Subnostr

When I was a baby writer, there were dozens of large NY publishers. Today, there are five - and it was almost *four*. A publishing sector with five giant companies is bad news for writers (as #StephenKing said at the trial, the idea that PRH and S&S would bid against each other for books was as absurd as the idea that he and his wife would bid against each other for their next family home).

Cory Doctorow 2y ago

But it's also bad news for publishing workers, a historically exploited and undervalued workforce whose labor conditions have only declined as the number of employers in the sector dwindled, leading to mass resignations:

https://lithub.com/unlivable-and-untenable-molly-mcghee-on-the-punishing-life-of-junior-publishing-employees/

It should go without saying that workers in sectors with few employers get worse deals from their bosses (see, e.g., the #WritersStrike and #ActorsStrike).

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

And yup, right on time, PRH, a wildly profitable publisher, fired a bunch of its most senior (and therefore hardest to push around) workers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/penguin-random-house-layoffs-buyouts.html

But publishing's contraction into a five-company cartel didn't occur in a vacuum. It was a normal response to monopolization elsewhere in its supply chain. First it was bookselling collapsing into two major chains. Then it was distribution going from 300 companies to three.