Maybe good public interest reasons for the merger exists, but I didn't see any in the links. This, from the first link, sounded utterly absurd (as King essentially said in the #4 link):
Quote:
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Dohle had promised that imprints of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would still be permitted to bid against each other for books. But he acknowledged under oath during the trial that his guarantee was not legally binding.
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I would think that if Dohle knowingly had the company bidding against itself in any significant way, he should be fired for failure to safeguard company funds. And if the supposedly competing bids were coordinated to be within a range, the author should be able to sue for deceptive business practice.
It might however, be that the publishers should have an antitrust exemption to ban together in a trade organization that negotiates terms with Amazon as a group.