Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
As you said this does not bode well for authors and worse for the many employees who will probably lose jobs. As to stockholders and consumers only time will tell.
Helen
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The stated intent of using the market power of the combined entity to enforce better margins carries with it the hidden assumption that consumers will put up with the enforced higher prices (possible, even likely in some regions) and that authors and their agents will be forced to swallow the new rate structures.
That second assumption strikes me as a bit less likely, as witnessed by Mr Turow's gang suddenly remembering their club is called the Authors' Guild and not the Publishing Guild.
Given enough blowback on the traditionalist front and the ongoing evolution of medium/small publishers it isn't hard to envision that combined market power withering away in a couple of years. Right around the time the merger disruption settles down.
One other thing to consider about the merger: it is actually a two-phase divestiture. Pearson is looking to get rid of its stake in the merged company within a couple of years and the plan is for an IPO for the Random Penguin as a way to achieve this. So effectively the merger is a way for Bertelsmann and Pearson to get out of consumer publishing and cut the consolidated operation loose.
Smells like a "getting out while they still can" manuever, in which case it won't necessarily be consumers or authors who end up with the short end of the stick but the staff and the investors in the IPO.
Complicated indeed.