In 2020, the publisher Penguin Random House -the largest in the world- announced the purchase of another very thriving label and its competition Simon & Schuster. In November 2021, the United States government, through the Department of Justice, decided to block said merger and initiate a lawsuit to prevent the absorption. The motives? If in the United States, the publishing market is already quite concentrated, a merger of such magnitude monopolizes the industry, reduces free competition and harms authors and readers.
In the words of the US State itself -as quoted by the AFP news agency-, the opposition is to “excessive influence over authors and the works that are published and the amount of money that is paid to authors.”
As a star witness, they chose none other than Stephen Kingwho last Tuesday spoke for almost an hour about the transformation of the sector throughout his long and prolific career.
“I’ve been in the book business for about 50 years. When I started, there were literally hundreds of editorials. One by one they were taken over by others or went out of business,” said King, the 75-year-old author behind works like “The glow”, “Carry”, “Misery”, “Item”, “After” and many more, who for years published their books with Simon & Schuster.
Although this is not the case with King, because in the situation of a writer like him the merger does not disadvantage him, the writer did consider that as publishing concentration progresses, the effects of that monopoly fall on the writers, who “love It’s getting harder and harder to find enough money to live on. And he lamented that his colleagues work in “a difficult world.”
According to his intervention, at the center of the issue are the advance payments that publishers offer their authors before they write their works. Those who are starting out do not enjoy the same right, while in the case of best-selling writers -as is your case-, publishers compete and sometimes surpass each other.
King recounted that his first check in 1974 was for $2,500 per “Carry”, whose sales skyrocketed after its film adaptation. Then came other hits like “The glow” and at the time offered his publisher to reserve his next three books for $2 million, but the publisher refused “with a laugh.” What did the horror master do? He went to the competition and continued to alternate publishing his books with well-known publishers, while continuing to edit some of his books for more independent labels.
However, mindful of his “privileged” status, he acknowledged that he was “lucky to be able to afford it, to stop following my bank account, to stop following my heart,” said King, who has been taking a position on issues of social and political reality for years. , and in 2012 he was one of the advocates for higher taxation of the wealthiest, including his own wealth.
The trial will continue for two weeks and is an important precedent to put a stop to editorial concentration, since an industry in few hands dominates the rules of the game and defines which authors are published and which are not, as well as the value chains, rights authorship and circulation of works.
Source: Ambito
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