From the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster deal to the Internet Archive's efforts to provide a new kind of library.
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Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The Biden comms shop will be women-run, Sarah Fuller makes college football history, and the publishing industry faces an uncertain future. Have a mindful Monday.
– Bookmark this. Last week ended with a seismic shift for the book business. Penguin Random House will pay $2 billion to acquire Simon & Schuster—creating the first true megapublisher.
The deal, if it makes it through antitrust concerns, has the potential to completely reshape publishing—and, of course, Simon & Schuster, which is headed by publisher Dana Canedy. She was No. 50 on our Most Powerful Women list this year. In her writeup, we noted the outsize impact of the business compared to its size, citing how “what we read is powerful, with far-reaching impact on our culture and beliefs”—influence that certainly comes into play for this acquisition, too.
But the merger of the two biggest publishers isn’t the only story right now with implications for writers and readers. Fortune‘s Jeff John Roberts has a piece on the battle between the Internet Archive and the American Association of Publishers. Lila Bailey, the Internet Archive’s chief lawyer, is representing the nonprofit as it fights for its ability to share ebooks with the public—in essence, to decide the future of libraries online.
The suit stems from an early-COVID project called the National Emergency Library; the Internet Archive sought to make ebooks more accessible as libraries closed at the height of March’s pandemic chaos.
Bailey acknowledges the economic realities that have led publishers to take a hard line on copyright issues, as is happening in this case, but says that battling nonprofits like the Internet Archive won’t solve the industry’s problems. The American Association of Publishers didn’t respond to Fortune‘s request for comment.
“This case will determine what libraries will be,” says Bailey—just as the Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster merger will decide the future of publishing. Read the full Fortune story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
