Topline
ViacomCBS on Wednesday announced it has agreed to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media company Bertelsmann, in a nearly $2.2 billion dollar cash deal creating further consolidation among the “Big 5” book publishers.
Simon & Schuster’s headquarters in New York City.
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Key Facts
Simon & Schuster will operate as a separate publishing unit under Penguin Random House.
Simon & Schuster President and CEO Jonathan Karp and COO and CFO Dennis Eulau will lead the unit.
The deal is expected to be finalized in 2021 and will require regulatory approval.
ViacomCBS said there was a competitive auction for Simon & Schuster, a 96-year-old publishing house with 30 units, and ultimately Penguin Random House won.
Penguin Random House, the largest book publisher in the U.S., has distinct publishing groups for Penguin, Random House and Knopf Doubleday and their respective imprints.
Tangent
The owners of Penguin and Random House, two of the then “Big 6” book publishers, announced a merger in October 2012 which closed the following July. When the deal went into effect, the companies owned 25% of the book publishing business worldwide, brought in nearly $4 billion a year and operated 250 independent imprints, the New York Times reported at the time. The “Big 6” were all owned by large media conglomerates and it was expected there would be more mergers among publishers. At the time, analysts said the mergers would help the publishers stay competitive with Amazon, Google, Apple and other companies that had developed e-book technology and could sell books at a lower cost.
Surprising Fact
Richard Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster founded Simon & Schuster in 1924. They started with the first crossword puzzle book, which became a bestseller. Now Simon & Schuster publishes about 2,500 books a year, according to the company and has published 57 Pulitzer prize winners.
Further Reading
ViacomCBS to Sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for $2.175 Billion
Penguin and Random House Merge, Saying Change Will Come Slowly (New York Times)
Source: Forbes – Business
