Penguin Random House & Simon & Schuster Merger Blocked

For the past few months on and off I’ve heard about a merger being proposed between the publishing giants Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. Yesterday a federal judge blocked the merger from happening. According to Deadline.com WGA West considers it  a tremendous victory for authors who, like screen and television writers, try to make a living selling their work to powerful conglomerates. The antitrust division of the USA Department of Justice also opposed the merger claiming that it would have reduced competition, decreased author compensation, diminished the breadth, depth, and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy. I remember reading in the past Bestselling author Stephen King was also against the merger between the publishing companies.

Penguin Random House who was hoping for this merger to take place was of course disappointed with the judge’s decision to block the merger. The quote from them says, We strongly disagree with the decision, which is an unfortunate setback for readers and authors, and we will immediately request an expedited appeal. As we demonstrated throughout the trial, the Department of Justice’s focus on advances to the world’s best-paid authors instead of consumers or the intense competitiveness in the publishing sector runs contrary to its mission to ensure fair competition. We believe this merger will be precompetitive, and we will continue to work closely with Paramount and Simon & Schuster on next steps.

From someone looking from the outside in, frankly this seems as though Penguin Random House wanted to be a monopoly. It reminds me of when Disney bought 20^th Century Fox and then was looking to buy Universal. Thank goodness Disney did not buy Universal. If this merger would have hurt authors then I’m glad that the merger did not go ahead. Authors who write beautiful stories sending them out into the world, deserve to make a living like the rest of us.

For a future piece in the miscellaneous section of my blog, I want to ask a few authors opinions on what they think about the judge blocking the merger whether in their opinions it was a good thing or not. I love talking about other book related topics whether its controversial or a celebrity writing a memoir or anything having to do with the publishing company etc. There’s just amazing topics to discuss.