Publishers

The publishing industry had an unexpectedly good year in 2020, despite the many challenges created by the pandemic. In the essay below, Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch uses lessons from last year to make some educated guesses about where the industry may be heading in the near term.

There's more to authoring than conquering the blank page. Dozens of unique quirks of industry factor into the experience of a creative. If you're an aspiring writer with traditional publishing in mind, pay attention. Here's what to expect from author life:

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

Book publishing in 2020 was a story of how much an industry can change and how much it can, or wants to, remain the same.

"A lot of what has happened this year - if it were a novel, I would say that it had a little too much plot," said Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp.  Read more

Following the announcement that Penguin Random House parent company Bertelsmann won the bidding war for Simon & Schuster with a $2.2 billion offer, members of the book business and related organizations have begun to weigh in.  Read more