Penguin S&S Random House?

[Apache]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Given the way they just amalgamate names, surely they'll become "Penguin, Random, House, Simon and Schuster". Also a great name for a law firm.

Then bus companies Trailways and Greyhound merged I thought the company should have changed their name to Trail Hound.
Apache

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Apache

Then bus companies Trailways and Greyhound merged I thought the company should have changed their name to Trail Hound.
Apache

Or become a feeder for Amtrak and go with Grey Trail

[John F]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

No possible about it.
It is a done deal.
$2.17B for a company grossing $835B a year and $143M net.

...

Do you mean $835M?

[binaryhermit]

I'd argue it's not necessarily done due to presumably needing regulatory approval.

I'm sure the US will sign off on it no questions asked, I'm curious what the EU has to say.

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Use POD so NOTHING goes out of print.

I'm not entirely sure this is a net good.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a book goes "out of print" the rights generally revert to the author?
And "out of print" is generally defined in a way that having no physical stock but it being loaded into a PoD system wouldn't count as "out of print"
So a publishing house could lock up a book until the copyright expires by doing so.

(I'm also not sure how having it available electronically only would affect whether it's "in print" or not so I'm potentially way off base, also, I assume a vast majority of the work to make a book available PoD is also required to make it available as an eBook)

[Fbone]

Don't worry, there is another morsel up for grabs. This month Houghton Mifflin Harcourt put HMH Books & Media, its consumer publishing business, up for sale.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by John F

Do you mean $835M?

Yes. I'll fix.
Too many B's, not enough M's.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I'm sure the US will sign off on it no questions asked, I'm curious what the EU has to say.

Most likely nothing.
It's a German company taking over an American one.
The opposite might get pushback but not that.
(Look up the sordid affair about the GE and Honeywell merger.)

Mergers are judged on the basis of market power and market impact. On the *whole" relevant market. As I said above, the RH and Penguin merger was rubberstamped on both sides of the pond practically overnight.

https://www.writerswrite.com/u-s-jus...roves-21420131

The U.S. Department of Justice has approved the merger of Penguin and Random House. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department did not impose any conditions on the merger, which it often does if there is an antitrust issue. Random House is owned by German media company Bertelsmann and Penguin is owned by British giant Pearson. The European Commission must still approve the deal which would create the world's largest book publisher.

Thomas Rabe, CEO of Bertelsmann, said in a statement, "This positive first decision by one of the antitrust authorities is an important milestone on the path to uniting two of the world's leading publishing companies into a truly global publishing group."

Bold mine. If that got no pushback, why would buying S&S matter?

As for the EU:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/europ...143914959.html

The European Union cleared the merger of publishers Random House and Penguin on Friday, saying it does not pose a risk to competition.

The EU said the merger doesn’t threaten competition. In a press release, the European Commission said of its investigation:

“The Commission assessed the impact of the transaction on the upstream markets for the acquisition of authors’ rights for English language books in the European Economic Area (EEA) and worldwide, and on the downstream markets for the sale of English language books to dealers in the EEA, in particular in the UK and Ireland. The Commission found that on both types of markets the new entity Penguin Random House will continue to face competition from several large and numerous small and medium sized publishers.

Seriously, adding S&S's market share isn't going to change much in the market.
Consumers, who by and large don't even know who publishes what, will notice nothing.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Don't worry, there is another morsel up for grabs. This month Houghton Mifflin Harcourt put HMH Books & Media, its consumer publishing business, up for sale.

Paging Mr Murdoch; consolation prize up for grabs!

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I'm not entirely sure this is a net good.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a book goes "out of print" the rights generally revert to the author?
And "out of print" is generally defined in a way that having no physical stock but it being loaded into a PoD system wouldn't count as "out of print"
So a publishing house could lock up a book until the copyright expires by doing so.

(I'm also not sure how having it available electronically only would affect whether it's "in print" or not so I'm potentially way off base, also, I assume a vast majority of the work to make a book available PoD is also required to make it available as an eBook)

It used to be that way.
Not any more.

