The marriage between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster there's nothing to do. To pronounce (metaphorically) the sentence was not a character of Manzonian memory but the US federal judge Florence Y.Pan who decided to block the maxi merger worth 2,2 billion of dollars that would have created the largest publishing group in the world.
Penguin-Simon & Schuster: the reasons for No to marriage
The US judge has in fact established that Simon & Schuster cannot be acquired by Penguin Random House.
The matter ended up in the courtroom last August after one lawsuit filed by the Justice Department American. According to the Biden administration, in fact, the marriage between two of the largest US publishing houses would damage competitiveness on the publishing market by creating a monopsony, that is to say a particular market situation characterized by the presence of a single buyer against a plurality of suppliers, who in this case would be the authors. Simply put, if the two publishing houses merged, they would have immense power and writers would be forced to accept lower fees and more unfavorable conditions to publish their books. A reality that would especially hurt the big bestselling authors who earn more than 250 thousand dollars, who would suddenly find themselves with narrower margins.
Penguin Random House and the company that owns the group, the multinational Bertelsmann, have announced that they will appeal appeal.
The US publishing market
The two publishing houses belong together to Hachette, Macmillan and HarperCollins of the US publishing elite that controls the 90% of the entertainment book market. Had Penguin and Simon & Schuster merged, they would have clearly outpaced the other three rivals. The first, we remember, publishes authors of the caliber of Zadie Smith and Danielle Stelle. The second names like Stephen King, Jennifer Weiner and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Its Stephen King, who had also testified during the trial, cheered the judge's decision: “I am pleased that Judge Florence Pan has blocked the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. The proposed merger has never been about readers and writers; it was about preserving (and growing) PRH's market share. In other words: $$$,” wrote the famous horror writer on Twitter.
