[HN Gopher] Justice sues to block Penguin Random House's acquisi...
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Justice sues to block Penguin Random House's acquisition of Simon
and Schuster
Author : pseudolus
Score : 103 points
Date : 2021-11-02 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justice.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justice.gov)
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm still a bit lost as to why this and the music industry
| haven't been more disrupted by technology. You don't need a
| record label you don't need a book publisher, you can, if people
| want to consume your content just write your book and have people
| just send you money via patreon or one time donations.
|
| I've made music with friends for a long time, and the industry
| makes it very hard for any independent artist to get ahead. You
| have some of the worst deals ever imaginable given to these kids,
| who are often only 18 or 19 and the label just takes everything.
|
| Why do we need any of that, I go out of my way to buy music
| exclusively from independent artist, while I might stream some
| popular hit. When it comes to actually buying merchandise, or
| music I only give it to the Indies.
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's in part because advertising still drives visibility which
| drives sales, and all the main discovery mediums are
| centralized and sell ad placements to the highest bidder.
| Combine that with the typical algorithmic promotion algorithm,
| where Amazon etc want to show you things they think you're
| likely to buy, so they mostly sell you things that are already
| top sellers.
| rackjack wrote:
| There are too many books and too many songs. The problem is no
| longer accessing them, it is finding them in the first place.
| Generally they need marketing to be discovered. This is where
| big name publishers come in.
|
| If you find a way to disrupt the recommendation industry you
| will be ahead of even Google.
| dhosek wrote:
| I was thinking about this conundrum a bit during my MFA when I
| met Wesley Stace and he mentioned something about there being a
| stigma against self-publishing literature that doesn't exist
| for self-releasing music. I think part of it is barrier to
| entry. Any schmuck with access to a computer with a word
| processor could write something that looks like a book and put
| it on Smashwords, etc. and claim to have published something.
|
| For music, it gets a lot harder: There's a higher cost to being
| able to get an MP3 available on the music services, not just on
| the part of the middle men who will gladly take your money to
| put things up (it's been a while since I've been in the music
| game so I don't know how big a role these folks play nowadays),
| but also just for the act of recording which requires the non-
| trivial purchase or rental of recording equipment, not to
| mention the training to be able to produce something that's not
| embarrassing (although the latter has not stopped more than a
| few people from releasing stuff like that anyway). Most people
| think they could write a book ("if they only had the time") but
| few people think they could record a song.
|
| But regardless, there's still the challenge of getting music
| heard, and I suspect that from minimum 500-CD orders of indie
| albums from the CD era, the majority are sitting in boxes in
| people's basements, garages and attics.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > You don't need a record label you don't need a book
| publisher, you can, if people want to consume your content just
| write your book and have people just send you money via patreon
| or one time donations.
|
| Yes you do need the biggest possible label. All the big artists
| today (post 2000), they might have started building their
| audience on the internet organically , but at some point one
| absolutely needs a label that has all the connections, budget
| for advertising, touring, featuring, ...to grow as an artist,
| nothing has changed on that regard. What collapsed is the
| record industry, which virtually doesn't exist anymore, save
| from vinyl records maybe.
|
| The people that are useless on the other hand are the middlemen
| like Spotify and co, they serve absolutely no purpose
| whatsoever. Better distribute your music freely on Youtube
| instead and grow your audience there, or do live shows on
| Twitch.
|
| This is a technologist forum, but people here needs to remember
| that just because you have a product to sell doesn't mean it
| will sell, no matter how good that product is, you often need
| to hire people dedicated to selling that product to clients.
| Music is no different.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Tech N9ne doesn't have a label. Most of the music I listen to
| is independently released.
|
| I actually enjoy supporting artist directly vs having a label
| steal half of what they make.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_N9ne
|
| According to wikipedia, Tech N9ne has been on many labels
| before, including majors such as Warner Bros. What is your
| exemple supposed to demonstrate? At some point, during his
| career, this artist benefited from being on a major label.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| He got dropped though. Meaning that you really don't need
| a label to succeed.
|
| Many artists do better after going indee.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > He got dropped though. Meaning that you really don't
| need a label to succeed.
|
| And? It doesn't change the fact that he did get exposure
| thanks to a major label at some point. You have proven
| nothing, on the contrary. You have demonstrated my entire
| point. Nobody makes featuring with Eminem or Lil Wayne
| without being backed by a label. Featurings are never
| free.
| JeremyReimer wrote:
| The publishing industry _was_ disrupted by technology in 2007
| when Amazon released the Kindle. It took a few years, but for a
| while, independent book authors were rivalling the "Big Five"
| publishers in terms of both sales volume and books sold.
|
| Part of this was driven by the big publishers' response to
| indies: they raised the price of their own eBooks to protect
| their hardcover market. They even illegally colluded with each
| other, along with Apple, to force these higher prices across
| the industry.
|
| But they were sued and lost, and the result was a lowering of
| big publisher eBook prices across the board. On the independent
| side, the problem was that too many people were publishing too
| many books. It was impossible to keep up, and there was no good
| system for finding the "best" independent authors, since tastes
| are so subjective and the vast majority of independent authors
| didn't have any money to spend on marketing anyway.
