On about books. We delve into the latest news about the Publishing Industry with interesting insider interviews with Publishing Industry experts. Well also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. The latest book reviews. And well talk about the current nonfiction books featured on cspans book tv. And this is about books, book tvs program and podcast, which looks at the business of publishing. Well, in just a few minutes, well hear from an author who has spent most of her career trying to get readers to read other authors. But first, a us circuit judge recently blocked the planned 2 billion merger between penguin, random house and simon and schuster. Andrew albanys is a Senior Writer with Publishers Weekly and hes followed the case from the beginning and he joins us now. So mr. Albanys remind us of what this merger was. To begin with, this merger was said to be the the coming together of the Worlds Largest english language trade publisher, which is Penguin Random house, with its Third Largest big five rival, publisher Simon Schuster would have created a megamerger, a publisher that would have been roughly 49 of the market for bestselling books. So who was supporting it and who was against it . Whats supporting it, of course, were the merging parties, right . Simon and schuster, its parent company, viacomcbs, had decided to get out of the Publishing Business and Penguin Random house. Obviously, the largest and most successful publisher right now really wanted to pick it up. So they were the ones who were really pushing for this, who was against it . Well, pretty much everybody in the Book Business was against this deal. And all eyes then turned to the department of justice to see whether or not they would step in to try to block the deal, which, of course, in november of 2021 they did. And what was the justice departments position really interesting here, because most times when we talk about antitrust cases, were talking about monopoly cases that deal with potential consumer effects. The department of justice in this case was pursuing a monopoly monopsony claim, which is when a market contracts down to one or a few buyers in this case, the buyer was the publisher and the seller was authors who were selling rights to these publishers. Now, monopsony claims are not uncommon, but they are somewhat unusual. Usually we see with the antitrust case, its about monopoly and potential consumer prices. This was all about the market for ebook rights for authors. It was a very novel approach and i think that led to a lot of people questioning whether or not this was going to be in effective case for the department of justice. Of course, in the end, it was the judge clearly bought the department of justices case here and ruled for them, blocking the deal. And the assistant attorney general, jonathan kantor, said after the judge ruled on this case, quote, the proposed merger would have reduced competition, decrease author compensation, diminish the breadth, depth and diversity of our stories and ideas and ultimately impoverished our democracy. Thats a pretty strong statement indeed. A very strong statement, and one i think that the publishing community, particularly authors in the publishing community, have been looking for for years. The Publishing Industry, as judge morris pan noted in a decision, is pretty highly concentrated. We have five major publishers in the industry. This would have taken it down to four, but more problematic is that it would have made one huge firm at the top of that industry. Penguin, random house. Simon schuster, that combined entity and it was that entity. The government said that was going to have uncover in power to suppress author advances and shove potentially not beneficial terms down authors throats. And if authors cant make money on their books or cant get good deals on their books, that ultimately would have an impact on all of us because we would not have the diversity of ideas out there that we need in this country. And florence pan, judge florence pan said in her ruling, the effect of the proposed merger may be substantially to lessen competition in the market for the us Publishing Rights to anticipated top selling books. We seem to spend a lot of time in this case talking about bestseller ing books. Exactly. And, you know, thats just the Legal Standard for judge pan was whether or not this deal with substantially it was likely to substantially lessen competition. She found it easily was. And you raised the the exact right point that we talked in this case, the department of justice built its case on this very small subset of books. And these are books that get advances of over 250,000, which seems like a lot. But really, when you factor in how much work goes into a book, its actually not that much. The publishers had argued that this is just a really small segment of the total book market. Less than 2 of authors and, you know, you really cant block a deal as anticompetitive based on this really small subset. But judge warrens pen easily saw through that, noted that while this is a small number of authors to get these advances they account for, i think she said 70 she found of the revenue. These bestselling books obviously are where publishers really make their money. And if the publishers were to get so much control with these, the combined entity, i should say, over to this section of the industry, it would really change the balance of power in an anticompetitive sense in the Book Business. And andrew albanys one of the celebrity people who spoke up celebrity authors who spoke up during this trial was stephen king. That got a lot of attention. It did get a lot of attention. And frankly, though, stephen king didnt have a lot to say that was on point in terms of the legal case. What he did say resonated loudly, though, and thats was and that was consolidation in the industry is bad and it needs to be arrested. It hurts. Authors. And it was it was interesting. At