Forum - View topicNEWS: ViacomCBS Sells Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13550 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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From deadline.com/2020/11/viacomcbs-to-sell-simon-schuster-to-random-house-for-close-to-2-2-billion-1234621745:
This is rich and somewhat hypocritical seeing as how News Corp owns another dominant book publisher, Harper Collins. Also, with News Corp owning a number of new media, if they sold news companies and publishers for various billions, I think that statement would seem a bit hypocritical. |
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JackOfNoTrades
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It may be hypocritical, but does that mean the statement is WRONG? Of course not. Anyone with a basic understanding of the publishing industry can tell you that this deal, if it goes through, will create a monolith the likes of which would cripple the book industry for life. This merger NEEDS to be prevented and investigated as a potential monopoly. On that, we can all agree. |
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Nate148
Posts: 466 |
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It will thou because viacomCBS is dieing like warner is right and so what the big five become the big four not much of change seeing as the system is broke.
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Triltaison
 Posts: 723 |
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I somehow missed ViacomCBS owning S&S before. That is most definitely a concerning merger, though I wonder if digital distribution is also affected. I've never been clear if the same distributors for the physical books also take part in digital distribution when manga are involved.
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Q4000
Posts: 44 |
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@Kadmos1 Them calling this 'antitrust behavior' is not wrong or hypocritical. What would be hypocritical is if he were to have said that and then his company was also an interested party to acquire S&S.
Anyway, who's gonna buy a publishing house if not a company who already has a stake in the publishing industry? This is common behavior in any industry, unless a company is eyeing to expand to new ventures. I wonder what Macmillan and Hachette has to say about this. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9835 Location: Virginia |
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It is actually more complicated than which publishing company has the biggest market share. The 800 pound gorilla in this equation is Amazon. They have a near monopoly on physical book sales, a large part of digital sales and are going into publishing. They currently are to some extent telling publishing companies what they can charge for books. It may take a mammoth publisher to be able to negotiate with them as equals.
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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Aren't these publishers all kind of mini-monopolies already? After all, they're not really competitors, since they sell completely different books. It's so unfair and anti-consumer that they just pay authors for exclusive licenses, instead of having multiple companies selling the same books and competing to see who has the best paper quality, the prettiest cover art, or the most aesthetically-pleasing text choices. But now, thanks to all that phony competition, there's so many publishers and the market's so fragmented that you have to spend thousands of dollars just to get even half of all the books out there.
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10420 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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That's not how a monopoly is defined. A monopoly is when one company controls all the competing products/services, or the only product/service in a category. Books that are similar in genre and target demographic compete with each other, and therefore the publishers and distributors of those books are competing. SS and Random House are competitors at the distribution level. They compete for share of store shelves, and for consumer dollars with very similar products (similar to Coke & Pepsi). Exclusivity is not the same as monopoly, and while it can be an anti-consumer concern, it usually isn't. Exclusivity is extremely popular throughout all industries, and it generally doesn't lead to anti-competitive behavior because there is still competition between similar products. Exclusivity doesn't give the distributors nearly as much ability to dictate terms as a monopoly would. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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I wonder if they'll still keep two separate brand names to maintain the illusion of choice in the manga marketplace or if it'll reduce down to only one moniker.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9835 Location: Virginia |
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@Mr. sickVisionz
From the article:
All the major publishers have multiple imprints. That allows them to use different brands for different genres. |
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Twage
Posts: 356 Location: North Bergen, NJ |
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You misunderstand the system here. PRH is Kodansha, Vertical, Dark Horse, and Seven Seas's distributor, and Simon & Schuster is Viz's distributor. All those companies are independently owned. They just pay a fee to the distributor so that they don't have to maintain their own sales teams and warehouses. If they wanted to, they could walk away and either build out their own sales and distribution capabilities or use another distributor (there are many). So PRH couldn't "reduce" these brands down if they wanted to. They're independent publishers. |
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