I regret the error.
Last week, a US District Court blocked the merger of Penguin Random House, the world’s largest publisher, and Simon and Schuster, the world’s third-largest publisher. This is very, very good news.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/01/1133032238/judge-blocks-penguin-random-house-simon-schuster-merger
During the trial, the Penguin Random House argued it they would continue to compete with Simon and Schuster for books, bidding against them for prized titles. Stephen King punctured this absurd fiction, noting that this was like a husband and wife bidding against each other to buy the same house:
With the merger halted (pending appeal) the number of major trade publishers stands at five, which, while better than four, is still not very many. Practically speaking, it means that five corporate board-rooms are in charge of nearly all of our literature, deciding what…
