Pearson and Bertelsmann hope that joining forces will give their publishing assets the scale they need to compete with the growing challenges to their business, by catapulting them ahead of rival Hachette to become the biggest publisher in the world.
If this goes ahead Random House will be huge! Already owns a whole slice of the publishing world. Wonder what the merged house could be called – Random Penguins?
I think that it is highly probable that the staff will know no more than the rest of us – that seems to be the way that big business works in these situations, sad though it is.
If the merger happens then The House of Random Penguins seems as good a name as any and it would definitely make me smile!
Yes read an article yesterday which was not happy about it at all, but if Penguin is in financial difficulties is it better to be taken over or go under? Sorry for the mixed mataphor!
I’m always scared when one company owns too much. I read this at wikipedia:
“During World War II, Bertelsmann was the biggest single producer of Nazi propaganda.”
There must be at least a few Brits that feel uncomfortable about B. owning Penguin.
Thank you for all your interesting comments. I am always a bit wary of multi national huge sprawling companies but I do think that the Penguin imprint is so embedeed in our psyche that it will not die. I Just feel that when a publishing house is as large as this small authors and new authors may not get a look in. On the other hand, if they make a lot of money and are this large they may have the time and finance to invest. I don’t know really.
I also hope that the staff are kept in the loop and know what is going on, Having worked in a law firm when they were merging with another, the workers were kept in the dark and did not know what was happening half the time and it was all very worrying.
I’m a literary agent. Opinions in the publishing community are varied, actually. Hachette currently comprises Little Brown, Hodder Headline and Orion, who have all kept their individuality.
Years back, when Random House bought Century Hutchinson and Ebury, attempts were made to say that agents couldn’t submit to more than one imprint, but they caved in after protests. Similarly, Transworld is part of Random House now and have a very distinct identity.
It’s possible that literary lists would be merged, but I can’t see the Penguin brand dying. The prevalent bon mot in publishing currently is ‘nobody knows anything’, so we might as well accept that have some fun in guessing the likely name; my preference is for ‘The House of Random Penguins’. No sillier than the new ‘Head of Zeus’!
Random Penguins really made me laugh! Hilarious! I’m also a bit chary of the move, though, as those are two big and important publishing houses, and they will effectively make just one big and important publishing house with the loss of a lot of literary fiction. Sigh. But there it is.
Penguin House?
I’ve read a couple of articles here in the U.S. that indicate authors and agents are not happy. They expect that competing imprints would be closed if the companies merge, thus leaving agents fewer editors to pitch. As for market share, the merged companies would own 25% of the U.S. market. I haven’t seen any numbers for other countries.
Meanwhile, over at Amazon…
Random Peneguins is a Great Name, but not sure if the merger is…well, guess is no big deal, but am always leery of giant companies…..
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