[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

I expect this to happen in the book branch when publishing is consolidated to the major actors in the field who see a book as a commodity just like any other and to hell with cultural or educational value-added.

All this makes me very sad. Those poor little publishing houses, led like lambs to the slaughter at the altar of Apple and Amazon. What ever will they do? Why, just the other day I heard them talking about how the sky was falling, and they can't possibly stand up to those twin corporate giants.

Take poor little Macmillan. They've published everybody: W.B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Sean O'Casey, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Morgan, Hugh Walpole, Margaret Mitchell, C. P. Snow. How could they possibly keep resisting the evil empire? Except, of course, they are a wholly own subsidiary of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. And have been for a couple decades.

Harper Collins, of course, is wholly owned by News Corp, and is part of the Rupert Murdoch group, better known here for it's Fox News subsidiary.

Penguin isn't Penguin, it's a subsidiary of Pearson PLC.

Simon & Schuster is wholly owned by CBS. That one gets even better. Here's a brief summary of the last few decades:

In 1975, Gulf+Western acquired the company, and nine years later, Prentice Hall was brought into the company fold. G+W would change its name to Paramount Communications in 1989.

In 1994, Paramount was sold to the original Viacom.

In 1998, Viacom sold Simon & Schuster's educational operations, including Prentice Hall and Macmillan, to Pearson PLC, becoming part of Pearson Education.

Viacom would split into 2 companies at the end of 2005: one called CBS Corporation (which inherited S&S), and the other retaining the Viacom name. Despite the split, National Amusements retains majority control of both firms.

And who, you may well ask, is National Amusements? Well, it's 80% privately owned by Sumner Redstone. His daughter owns the other 20%.

So, these poor little publishing houses, innocent victims of those big bad wolves like Amazon and Apple? Makes me want to weep in my beer. What's the world coming to?

Thanks,

Bill