It takes at least a few posts to explain just how much material we have packed into our new ebook THE TRIAL. Yes, it has the full opening and closing arguments; the full public testimony of 22 witnesses; Judge Pan’s critical (and lengthy) ruling disallowing Penguin Random House’s evidence about their projected post-merger cost savings and increased revenues; and key pre- and post-trial documents. And yes, at every step of the way it includes the Publishers Lunch overviews and analysis.
But that’s not all, of course. At the end, we have culled a selection of over 100 pages of the most interesting — and relevant — documents, emails and charts entered into evidence, shared for the first time. That collection includes:
From Penguin Random House: Bertelsmann board documents about the S&S acquisition; PRH’s publishing market assessments for 2013-2019; some rather stunning charts detailing all the lost market share across PRH, primarily in adult fiction; an assessment of recent fiction sales across PRH divisions and across the Big Five; Markus Dohle’s memo rallying staff to support Amazon during the pandemic; a memo reckoning with supply chain and printing problems; PRH memos on avoiding internal poaching and upbidding; PRH stats on author advances and royalties; PRH’s 2019 presentation regarding a “global partnership” imprint for a very famous couple; memos on the consolidation of Crown; and Crown’s approach to marketing “lead” and “opportunity” titles.
From Simon & Schuster and others: Carolyn Reidy’s long memo to her boss explaining S&S’s business ahead of the Viacom CBS merger; another memo on changes in the printing business; Jonathan Karp’s stated preference for a sale to a financial buyer; his email correspondence with John Irving; his memo setting out expectations for best performance from company editors; a typical auction memo showing how “best bids” has actually become just a variation on bidding in rounds — including an expression of The Workaround; a HarperCollins chart with their growth plans; and some key charts and graphs from the two economics experts.
THE TRIAL is fascinating reading now, and will stand as an important reference document for a long time. Curl up with your gigantic ebook now, available from: Apple Books; Barnes & Noble; Google Play; Kobo (No. 72, with a bullet); or directly from PM (where you can get a PDF, choose to “send to Kindle” or load an epub onto your reader of choice).