The best-selling author Stephen King has testified in court against Bertelsmann. The Gütersloh-based media group had announced that it would buy the American publisher Simon & Schuster for $2.2 billion and merge it with its Penguin Random House publishing group, which had already emerged from a major merger. If this were to succeed, there would only be four instead of the current five large publishing houses in the already highly concentrated US market. Penguin Random House is already the world’s largest book publisher, with Simon & Schuster in fourth place in the English-speaking world. According to Stephen King, a merger of these two giants would be “bad for competition”. King, author of global hits like The Shining and It, is publishing his books today through Scribner, a Simon & Schuster publishing company.
King spoke out for the side of the US Department of Justice, which is suing against Bertelsmann’s purchase intentions because a merger of the major publishers would lead to a monopoly. That could harm the industry and thus also the authors and readers. The competition in bidding competitions for large book projects could decrease, the advances for authors would be lower. Then even fewer people than before would decide what is published, King said before the federal court in Washington. Diversity in literature is lost. Ever since the beginning of his career, he has observed that fewer and fewer publishers can keep up with the big ones.
Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, on the other hand, explain that the takeover would lead to additional investments in publications and a simplification of distribution channels, which would be beneficial for readers and authors.