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America’s largest book publisher is about to grow. ViacomCBS has agreed to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for more than $ 2 billion in a deal that will create the first mega publisher.
Penguin Random House, the largest book publisher in the United States, is owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Adding Simon & Schuster, the third-largest publisher, would create a giant book, a combination that could raise antitrust concerns.
The agreement announced Wednesday includes provisions that would protect ViacomCBS in the event that authorities crush a sale. Bertelsmann would pay what is known as a termination fee if the deal doesn’t go through.
The sale of the company will profoundly reshape the publishing industry, increasingly a winner-take-all business in which the largest companies compete for brand authors and guaranteed bestsellers.
The book business has seen wave after wave of consolidation in the last decade, with the merger of Penguin and Random House in 2013, News Corp.’s purchase of romantic publisher Harlequin, and Hachette Book Group’s acquisition of Perseus Books. . This fall, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it was exploring the sale of its trade publications division and could be an attractive target for a large publisher like Macmillan or Hachette.
Simon & Schuster, which publishes prominent authors such as Stephen King, Don DeLillo, Bob Woodward, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Walter Isaacson, was long rumored as the next big company to go up for sale, and became an attractive prize for big companies. publishers looking to grow through acquisitions. It has a catalog fund of more than 30,000 titles.
Founded in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster, the company started as a crossword editor. It eventually grew into a growing company with more than 30 publishing units and a list of literary treasures such as the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.
The past year has been tumultuous for Simon & Schuster. In March, it was put on sale, just as the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit, destabilizing the economy and forcing bookstores to close, hampering an important sales channel.
In May, Carolyn Reidy, the company’s beloved CEO, died suddenly and was later replaced by Jonathan Karp, who was previously the publisher of Simon & Schuster, the company’s flagship house among dozens of labels.
The company also faced lawsuits from the Trump family and administration, as the president tried and failed to prevent the publication of critical books by John Bolton and Mary L. Trump.
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