trial, the defense attorney, daniel petrocelli, had no questions for stephen king, said, id love to have a coffee with you and sit down and talk about your fascinating career. But i have nothing to ask you today. And that was the defenses, you know, their attempt to sort of characterize kings testimony as not really pertaining to the case. But i think if you read judge pans decision, theres a lengthy section in there about consolidation and competition in the Book Business. I think she clearly was affected by kings testimony. So what was the reaction from simon and schuster and Penguin Random house after the ruling . Well, disappointment, obviously, and i really feel for the employees of Simon Schuster. Right, because they are still looking for a home more than two years later. And there seems to be no end in immediate sight for them to to whos going to be their corporate owner. Nevertheless, theyve continued to put out outstanding books. Simon schuster has been posting record sales throughout for the last couple of years and still to this day, Penguin Random house. I think its a little more complicated. I think they would like to i think theyre considering an appeal to try to push this forward where that gets complicated now is that both, you know, Simon Schuster and Penguin Random house have to agree to move Forward Together in any appeal. And you can see where Simon Schuster would want to just move on and find a new buyer that can pass muster and be approved by the department of justice, whereas i think Penguin Random house would like to continue the fight and ultimately make simon and schuster part of its portfolio, to use your words. Why is simon and schuster looking for a home . I think its you know, it comes down to a corporate decision with viacomcbs that publishing is not part of their core strategy for the future. You know, viacomcbs, obviously, were looking at the age of streaming and technology and content and things are changing rapidly. Books are mature industry. You know, were not getting like a ton of innovation from the Book Business, right . Were selling books. And while books are doing very well, the market for books has been up significantly over the last couple of years. Like i said, theres not a ton of growth that youre going to squeeze out an industry that thats mature, like the Book Business and not a lot of innovation to come there. So i think they just didnt see that aligning with their strategic goals and decided that it was time to move on. Well, andrew albanys of Publishers Weekly, thanks for the update on this case. My pleasure. And this is about books. This is book tvs program and podcast looking at the business of publishing. And now we want to introduce you to british writer louise wilder. She has spent most of her career trying to get readers to buy other authors books. She does it through blurb writing. In fact, she is so prolific, shes written a book about it. Blurb your enthusiasm. Book tvs john mcardle sat down with her recently to talk about her new book. Louise welder whats a blurb and how important is it to a book . Success . Right. Well, the word blurb, i guess, has different meanings. And over your side of the atlantic that it does here in england, i think in the u. S. , its more commonly used to describe an advanced endorsement that this, an author will give for another authors book. Whereas here we tend to use it to mean the descriptive copy that goes on a book. So you know that the synopsis, although i think its much more than a synopsis which is why i wrote a whole book about it and i think that the words we see on books, i mean, we probably read more of them than we do actual books themselves can tell us so much about the history of books, about the art of words publishing. About storytelling. And the more i delved into them, the more fascinating things i discovered. So, yeah. And they theyve been around a lot longer than we think. The word blurb was in. I think it was coined that theres no evidence before that in 1987 by an american writer. It was on an advert for his book called are you a bromide . Which means like or you really dont person. And so this whole thing is lumped in the language of literary hype. You can see the art. If you look for online, its got a photo of a woman they call misspelled in a blurb and the art of blurb. And shes saying how this book is so wonderful that its going to make you want to crawl through miles of tropical jungle and bite someone on the neck because its so spectacular. So the whole idea is that its just mocking this, you know, the puffery of publishing. So i sort of think whether we use it, your sense or the sense, we more commonly use it in here, in england that the blurb is definitely a piece of hype. You know, maybe something we dont quite trust on the history of blurbs. You get into that in your book, blurb your enthusiasm, and one quote from George Orwell that you start your book with question any thinking person as to why he never reads novels and you will usually find that at bottom it is because of the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb reviewers. Yes, thats quite strong, isnt it . Yes, i think its interesting. I think in this sense orwell was talking a little bit more about blurbs in terms of a quotation, you know, a puff from another author. But i found it interesting that when i looked into this, orwell wrote off not long after actually writing that in. An essay he wrote to his friends to connolly, asking him if he could give him a nice blurb. Facebook basically saying, you know, ill scratch your back if you scratch mine. So, you know, i think everyones everyones in on it. But orwell did have quite a lot of obviously a lot of control over the words that went on his covers. Theres theres some letters between him and his his editor when they would just before the publication of 1984. And he said, you know, i really dont like the way youve described this book. It makes it