The US justice department is suing to block a $2.2bn book publishing deal that would have reshaped the industry, saying consolidation would hurt authors and, ultimately, readers.
The German media giant Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House, already the largest American publisher, wants to buy New York-based Simon & Schuster, whose authors include Stephen King, Hillary Clinton and John Irving, from the TV and film company ViacomCBS.
The Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit in the US district court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday in the first major antitrust action by the Biden administration, saying the deal would let Penguin Random House “exert outsized influence over which books are published in the United States and how much
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