The biggest antitrust trial to hit the publishing industry in recent memory kicked off this week, and today the King of horror had his day in court.
On Monday, Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the country, entered a federal courthouse in Washington to defend its deal to acquire Simon & Schuster, the fourth largest, against a Department of Justice emboldened under President Joe Biden to enforce antitrust laws aggressively.
If Judge Florence Y. Pan rules in the publisher’s favor, the merger would drastically change the publishing world, whittling down the number of major publishing houses, known as the Big Five, to four. The question Pan is deciding is whether, as the DOJ argues, this will curtail competition and suppress book advances for high-earning authors.
