#NaNoWriMo 2021: All the News You Can't Use

Publishing mergers come and go. You still need to do the writing, either way.

The big news today in the literary and book publishing worlds (which are not exactly the same) was that the Justice Department is intervening in an attempt to block the proposed merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, two of the largest book publishers in the United States and hence the world. I realized that my thoughts on the matter haven’t changed all that much since the deal was announced late last year, so today’s newsletter recycles and refines some of what I said then.

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When the PRH/S&S merger was announced, there was one obvious potential consequence for writers. The Authors Guild and the American Booksellers Association both warned that, with reduced competition among publishing houses for hot new manuscripts, writers would suffer because their agents would have less opportunity to play publishers against one another to raise advances.

The antitrust crew have now raised similar concerns. “Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster compete vigorously to acquire publishing rights from authors and provide publishing services to those authors,” the Justice Department observes in its 26-page brief arguing against the merger. “Competition between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has resulted in higher advances, better services, and more favorable contract terms for authors, [but] the proposed merger would eliminate this head-to-head competition, enabling the merged firm to pay less and extract more from authors who often work for years at their craft before producing a book.”

This might affect you at some point, or it might not. What I would suggest to you, though, the person reading this newsletter because you want to develop a stronger writing practice, is that you think about this merger as little as possible.

I’m not saying you should ignore it. You’d do well to have some fundamental understanding of the layout of the contemporary publishing industry. You just don’t need to worry about it now, while you’re still working on your manuscript. Two large conglomerates becoming one enormous conglomerate isn’t going to get your book written any faster, and neither would the deal falling apart, if that should happen. The only thing that will get your book written is you, writing.

If you do get your book written, and you’re able to secure representation from a literary agent, then it will be helpful to know enough about what’s going on in publishing to ask your agent about your options, but even then you can let your agent carry a lot of the knowledge burden. After all, it’s her job to know what’s happening within the industry and how it affects her ability to obtain the highest advance possible for your book.

Also, real talk time: If you don’t have a literary agent, and you’re not already famous for something non-literary, honestly, your chances of landing a book deal with a Big Five (not Four yet!) publishing imprint, on your own, are negligible. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it essentially requires getting discovered in a manner akin to the legends about Lana Turner and the soda counter at Schwab’s. You might be better served by continuing to look for literary representation or focusing on independent publishers more likely to take a chance on unagented writers.

Instead of imagining what might or might not happen to the book you haven’t written yet, you should be writing that book.

As a culture, we’ve convinced ourselves that the only real measure of success for a writer is success in the business of publishing. The Justice Department’s antitrust brief reinforces that notion by emphasizing the financial consequences for writers should PRH and S&S merge, and by declaring that most other publishers “cannot regularly pay the high advances and provide the unique bundle of services needed to secure the publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books and maximize their chances of becoming commercially successful.” The brief then goes on to buy into the assertion that other publishers serve as “farm teams,” minor league operations from which PRH, S&S, and the three other biggest houses can “cherry pick” writers most likely to produce bestsellers with their corporate support.

That’s one way of looking at things, sure.

But if you don’t have a finished manuscript yet, it’s largely irrelevant to your situation, because you simply aren’t ready to compete in that market. And every minute you spend thinking about the publishing industry, which you can’t control, is a minute you didn’t spend on your writing practice, which you can control.

So keep you head down, keep writing, and we’ll see what happens when it happens.