![]() That is because so many resources are devoted to helping those books succeed.īROOKE GLADSTONE So the publisher's case, you said they had presented their industry in a, quote, tenderly drawn portrait of gamblers, guessers and dreamers sung by Kris Kristofferson. The books that are making publishing houses most of their money. The works that we embrace as the next big thing. It's really that the type of book that that advanced level symbolizes is the type of book that would benefit from things that only the Big Five or the Big Four can really provide, which is reputation, breadth of marketing, breadth of distribution, relationships with librarians and booksellers. KATY WALDMAN I mean, they may do that, too, although actually, if you think about that advance paid out over a series of years, I'm not sure that they're living entirely so large. And then separately, he made a really big contribution to the government's case that authors behave differently at $250,000 advance or more cut off.īROOKE GLADSTONE Point, they buy expensive bottles of champagne? That is what the GUPPI is trying to elucidate. KATY WALDMAN He was basically predicting what share of the market combined. His most memorable contribution to the argument that publishers were focused on a top seller market that you could predict and plan for was something called the GUPPI Index that stands for gross upward pricing pressure index. And so, you know, in a risk averse industry, if there are fewer companies able to take that kind of wager because they're wealthy enough, because they're dominant enough, the size of the advances will go down.īROOKE GLADSTONE So the government found an expert witness, data scientist Nicholas Hill, who's taken part in past antitrust cases. KATY WALDMAN You can look at the data, you can look at past successes, and you can anticipate that something may do well, but you can't know for sure. The DOJ is basically saying you have particular books that are going to make you most of your money and you know which ones those books are going to be because those are the books that you pay the highest advances to.īROOKE GLADSTONE It strikes me that if everybody knows what's going to be the bestseller, as the DOJ contends, wouldn't that drive the prices of those books up? The DOJ's argument is basically that that is going to result in fewer titles being published and also less diverse books being published. KATY WALDMAN So the idea is that if there are fewer buyers for book contracts, the authors are going to have to lower their prices and they're going to get lower advances. She says the prosecution based its argument on projections that both writers and readers would suffer if the Big Five: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon and Schuster and Hachette shrank to only four. Katy Waldman writes about books and culture for The New Yorker and has been covering the case. We're now in limbo awaiting the verdict expected to drop later this fall. According to the prosecution's pretrial brief. The resulting Colossus Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster is projected to dominate nearly half of the market for the industry's anticipated bestsellers. īROOKE GLADSTONE This case could potentially transform the landscape of books in America. ![]() NEWS REPORT King told the court the suggestion the two companies would still bid against each other for books is as ridiculous as the idea that a husband and wife would compete to buy the same house. Deeply suspicious of publishers vows to keep competition alive. ![]() ![]() He stood as a government witness in defense of less established writers. As for the prosecution, there were lawyers, experts and even a sneaker clad, self-styled freelance writer named Stephen King. Speaking for the defense were publishing's biggest CEOs and the mega agents who like the system just as it is. īROOKE GLADSTONE The trial was a three-week peek into the heads of the industry's leading lights and their critics, each wielding terms like backlist, book-tok and anticipated top sellers, where publishers invest most of their hopes and resources. NEWS REPORT It would make two of the largest publishers into one mega publisher. NEWS REPORT The Justice Department has sued to block the $2.2 billion merger, which eould reduce the big five U.S. Penguin,] Random House and Simon and Schuster. The goal to stop the merging of two publishing giants. It's also one of the first high profile antitrust cases the Justice Department has brought since President Biden appointed Lina Khan, a prominent critic of big tech to the Federal Trade Commission. Right now, we're waiting for a verdict in the biggest antitrust trial to hit the publishing industry in decades. BROOKE GLADSTONE This is On the Media, I'm Brooke Gladstone. ![]()
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