Stephen King Testifies in Publishing House Merger Trial
Stephen King testified yesterday for the Department of Justice in its antitrust trial regarding a merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. He volunteered to testify. “I came because I think that consolidation is bad for competition,” King said. [Because of the current state of the industry], “It becomes tougher and tougher for writers to find money to live on.” The two publishers claim that they will continue to bid for books separately (i.e. maintain “competition”), but King rebutted with this: “You might as well say you’re going to have a husband and wife bidding against each other for the same house… It would be sort of very gentlemanly and sort of after you, and after you.”
I will be honest: I rarely (if ever) pay attention to who publishes the books I read. That said, I am currently reading a middle grade book published by Levine Querido and a translated novel published by New Directions. I’m actually a little surprised because I imagine the majority of books I read {checks back at my last few posts…} would be put out by the Big 5 (Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins Publishing, Macmillan, and Hachette). FYI, even if something appears to be published by a “small press” (for instance, Elin Hilderbrand’s publisher, Little, Brown), there’s a very good chance it’s an imprint of one of these five.
Anyhoo, all that to say…I’d argue that the majority of us pay very little attention to the origin stories of our “media.” (Guilty as charged.) I’ve said before that I’d love to hear Guy Raz do a How I Built This podcast episode on a publishing company. (He *has* done one on Powell’s Books.) But now that Matt and I are watching Ken Burns’ documentary on Country Music (yeehaw, so good!), I’m going to dream big: Ken, will you show us how these Big 5 publishers have come to be and how — whether we recognize it or not — the multitudes of books they release have shaped American thought? Thx.
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