Randy Penguin Is Shooting Blanks

Since I'm a recovering attorney, other writers asked me about the trial in U.S. v. Bertelsmann SE & CO KGaA et al.

A lot.

Except that's not how the other writers describe the above case. It's all about Randy Penguin's attempt to buy Simon & Schuster, and the Department of Justice's anti-trust lawsuit.

So, what do I really think?

After Penguin's purchase of Random House, we were down to five major book publishers left in the U.S. Only one of these five publishers was completely owned by a U.S. company--Simon & Schuster.

In my limited knowledge of anti-trust law, I figured if any of the remaining publishers (all owned by foreign interests) tried to buy Simon & Schuster, the DOJ would have something to say about the merger/buy-out. Besides, it doesn't look good if the U.S. and its precious First Amendment allows all major publishers to be owned by foreign interests.

After three weeks of witnesses, both lay and expert, the bulk of Randy Penguin's defense is "We're incompetent."

WTF?!

Basically, Randy Penguin give one line to the writers (without whom they wouldn't have a product to sell) and the opposite of that one line to Judge Florence Pan. And it sounds like Judge Pan doesn't like their Kool-Aid.

For a decent lay article on the trial, check out Vox's summary. Publishers Weekly has a detailed run down on their website.

As I write this on Thursday evening, I could not find a final ruling on the trial by Judge Pan, which is not unusual in a Federal bench case. It will be interesting to see where the final decision lands, but I'm putting my money on the DOJ.

The one thing that amused me out of all the hullabaloo was Randy Penguin trying to introduce evidence that the indies sell more books than Randy Penguin does. However, where do they get the numbers to prove it? LOL

DOJ Sues Randy Penguin over Simon & Schuster Merger

The big news in traditional publishing is the Penguin-Random House merger with Simon & Schuster. CBSViacom, Inc. has been seeking a buyer for their publishing arm for a while now, and Randy Penguin slapped $2.18B on the table and said, "SOLD!"

No, that is not a typo. B as in billion. The deal would make the Big Five into the Big Four. A lot of publishing observers have been expecting this even before CBS put their little brother up for sale.

Then the DOJ stepped in and said, "Noppity no," and they slapped an anti-trust suit on the deal.

A big part of Randy Penguin defense is "Look! Indies! We wouldn't control that much of the market." Some writers are grinding their teeth to nubs and other are laughing their asses off since the Big Five have refused to see indie publishing as even real publishing for the last ten years.

Here's my observations and thoughts on the matter:

1) Randy Penguin's defense is a back door jab at Amazon. As in PRH is trying to claim Amazon is the indies' publisher. There's a big difference between Amazon publishing a writer through one of their imprints and the rest of us to whom Amazon is one retailer (out of many around the world).

2) The DOJ is more than a little short-sighted in that they have no fucking clue of how the book industry works as a whole. They made the same mistakes with the tech industry when they were going after Microsoft thirty years ago.

3) While it's nice the DOJ is concerned about writers, the protections of anti-trust law are for the consumers. If the DOJ actually gave a fuck about the consumers, they would have tackled ebook pricing long before now.

4) Simon & Schuster are the last wholly American-owned large book publisher. You'd think CBS would be parading that around or the DOJ would. Nope, no one gives a rat's ass with $2.18B on the table.

5) How much longer will the increase in book sales be trending up? With the pandemic still ongoing, TV and movie production has been delayed and is finally getting back to a semi-normal pace. During that lull between late 2019 and late 2021, people were reading, but will they continue to do do with new video on the rise?

6) If the DOJ stops the sale, it is likely CBS will spin Simon & Schuster into its own company where it could die a slow quiet death. Unless someone with a fucking clue can rebuild it. But that would mean changing the cultural mindset of the company, which is unlikely.

So how will this all shake out? I don't know, but I'm popping some corn and melting some butter because it's going to be entertaining as hell to watch.