Authors oppose Bertelsmann-Random House merger
Reuters Story - May 21, 1998 20:32
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By David Lawsky
WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) - Studs Terkel, Erica Jong and
Joseph Heller may not share much stylistically in their
writing, but they are all on the same page when it comes to
opposing Bertelsmann's $1.3 billion plan to buy Random House.
They and other leading authors wrote to Federal Trade
Commission Chairman Robert Pitofsky this week to express their
concern about increasing concentration among the publishers of
adult fiction. The FTC will decide whether to approve the sale.
"The books available to readers are already largely chosen
by a handful of publishers," the letter said. "The continued
existence of as many distinct major publishers as possible is
needed to help assure that readers will be able to choose from
a broad range of viewpoints."
The Authors Guild, made up of 7,200 published authors,
circulated the letter as part of a campaign to oppose the
merger. The deal would fold Random House into Europe's largest
media firm, which is already the owner of number three U.S.
publisher Bantam Doubleday Dell.
On Thursday the Guild released highlights of a survey of
160 independent bookstores that it has provided to the Federal
Trade Commission and that it says shows the Bertelsmann-Random
House combination would result in unacceptably dense
concentration in a number of publishing businesses.
The point-of-sale data on adult fiction for the last
quarter of 1997 showed the new Bertelsmann combination would
control 35 percent of adult hardcover fiction, 33 percent of
adult trade paperback fiction and 40 percent of adult mass
market paperback fiction in the stores surveyed, the Authors
Guild said.
Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said
the survey was based on the best source of market data
available and was typical of the adult fiction market as a
whole.
"We didn't know the results when we asked for this data,"
he said. "It is an honest representation."
Bertelsmann disputed the figures but would not release its
own.
A company spokesman, Stuart Applebaum, said the survey was
"disingenuously skewed. None of us publishers controls the
selection and quantification of titles."
Bertelsmann has said the combination would control 10.9
percent of the market, but that is a far broader market that
includes everything from cookbooks to children's books.
In their letter, the authors said that the more publishers
that existed the greater the number of voices that would be
represented in adult fiction.
"Diverse and varied publishers nurture diverse and varied
writers," said the letter.
It was signed by Carl Bernstein, Art Buchwald, Annie
Dillard, E.L. Doctorow, James Gleick, Joseph Heller, Erica
Jong, William P. Kennedy, Nicholas Lehmann, Peter Maas, Robert
K. Massie, John McPhee, Herbert Mitgang, Joyce Carol Oates,
Sidney Offit, Mary Pope Osborne, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Anne
Rivers Siddons, Jane Smiley, James B. Stewart, Studs Terkel,
Jeffrey Toobin, Anne Tyler, Kurt Vonnegut, Geoffrey C. Ward and
John Edgar Wideman.
The letter noted that a major publishing house in Great
Britain "cancelled a book by the former governor of Hong Kong
for fear of offending the government of China." The book was
published elsewhere, the letter noted.
"The greater the conglomeration of publishers, the greater
the odds of such conflict, and the less likelihood that such
industry self-censorship will be happily resolved," the writers
said.
That was a reference to a book by the former governor of
Hong Kong, Chris Patten. A company owned by Rupert Murdoch
declined to publish the book.
Random House, closely held by the Newhouse family's Advance
Publications Inc., does not disclose frinancial data. But
industry sources said it had about $1.1 billion in sales last
year, ranking it ahead of Penguin/Putanm with about $890
million and Bantam doubleday Dell with $650 million.
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