Over the course of the last five days, the Association of American Literary Agents conducted a survey of its members about Penguin Random House’s plans to acquire Simon & Schuster, asking whether they are for or against the merger with most respondents replying “strongly against.” A release notes that “nearly nine out of ten” of the people who responded oppose it. The survey was conducted from August 11 to August 16, as the government’s antitrust trial against PRH stretched into its third week. The AALA could not provide a number of people who responded, as they said more surveys continue […]
Archives for August 2022
Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award
Wil Haygood, author of Showdown and The Butler, will receive the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, which is the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's lifetime achievement award.
Judge Rules PRH’s Efficiencies Estimates Are Inadmissible, After Sansigre Details Expected Staff Overlap, Royalty Raises
As we reported before the trial began, Judge Florence Pan had clearly been “a little skeptical” about admitting Penguin Random House’s internal expectations of significant cost savings and sales increases following the merger. On Wednesday morning, after another testy exchange with PRH’s attorney Andrew Frackman, Judge Pan ruled for the government and found the efficiencies evidence inadmissible: “The efficiencies projected by Penguin Random House are not substantiated and verified. Although many may be verifiable, some are not.” (We’ll share the full ruling tomorrow; it was quite extensive and thorough, and grounded in both the horizontal merger guidelines and case law […]
People 8/17
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo Can Keep $5.1 Million Book Advance, Says Judge
A judge ruled on Tuesday that former New York governor Andrew Cuomo can keep the $5.1 million book advance he received for his memoir American Crisis–for now. The now-defunct Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) ordered Cuomo to turn over the advance to the state last December, after it was discovered that he used state employees to work on the book during business hours. Cuomo had previously obtained permission from the commission to use state employees, as long as they worked on the book in their free time. Judge Denise A. Hartman of the State Supreme Court in Albany ruled […]
Judge Pan Challenges the Defense’s Economics Expert, Asserts Her Current View of Diminished Competition
The antitrust trial took a pretty striking turn on Monday afternoon for anyone trying to gauge where the case actually stands as it enters its third and likely final week. The defense was questioning their economic expert, Yale professor Dr. Edward Snyder, who was duly explaining why he believes the government’s expert Dr. Nicholas Hill got almost everything wrong: “The government has not proven that there will be a substantial lessening of competition as a result of the merger.” That will likely be the question on which the case hinges. Yes, the merger will give the combined firm half of the […]