Anyone who thinks it was a quiet year for publishing mergers, acquisitions and finance doesn’t understand what happened very well. It was in fact both an active and fascinating year. First and foremost, 2017 saw one of the biggest trade publishing deals ever. We’re talking about the transaction hiding in plain sight, in which Bertelsmann acquired an additional 22 percent of Penguin Random House from Pearson, for actual cash. Remember that when Random House and Penguin merged in July 2013, it was a mammoth “deal” in that it created the world’s largest trade publishing company, but no money actually changed […]