Judge blocks Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger

[hungryboson]

From ABC news: "A federal judge has blocked Penguin Random House's proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster, agreeing with the Justice Department that the joining of two of the world’s biggest publishers could “lessen competition” for “top-selling books.”
...
Penguin Random House quickly condemned the ruling, which it called “an unfortunate setback for readers and authors." In its statement Monday, the publisher said it would immediately seek an expedited appeal."

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/judge-blocks-penguin-random-house-simon-schuster-merger-92452860

Personally, I don't see how this ruling is a setback for either readers or authors.

[David VanDyke]

Whenever a big money special interest tries to claim they're looking out for the little guy, you can be sure they're lying.

[PJ Post]

Consolidating industry power into the purview of a handful of people is almost always a bad idea - for everyone else that is.

[writeway]

Good. But unfortunately, I doubt this will stand. And the "this is good for readers and authors is a joke." Not only would it be horrific for both but what about how terrible it's gonna be for the underpaid staff that already work at these places and many who most likely will be fired the moment this goes through? They really think people are stupid. If trade pubs cared about authors they'd pay them more.

[hungryboson]

PRH's remark about readers and authors is obviously disingenuous, but the expected layoffs of stuff and the smaller advances most authors will get don't seem to be the main issues.
According to the ABC article, "The Justice Department's case against Penguin Random House did not focus on market share overall or on potential price hikes for customer. The DOJ instead argued that the new company would so dominate the market for commercial books, those with author advances of $250,000 and higher, that the size of advances would go down and the number of releases would decrease."
 

[She-la-te-da]

And they call Amazon a monopoly...