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| The Publishing Industry if the Big Six becomes the Big Four |
This will drop the 'Big Six' to the ‘Big Five'.
If this
merger is approved it will result in the world's biggest and most formidable
publisher - at least based on past sales figures.
AND, rumor
has it that in order to stay in the fray, Simon and Schuster and
HarperCollins are contemplating a possible merger, further consolidating the
traditional publishing industry into the ‘Big Four’ --- The ‘Big Three’ would
soon follow, I’m almost sure, since Hachette and Macmillan would want to keep
up with the Joneses.
Now, WHY
are these old cobwebbed collaborators massing their artillery?
Apparently
the traditional publishing folks see this merging as a way to gain some
strategic advantage over Amazon.
Amazon!!
Hell, they’re no problem --- I’ve been told by
many professional publishing ‘pros’ that Amazon is no real threat to ‘big publishing’.
In fact, scuttlebutt on the street (what street is another story) is that traditional
publishers are doing just fine and have nothing to fear from digital
and the likes of Amazon --- This in spite of my best efforts to suggest or
educate otherwise :)
Fact is, Amazon dominates the retail end of the
book business and is expanding into the publishing end at a rather fast pace
--- And traditional publishers are merging in the hopes of having enough clout
to maintain high prices on their books sold through Amazon, Apple and other
tech companies.
But, is merging diminishing their own
publishing sector by decreasing healthy competition instead of empowering them
to manhandle the likes of Amazon?
Yours truly thinks so; they appear to be cutting
off their publishing nose to spite their fearful face!
This is what
the publishing industry will look like if the Big Six become the Big Four
News Corp.’s HarperCollins and CBS’s Simon
& Schuster are
discussing a possible merger, according to The Wall Street Journal (paywall),
in another move toward consolidation in the book publishing industry.
The talks follow the combination of Pearson’s Penguin and Bertelsmann’sRandom House, which will
create the world’s largest publisher, two-and-a-half times bigger by sales than
its nearest rival, Lagardère’s Hachette.
That deal is still awaiting approval from antitrust regulators in the United
States and Europe, who might look at something like the chart above and balk at
evidence that competition in the industry is dwindling.
Our chart includes the
so-called “Big Six” major trade publishers, ranked by trade and consumer sales
in 2011, according to research firm Outsell.
They will become the Big Five by mid-2013, if Penguin Random House is approved.
HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster could make it the Big Four. And
if Lagardere feels compelled to defend its territory, we could even
be looking at the Big Three in short order.
