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Comment by keneda7 | Hacker News Reader

I am all for this. IMO publishers especially textbook publishers are running a racket on us. Giving one company even more control over the market is definitely not going to help the situation.

They mention with the acquisition Penguin would "control of close to half the market for acquiring publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books". They also mention how the market is dominated by 5 major players already. Is this domination due to the major 5 players being able to pay substantially more to acquire publishing rights than the little guys or is something else at play?

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[I have a close family member that works in publishing]

As far as I can tell, part of it is that the bigger publishing houses are able to get lucky more often; they're more likely to get a bestseller than a smaller publishing house. This is apparently due to a combination of

1. Being able to pay more authors as a raw number (they're numerically more likely to get a "hit"), which is partly because of

2. Inertia from already having big authors, so people look to sign with them before considering the smaller publishers.

Note that this is really only for mass-market stuff; specialty genres are different.

The big publishers are also able to cut better deals with distribution centers and booksellers.

Not to mention:

Advances. No not for the big celebrity writers doing memoirs/biographies. Those are already out of the realm of imagination for indies.

It’s the advances given to up-and-comers out of the MFAs, and the advances given to professors teaching at said programs. An indie book house will not be able to front 100k to an author for a book in the way the big 4 does (funded in part by the celebrity books they sell).

Thank you very much for your reply. Its always good to hear from inside the industry. The two points make complete sense. I can definitely see an author wanting to stick with a publisher that has made them money in the past.

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