On August 2, Stephen King impressed the court with his case against the merger of major publishers Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.
In November last year, the U.S. Justice Department blocked Penguin Random House from purchasing Simon & Schuster for $2.175 billion arguing it would harm authors. The New York publishing industry is currently dominated by the “big five” that often land their authors the best-selling spots. Those are Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan.
Before the merge was proposed, the notion of solidarity between publishing presses had been proposed to help compete with Amazon, Frank Foer wrote in The Atlantic in November 2020.
Jonathan Karp, the CEO of Simon & Schuster rejects that the merger will have a negative impact on the competition of manuscript acquisition. The two publishers assured that despite the merger, they would continue competing for manuscripts.
But King does not agree despite loyally publishing his novels with Simon & Schuster. “You might as well say you’re going to have a husband and wife bidding against each other for the same house,” he said, per the AP. “It would be sort of very gentlemanly and sort of, ‘After you’ and ‘After you.’’”
King also highlighted that it is becoming more difficult for writers to make money, and the merger he fears is only going to make it harder for new writers.
Words by Georgia McInnes
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