Trying to publish for money without the marketing, editing, audiobook production, cover designing, and reach in bookstores of a major publishing house (or even

Trying to publish for money without the marketing, editing, audiobook production, cover designing, and reach in bookstores of a major publishing house (or even an indie publishing house) is a huge hustle. It’s a massive pain in the ass. Sometimes writers want to instead focus on doing the writing. (To be clear: this is changing over time. Major labor cuts when the pandemic began weren’t filled in back even though publishing made money hand over fist during the lockdowns. This means they’re running ghost crews and it’s affecting the quality of all of the above I just listed. It’s becoming less and less attractive to go with large trad publishing vs indies or self.) You’re conflating two issues here: this lawsuit has nothing to do with whether or not publishing houses are censorship. This lawsuit is about whether or not a merger of this size would cause authors to make less money from publishing traditionally because it would reduce the number of bidders for their work.