Three months after Penguin Random House’s effort to acquire Simon & Schuster was terminated, Christian Lorentzen summarizes the August antitrust trial in a cover piece for Harper’s. Spoiler alert: PRH loses. About the most quotable graph: “The view put forth by the government was that the publishing industry was a market like any other, that its practices were routinized, that its players followed rules, and that its dynamics could be predicted by the scientific methods of economists. The defense presented it as a casino full of hippies gambling unlimited piles of money generously provided to them by multinational corporations happy […]
