ViacomCBS has announced plans to sell Simon & Schuster to publishing giant Penguin Random House LLC for a whopping $2.18 billion next year.
The Authors Guild is a 109-year-old organization dedicated to advancing writers’ interests in copyright control, free expression and fair contracts. Romance Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Western Writers of America and the Horror Writers Assn. also signed the letter. The signatories argue the merger of two of the Big Five publishing houses is part of a wider effort to consolidate the entire publishing industry — including bookselling, which Amazon reigns over — and has gone too far.announced in November its plans to sell Simon & Schuster to Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House for $2.18 billion in a merger expected to be finalized this year. Its public rationale? The dominance of Amazon.
Such a massive publishing merger, the letter contends, would “lead to increased leverage and price squeezing over authors, increased concentration of power over independent retailers” and the curtailment of the diversity and quality of books available to readers. In addition, the signatories argue that because the publishing industry plays a critical role in safeguarding democracy and freedom of speech, “antimonopoly enforcement” should be “of the utmost importance.”
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