The government would find it very difficult to prove the “quality” of books increases or decreases based on the number of publishers, difficult to prove by any sort of objective measure, so it would be exceedingly difficult to say that this merger is definitively “bad” for consumers. Why Isn’t The Government Mentioning Consumers? So, the DOJ is claiming this merger harms workers (writers and agents) selling products (manuscripts) as opposed to consumers of those products (readers) having only one purchase option. In a monopsony, there is only one buyer for a product, and the concern is that sellers are harmed by decreased competition when they go to sell their work. In a monopoly, there is only one seller of a product, and the concern is that consumers are harmed by lack of choice in what they buy. What makes this a little complicated is that the Department of Justice isn’t claiming that this is an issue of monopoly, it’s one of monopsony, a word I’d never heard before researching this column, but let me reassure you, it would make for a board game at least as tedious and awful as Monopoly. Penguin Random House’s Argument: This merger would help us pay better advances and negotiate for retail placement in a field that’s very uncertain these days.Įveryone Who Isn’t Them: This merger would give one entity so much power that the rest of us can’t compete. Government is looking at whether this move would damage the book industry in a terrible, unfair way. ![]() Penguin Random House wants to buy Simon & Schuster, which would bring The Big 5 Publishers down to The Big 4, or maybe it'd be The Big 3 and Enormous 1 (I don’t know, what am I, a mathematician?). Which brought us a case about a remote controlled car made out of a dead raccoon. In the list of celebrity judges, qualifications-wise, I fall somewhere between Judge Judy, Judge Dredd, and Gary Busey: Pet Judge. I’ve always wanted to write a courtroom scene. The best way to spool all this out is courtroom style. ![]() Here’s the thing, though: while all the business types are talking about the merger, and while they all make it sound like the only people who really need to worry about it are rich bastards with their rich bastard book advances, this merger might have a much bigger impact on you small-time writers and readers. If you’re anything like me, you heard about Penguin Random House buying Simon & Schuster for a million billion dollars, shrugged, and went back to deciding whether your book sales for the entire last quarter could buy you one of those stupid margaritas with a beer upside down in it.
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