The concentration of the publishing industry

[The Marquis de Leech]

I recently ran across quite an interesting graphic:

http://almossawi.com/big-five-publishers/

It basically depicts which imprints are owned by which of the Big Five, and thus how insanely concentrated the modern publishing industry has become.

[maarsen]

3 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I recently ran across quite an interesting graphic:

http://almossawi.com/big-five-publishers/

It basically depicts which imprints are owned by which of the Big Five, and thus how insanely concentrated the modern publishing industry has become.

When I was young, the Canadian publishing industry was very much the same. I think 2 companies had all the major imprints. What happened though was every struggling writer decided to create their own publishing company so that they could get their stuff in print. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

The title is misleading - this isn't just US publishing, but rather the English-speaking world. There are certainly many small presses out there, but the industry at the international level is dominated by the Big Five.

(In New Zealand, we only have a branch office of one of the Big Five - Penguin/Random House. The other publishers consist of the university presses, and small speciality presses catering to Maori language, etc). 

[maarsen]

I just did a quick check and Canada has at least 26 independent publishing companies just for fiction alone. The concentration world wide is a problem but e-publishing can be an alternative. Or come to Canada to get your stuff published.

[Jiriki]

On 1/15/2017 at 1:59 AM, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I recently ran across quite an interesting graphic:

http://almossawi.com/big-five-publishers/

It basically depicts which imprints are owned by which of the Big Five, and thus how insanely concentrated the modern publishing industry has become.

Thanks. Great topic.

I've long had concerns about the consolidation of media, whether that media is print, web, radio, television, or something else. We've witnessed where this is going before, and history tells us that media consolidation, in any format, is a very bad thing.

For thirty years, from 1956 to 1986, the US television industry was controlled by just three companies: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Three white men: David Sarnoff, Leonard Goldenson, and William Paley, controlled nearly everything that Americans saw on TV; if they didn't want it aired, it mostly just didn't air.

People were blacklisted for even rumors of unsavory behavior (communism, homosexuality, loose morals, etc), minorities weren't regularly seen (except occasionally on NBC), and lives were ruined more than once. There were no viable outlets to the Big Three, and they used the power of the FCC to keep outsiders out. Although Fox entered television in 1986, and many cable companies also entered the television medium in the 1980s and 1990s, after years of media consolidation, the situation isn't much better now, as there are just five companies which control nearly the entire broadcast and cable industry in the US. It's the same with radio, and the big Hollywood film studios, which are now partnered with the television industry: ABC and Disney, CBS and Paramount, NBC and Universal, Fox and 21st Century, CW and Time-Warner, etc. Even the local TV stations have been bought out by chains of broadcasters.

I witnessed the same thing happening with the bookselling industry in the 1990s and 2000s, when I worked for Waldenbooks: the big bookstore chains (Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, Border's, Brentano's, Crown Books, Hastings, and B&N) went through a series of ever-larger acquisitions and mergers, growing ever larger, and slowly put the independents out of business, then the big chains themselves were destroyed by Amazon. My community doesn't even have a brick and mortar bookstore anymore.

People don't realize how destructive media consolidation is. It takes away livelihoods from local businesses, it promotes centralized thought/control, and it promotes groupthink and stagnation.