As 2022 began, the U.S. trade publishing business was dominated by what has been called the Big Five-Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan. Read more
There are, at this moment, still five US commercial book publishers of mega-size. Penguin Random House is the biggest; HarperCollins is 2nd; and Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster round out the Big Five. Read more
It doesn't sound like a Pulitzer winner, but "U.S. v. Bertelsmann SE, 21-cv-02886" is a cracking read in the niche genre of antitrust litigation. This is the U.S. Department of Justice's surprise lawsuit against Penguin Random House's $2.2 billion agreement to buy rival publisher Simon & Schuster almost a year ago.
The Department of Justice's attempt to halt Penguin Random House's acquisition of Simon & Schuster finds support within an industry already burned by bad trends. "Obviously every agent is thrilled that the wheels might be grinding to a halt on this," one insider says.
The biggest trade publishers continue to get larger: Hachette Book Group has entered into a "binding commitment" to acquire one of the industry's largest and most distinct independent publishers, Workman Publishing. HBG, backed by its parent company, Lagardère, is paying $240 million for Workman, which had sales of $134 million last year. Read more
In a presentation that was part of Credit Suisse's 23rd annual communications conference, HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray said he sees no signs of consumer book spending slowing down in 2021-nor does he see the trend toward greater consolidation of the publishing industry cooling. Read more
No one in the industry was surprised last week when HarperCollins emerged as the buyer for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media, the sixth-largest trade publisher in the U.S. Read more
Jokes circulated online when, in 2013, Penguin and Random House merged: would the new mega-publisher, which became the world's biggest trade publishing group, be known as Random Penguin? Penguin House? Read more
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. Read more
'We've only been publishing for three years, having started just before the pandemic did... The digital vision we had formulated was vindicated and validated by the pandemic - but that doesn't mean it's not still relevant. As we grow, we're doing a bit more print, but we'll continue to adapt and survive.
In 2017, we learned that Eleanor Oliphant was completely fine. As you may recall, there was a bestselling novel all about it, titled, appropriately enough, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Soon, a wave of syntactically similar book titles followed, all involving simple sentences containing the female protagonist's name: Evvie Drake started over. Florence Adler swam forever. Read more
Kate Clanchy's memoir about teaching won the Orwell prize. Then, a year later, it became the centre of a storm that would engulf the lives of the author, her critics and dozens of people in the book trade. So what happened?
Writers buy plotting books by the dozen and do their best to create the plottiest plot that the world has ever seen. They stuff their novels with action-packed sword fights, explosions, fist fights, and screaming matches. Plot points, pinch points, and grandiose climaxes abound. Read more
In my 15 years of teaching English to hundreds of children in various parts of England, there are four books that have been on the curriculum in every school I have found myself in, with no exception: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Animal Farm by George Orwell, An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. Read more
The Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo says she fears that publishers' interest in black authors may be only a "trend or fashion" that could wane unless the business becomes more diverse. Read more
Waterstones Children's Laureate Cressida Cowell has revealed the "transformative" impact on the pilot primary schools taking part in her "Life-changing Libraries" initiative, including an increase in a love of reading, motivation towards learning, well-being and feelings of self-worth. Read more
Every writer has had it drilled into them at some point. It's one of the most familiar bits of writing advice there is: "Write what you know." And it makes so much sense-it worked for John Grisham and Kathy Reichs, right?
Another May has come and gone without BookExpo or any other in-person, industrywide spring show taking its place. As the pandemic eases, more and more publishing and publishing-related conferences, meetings, and fairs are moving from online-only events to either in-person or hybrid affairs. Read more
Meanwhile, I was working on my column for Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/. The theme: influencing readers-beyond BookTok. I certainly didn't expect to find a point of intersection with these two shows. Did I? Bear with me.