Posted on March 30, 2021 at 12:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
The business side of fiction has grabbed several headlines recently.
Last week, law firm Hagens Berman said in a news release that retail booksellers would also be suing Amazon and publishers for supposed price-fixing.
A few months ago, Hagens Berman also filed a price-fixing suit against Amazon on behalf of consumers; the Digital Reader remains skeptical of these suits' prospects, but for an opposing opinion, you can read the law firm's press release.
And this week, HarperCollins announced that it will buy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade publishing division for $349 million.
According to the New York Times, this would better position HarperCollins against other member of the big five publishing companies — among the authors published by Houghton Mifflin are J.R.R. Tolkien, George Orwell, Robert Penn Warren, Philip Roth, and Lois Lowry.
Though the trade groups who have spoken out against a previous large deal — Penguin Random House’s proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster — weren’t quoted in the NY Times article, it does underscore some of the longer-term concerns with such a deal.
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Categories: Today in Books