![]() Writers have found themselves with less power to negotiate the terms of their contracts than perhaps ever before, regularly being obliged to sign away their worldwide English-language rights, audio rights, even graphic novel rights all in one go. That giant is now persuading regulators to let it gulp down Simon & Schuster, one of the world’s biggest remaining publishers.Īs publishers go around gobbling up others and being gobbled up themselves, they have sought to recover losses to Amazon with gains exacted from writers and libraries. Incredibly, Penguin and Random House (the world’s two biggest trade publishers) were permitted to merge in 2013, creating a behemoth of unimaginable scale, now fully owned by private German conglomerate Bertelsmann. They can’t compete for the really big titles, so they get bought.” An increasing “bestseller” mentality contributes to the vulnerability of independent presses to being absorbed.Įven the very biggest publishers are merging with one another. This results in “a cycle so self-fulfilling it’s nearly tautological: Best sellers sell the best because they are best sellers.” As a result, according to book analyst Mike Shatzkin, “the medium-sized publishers can’t sustain themselves anymore. Mass-market retailers only stock the titles they predict will be hits, and online marketplaces amplify the books that are shifting fastest. As Stoller puts it, “it’s not fair that authors must sell on the terms laid down by increasingly powerful publishers, but this dynamic is driven by the far more unfair situation whereby publishers are dealing with the utterly ruthless trillion dollar powerhouse Amazon.”Īn increasing “bestseller” mentality contributes to the vulnerability of independent presses to being absorbed. Matt Stoller describes the merger as “defensive, an attempt to gain bargaining power against a monopolist bookseller.” This kind of producer integration is an understandable response to overly powerful buyers, especially since antitrust law prevents separate companies from banding together to create countervailing power.īut it causes knock-on problems for suppliers and workers downstream. The push towards “big” explains Penguin Random House’s play to absorb Simon & Schuster. Publishers have tried to respond to Amazon’s power by doing the exact same thing, accelerating their decades-long campaign of mergers and acquisitions to consolidate into an ever smaller number of bigger firms all trying to publish ever bigger books (like the memoirs of Barack and Michelle Obama, for which Penguin Random House advanced an astonishing $65 million). Amazon founder Jeff Bezos came up with the slogan “Get Big Fast” because he knew size was crucial to exacting ever lower prices from suppliers.
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