The Bigger the Publishers, the Blander the Books

When the Department of Justice interviewed me in late 2012 as part of its investigation into the pending merger of Random House and Penguin, I was both surprised and heartened—the very fact that DOJ attorneys were talking with a small publisher suggested that they understood the dark potential of such a deal. After all, the Big Six publishers at the time accounted for roughly 50 percent of American book sales, with the rest of us—independent publishers, university presses, nonprofits—having to follow the rules of the market those few Goliaths dominated. The fact that a merger between Random House (the world’s biggest trade publisher) and Penguin (the world’s second-biggest trade publisher) would result in a monopoly seemed, to me, obvious.

During my long interview with the two DOJ attorneys, I prattled on about how the big houses dominated certain publishing categories, such as literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, and how they could prevail over the supply and printing chains—and the attorneys came back to me