Forum - View topicNEWS: U.S. Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against Penguin Random House's Acquisition of Simon
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anime-prime
Posts: 71 |
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While I am not even close to an expert on the subject, it doesn't seem much different than the Sony acquisition of Crunchyroll and whatever Disney does on a regular basis, so I don't really see this ending up any differently. I guess it depends on the evidence brought and the legal teams. Perhaps this is somehow much more of an potential monopoly than the others.
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Яeverse
 Posts: 1146 Location: Indianapolis |
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they would distribute all but yen press manga? bad.
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Picky33
Posts: 270 |
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Penguin House doesn't have to worry, it's been years maybe decades since the US has successfully stopped a merger. The Anti-Trust laws are pretty weak right now.
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10019 Location: Virginia |
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It gets worse, they now distribute Marvel comics. Apparently that has growing pains.
https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/marvel-penguin-random-house-announce-exclusive-agreement-to-distribute-marvel-comics-and-graphic-novels |
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Ryujin99
 Posts: 199 |
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I hypothesize that the difference is that such a merger would not only put many of the biggest manga publishers under the same roof, but book publishers in general. While the Sony acquisition of CR and a lot of Disney's recent acquisitions are trending towards this, I don't think any of them are quite at the same scale for as many market segments as this merger would be. |
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Fistorian
Posts: 11 |
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I think the larger thing about the Sony acquisition is that Crunchyroll at the end of the day is just a streaming service, even if it’s a niche one that focuses on anime. Companies would essentially be able to reach out to any of the other hundreds streaming services (Amazon, Netflix, AppleTV, Paramount, Hulu etc.) easily enough if they didn’t want to deal with Sony, and they’d have a bit more leverage. Here we have a publishing company that would, in effect, dominate the entire industry. There would be fewer realistic choices for authors to try and publish books and that would have a chilling effect on the book industry as a whole. With that said, I am not a lawyer nor do I even pretend to be one on TV so take this all as the ramblings of someone who doesn’t know better. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16963 |
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I am no expert myself, but the bolded part I think is the crux of the problem here. Anime is a small sub-set in the entertainment industry. Sony having CR and Funi does help to dominate the ANIME market, but that is a small portion of the entertainment industry as a whole. This is the opposite. This is one company having an unprecedented share in the entire overall industry of publishing. This would effect not just manga as a small portion of publishing sales, but "normal" books as well. Plus many other facets within the publishing industry. I hope this deal is stopped personally. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2417 |
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Sony only dominates anime through Crunchy and Funi because no other company cares enough. There are other, larger streaming platforms that stream anime. Other companies have the infrastructure to be able to do it. Sony's acquisitions aren't a barrier of entry to the market. It sounds like in this case that no other company has the infrastructure, and it is likely prohibitively expensive for some new player to show up and build competition from the ground up.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10019 Location: Virginia |
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Something to keep in mind. Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, is, according to the article, the parent company. Penguin Random House is only a subsidiary. The Justice Department or others in Washington may have concerns about the whole US publishing industry being controlled from a German/multinational company.
In the whole train that is book publishing, authors are already having problems. Amazon is to some extent controlling pricing of fiction, especially best sellers in their drive to be cheap. This seriously undercuts the publishers ability to pay higher prices to their authors. It may take a company of this size to deal with Amazon as equals. |
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IceLeaf
Posts: 146 |
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Even looking at this from a non-manga standpoint, the acquisition wouldn't give them a general publishing majority anyway?
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Nate148
Posts: 509 |
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we have 5 book companys left this would levee 4 left
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 767 Location: North America |
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Free markets work when there are 100 goats running around. When that gets consolidated into 4 or 5 elephants, it stops working since even without actual conspiracy collusion occurring, de facto collusion occurs simply because there are only 3 or 4 competitors to observe the actions of. |
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Dayraven
Posts: 184 |
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Worth noting that the current Big 5 situation in publishing used to be a Big 6, until the 2013 merger of Random House and Penguin. There’s grounds to fear this is an ongoing consolidation trend rather than one where new major players emerge.
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SenpaiDuckie
ANN Community Manager
 Posts: 523 Location: PH |
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Post removed for the unnecessary snark.
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Ryujin99
Posts: 199 |
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This makes me wonder if the DoJ would give a merger between Simon & Schuster and one of the other big 5 publishers. I still wouldn't personally be a fan of such a merger, but it does make me wonder. |
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