How The Penguin Random House Antitrust Case Could Impact Your Book Reading Habits |
By: Reily McGee
A few weeks ago, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the book publisher Penguin Random House for their attempts to buy out Simon & Schuster for $2.2 Billion dollars. If the acquisition went through, it would consolidate the big five book publishers down to four, extending Penguin Random House’s lead over the competition as the world’s largest book publisher.
The arguments being present by the Department of Justice currently are unusual for an antitrust case. In most antitrust cases, the argument presented is that the given product being monopolized, in this case books, would go up in price from lack of competition. But, because of the rise of Kindle and eReading, book prices are fairly locked in place in their current marketplace. The issue the DOJ is presenting is one of author compensation. Book publishers are struggling to cope with the changing landscape of the book world. Attracting people to reading books continues to become more difficult as the world of storytelling evolves into audio platforms and digital games. The result of this merger, as stated in documents provided to the court, show Penguin Random House plans to steadily decrease the amount of profit share they give back to the authors of their books. This could further escalate celebrity authors being able to survive in the industry whilst small authors struggle to break into the world of publishing.
This would mostly be driven by publishers having a greater hand in the industry. If there are only a few places to turn to, many agents and authors may struggle to hold onto all media rights, being forced to sell them to the publishers. This includes text, television, film, and social media where publishers will take larger and larger chunks of funding from for themselves.
On the other hand, when Penguin bought Random House in their last mega merger, not much changed in this realm. The DOJ is right to be skeptical but Amazon, Inc. will still have the largest monopoly on book sales which will keep the prices of books the same, hence the arguments focusing on author compensation.
If the merger goes through, we will likely not see any shifts in the price of books. But whether we see a change in which authors are on the shelves remains to be seen. One thing is for certain though, we currently have many books by many authors and hope to maintain that at all of our locations throughout the Northern Denver Metropolitan area. Consider visiting Grandrabbits to find a book that’s right for you! |