|
| So that leads us to today, where the "Big Four" (trying to
| become the Big Three) still have access to their promotional
| machinery, which includes retail bookstores. There are a very
| few insanely successful independent authors, and a veeeeeery
| long tail of folks that have no way of getting noticed in the
| crowd.
|
| Still, the sales volume of traditional publishing and
| independent publishing remains about equivalent even today
| (it's hard to get exact numbers because Amazon doesn't like
| giving them out, but apps like KindleSpy offer a broad
| estimate) It's just that the latter is spread out among many
| more authors.
| Larrikin wrote:
| All of my friends that are truly veracious readers prefer
| physical books. I've wasted a good bit of money gifting
| kindles.
|
| Vinyl has some hold outs, but after music went digital on CDs
| the next step to digital distribution was inevitable since
| ultimately music listening is an interaction that is for your
| ears.
|
| Many readers prefer turning pages on top of the visual
| experience for some reason, which I'm sure has been an
| impediment for bypassing publishers
| joe-collins wrote:
| Vinyl doesn't merely have holdouts, but it's actually
| outselling CDs, now. (Granted, all physical media remains a
| tiny fraction of the recorded music market.)
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/14/vinyl-
| records-...
|
| I figure this is mostly the trendy bandwagon at work, but
| from those I know who partake in such, having a highly
| visible piece of cover art is another motivating factor
| behind its resurgence.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Instead of going after google, microsoft, or even citadel they go
| after publishing companies. It would be funny if it wasn't so
| sad.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This is a cynical take and I'm no expert but perhaps the
| publishing industry can't afford the legal fortress needed for
| effective protection from anti-trust enforcement?
|
| I mean there seem to be plenty of enormous mergers and
| acquisitions that aren't and haven't been blocked over the past
| several decades.
| fblp wrote:
| Yes, I was thinking "when was the last time Amazon had an
| acquisition blocked? "
| ticviking wrote:
| What could Amazon acquire to double its market share in any
| particular market?
| keneda7 wrote:
| I am all for this. IMO publishers especially textbook publishers
| are running a racket on us. Giving one company even more control
| over the market is definitely not going to help the situation.
|
| They mention with the acquisition Penguin would "control of close
| to half the market for acquiring publishing rights to anticipated
| top-selling books". They also mention how the market is dominated
| by 5 major players already. Is this domination due to the major 5
| players being able to pay substantially more to acquire
| publishing rights than the little guys or is something else at
| play?
| poidos wrote:
| [I have a close family member that works in publishing]
|
| As far as I can tell, part of it is that the bigger publishing
| houses are able to get lucky more often; they're more likely to
| get a bestseller than a smaller publishing house. This is
| apparently due to a combination of
|
| 1. Being able to pay more authors as a raw number (they're
| numerically more likely to get a "hit"), which is partly
| because of
|
| 2. Inertia from already having big authors, so people look to
| sign with them before considering the smaller publishers.
|
| Note that this is really only for mass-market stuff; specialty
| genres are different.
|
| The big publishers are also able to cut better deals with
| distribution centers and booksellers.
| keneda7 wrote:
| Thank you very much for your reply. Its always good to hear
| from inside the industry. The two points make complete sense.
| I can definitely see an author wanting to stick with a
| publisher that has made them money in the past.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Apart from the anti-trust angles as to why such a merger is bad,
| I am also concerned about the increasing political biases among
| employees in the publishing world. For example, employees at
| Penguin Random House protested the publishing of Jordan
| Peterson's new book (https://reason.com/2020/11/25/jordan-
| peterson-12-rules-for-l...). Simon and Schuster employees
| protested the publishing of Mike Pence's memoir
| (https://thehill.com/homenews/media/549311-simon-schuster-
| rej...). There are numerous other examples that can be found via
| search, and the spike in political protests at publishers
| coincides with the rise of protests and calls for deplatforming
| elsewhere.
|
| Something similar has been happening with booksellers as well.
| Industry groups like the American Booksellers Association have
| been bowing down to progressive activists' pressure
| (https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-entertainment-
| business-...). Leftist activists have pressured physical
| bookstores to remove books from their shelves
| (https://reason.com/2021/01/11/powells-books-antifa-andy-
| ngo-...). Even new online independent bookstore Bookshop.org has
| joined the culture wars, asking customers to donate to send
| copies of "The 1619 Project" to schools
| (https://bookshop.org/1619).
|
| Books are a really fundamental tool in our society for the
| exchange of information and ideas. The introduction of political
| and ideological wars into the world of book publishing and sales
| is scary, and out of touch with classically liberal enlightenment
| values. However, seeing as how many institutions have been taken
| over or caved to such pressures, I feel like choice and
| competition are the one thing protecting free expression on this
| medium. As such, I would not like to see the type of
| consolidation these publishers are pushing for.
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(page generated 2021-11-02 23:01 UTC)