2 May 2022
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. Before the Penguin-Random House merger in 2013, that group was referred to by PW as the Big Six; if a court battle between PRH and the Department of Justice allows PRH to acquire S&S, a deal that the government blocked in November 2021, it could shrink to the Big Four in late 2022.
