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As I understand it, the test for monopoly is detrimental effect for consumers, not control of a market. Making your company more vertically integrated (by buyi
by kingsuper20 5y ago
As I understand it, the test for monopoly is detrimental effect for consumers, not control of a market. Making your company more vertically integrated (by buying a back catalog in this case I guess) probably doesn't trip any alarms.
I'm surprised that they don't buy Penguin. Maybe Bertelsmann has no interest in selling.
If you think about it, publishers of print/music/movies are essentially built on monopoly given the single sourcing of a title. It's not as simple as cornering the market on wheat or oil.
- ghaff 5y agoBook publishing is a rather fragmented market and a lot of the growth is in self-publishing, which Amazon already own a big chunk of in various ways. I'm not sure why Amazon would have any interest in an old school publisher.
- kingsuper20 5y agoYou can make the same argument about buying MGM. Looking at Publishers Weekly, I see this: "An important driver of print book sales last year was the continuing increase in backlist sales, McLean said. Backlist titles accounted for 67% of all print units purchased in 2020, up from 63% the year before. In 2010, backlist accounted for only 54% of all unit sales. " https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/85453-a-year-for-the-record-books.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/b... I think you could make a strong argument for buying a large publisher (or anything really) given a good ROI.