sound like a thriller mixed up with a love story. And so presumably being orwell, he got his own way. And so his the blurb that he wrote talks much more about totalitarian is it it sets up this dystopian world and it starts 1984 was the year in which it happened, which i actually think is a really good book as well. That gives you a sense of mystery. Well, this is your first book, but youre no stranger to writing blurbs. How long have you been in the blurb business . Yeah, the blurb business. Its its its over 25 years now. So since the last century, i guess. Which makes me feel very old. Yeah, i started out in publishing in the 1990s and things have changed quite a lot since then. Initially, there was a department of us who would just wrote the cover, copy the jacket, copy for the books. Thats all we did. And we read books all day and we wrote blurbs and it was just wonderful. But since then, we have been kind of separate it out and folded into marketing departments, which actually i do think works well because you know what . Were doing in a sense is marketing to to the consumer directly. You know, theres probably no more direct way of doing it than the words that they will see when they browse in a bookshop and pick a book up and look at the back of it. I think people there are a lot of estimations that people might not spend more than about 30 seconds doing this. But, you know, hopefully something in those words that we that weve crafted will jump out and make them want to want to buy. Yeah. And in your 25 years, have they all been at Penguin Books in the uk . They have, yes. Obviously now with Penguin Random house in the uk. But yes, it was at penguin. Ive worked in various departments, so ive worked on very commercial books, you know, like thrillers. And now i tend to work on more serious nonfiction and a lot of classics. But i think, you know, its it seems to be the same where wherever i am, you know, often will get, you know, were working with a book that might not yet be written or well just have a few lines about it and not know that much. You know, hopefully theres a manuscript that we can get our hands on, but thats not always the case. But its yeah, its been such an instructive, an amazing experience. You know, ive got to read incredible works of literature. Ive learned so much more than i ever did when i was at university about, you know, the art of writing and putting together a piece of writing and i think that, you know, writing these very short paragraphs can actually teach you a lot about, you know, writing as a whole and, you know, writing a whole book. Well, what makes a good blurb . Oh, the Million Dollar question. I would say that a blurb is a lot more than a synopsis. You know, if you want a synopsis of a bookstore, you can just look on wikipedia. The author, iris murdoch, said that a blurb is a mini art form, and thats how i like to see it. It should tell a story. It should have a beginning, middle and an end. It should that story should contain tensions and drama. And mr. It should do a kind of a dance between divulging and withholding. It should set up you know, a time and a place, but do it in a way that really hooks reader in, you know, i think its really important that a blurb will make an emotional connection with the reader, whether its Something Like the, the opening of the blurb on. The first discworld novel by terry pratchett. It starts in the beginning there was a turtle which just makes you smile or Something Like the blurb thats been on Margaret Atwoods novel, the handmaids tale for years, which starts the republic of gilead, allows offred only one function to breed, which obviously creates a completely different kind of emotion. It unnerves you and unsettle you. So i think a good bloke has to hook you in. It has to tell a story and it has to try and be original in some way, which is difficult when youre writing thousands of these things. But, you know, it needs to try and stay true to the book if it can, and pick out some some kind of intriguing detail from it. You know, i think we have a responsibility with what we do as well. Well, how do you write a good blurb for a bad book . A book that you dont have any emotional connection to, that youre not that youre not feeling that with . Oh, thats a good question. And i really i think sometimes it can be easier because you dont youre not involved. So or, you know, if its something that im not an expert in at all, you know, some science, but that a on the subject i know nothing about in a way that can be easy because im kind of like the layman, you know, i dont have this expertise. And so i can step back from something and hopefully try and make it clear, try and make it accessible, which is what im there to do. And i think and i think, you know, perhaps with a novel, its not that great, you know, i like to be positive and think that theres always something that you can find to love in a book. And its my job to try and dig it out. Have you ever lied in a blurb . Oh, well, i would describe it as more of a fib. Maybe that a lie. You know, its. Its like a kind of a white lie. Theres an italian author, roberto calasso, who i quote in the book, and he talks about the art of blurb and being like introducing someone at a party. You know, you you could be talking to someone who doesnt know anything about them. And so you concentrate on the good parts and the positive, you know, rather than saying this day or this person like this book is a bit kind of soggy in the middle and rambles on a bit. You know, i think its our job to try and highlight those good things. And and i also think that perhaps as readers, you know, most readers are very savvy. Theyre aware of whats going on. And partly, i think i know as a reader that i want to be hooked in. And there was a quote on a book that i bought the book because of the quote in it on the front. And it said, if if George Clooney had walked into the room while i was reading this boo