POD and ebook editions do count.
And, yes, that makes reversion almost impossible.
So no, it's not good for authors, especially when the publisher does nothing to promote the book but won't let go because even non-selling books count as corporate assets.


The "Almost" is because of a loophole Congress introduced in 2003, Section 203.

https://dearauthor.com/features/recl...ty-five-years/

Section 203:
In the case of any work other than a work made for hire, the exclusive or nonexclusive grant of a transfer or license of copyright or of any right under a copyright, executed by the author on or after January 1, 1978, otherwise than by will, is subject to termination…
Upon the effective date of termination, all rights under this title that were covered by the terminated grants revert to the author, authors, and other persons owning termination interests…
17 U.S.C.A. § 203 (a) (2009).

It is very tricky to execute and more often than not ends up in court.

Last year there was a lot of angst over Gale Ann Hurd and otbers exercising their right to reclaim:

https://screenrant.com/studios-losin...r-beetlejuice/

The primary stipulations of the Copyright Act require that the license to the work have been originally granted on or after January 1, 1978, and that 35 years have passed since publication under the grant. This places the films of the eighties squarely within the legal sights of authors wishing to invoke the Act. Another requirement of the regulations is that the author's product not have been written as a 'work for hire.'

Studios and publishers tend to fight these efforts making them expensive to complete.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I'm not entirely sure this is a net good.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a book goes "out of print" the rights generally revert to the author?

Absolutely not. Tradition is that the Publisher has rights for the copyright life, or author life. More recently sometimes 10 years or 5 if lucky.

Out of print for most copyright titles can happen in a few years and the publisher STILL has the copyright.

There is NO connection between out of print and rights, unless and unusually the contract says so,

I agree, rights SHOULD revert, completely, maybe 1 year or less after out of print. But it's rare.

With Disney and other USA corps getting copyright extended this has got far worse.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Absolutely not. Tradition is that the Publisher has rights for the copyright life, or author life. More recently sometimes 10 years or 5 if lucky.

Out of print for most copyright titles can happen in a few years and the publisher STILL has the copyright.

There is NO connection between out of print and rights, unless and unusually the contract says so,

Any author who signs a contract that doesn't allow the author to get back the publication rights to book if the book goes out of print has been poorly advised.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I assume a vast majority of the work to make a book available PoD is also required to make it available as an eBook)

If the book is electronically stored and typeset rather than physical type, then POD is no work at all. It's the same PDF as used for a volume print run.

The ebook needs different formatting to a paper book. If you have the wordprocessor source then making an ebook isn't a huge task.

Properly done ebooks and paper books use different styles, front matter, rear matter, cover, page definition, header and footer. Images need to be prepared differently for an ebook and PDF for print (big print run or POD).

Modern printing uses a PDF that's an exact electronic proof of the paper print. That can then be volume printed as paper back, hard back, large print. Or using POD.
Each SIZE of paper book would have a different PDF. A hard back and paper back with same page contents can use the same PDF as the cover or dust cover is always a separate file. POD vs volume print uses the same PDF for the same page size and styles. Glued or stitched doesn't matter!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Any author who signs a contract that doesn't allow the author to get back the publication rights to book if the book goes out of print has been poorly advised.

Yes, this can be true NOW. But plenty of rights assigned years ago and it was take the publisher terms or have nothing.

It's often still true for a first time published author. Fixed term rather than out of print is still common.

I totally agree it should be the norm. But there are loads of live authors and Estates where the book is out of print and the publisher still has the rights. The publishers are letting Amazon eat their lunch. It costs them nearly nothing to release a title via POD and they are only doing it for specialist technical books. Idiots.

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It costs them nearly nothing to release a title via POD and they are only doing it for specialist technical books. Idiots.

I mean, isn't there a higher per-book price for POD copies rather than traditionally printed books made in large batches, albeit with virtually no risk you'll end up sitting on a bunch of unsold inventory, perhaps even having to dispose of said unsold inventory.

(I know, I misrepresented your argument, which is preparing a book for POD and having it sit on a server indefinitely is fairly cheap.


And there are additional benefits like if your author has a sudden spike in interest you can quickly respond to that. An example of that I've seen cited is when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP candidate.