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Friday 4 August 2023

Deputy Editor

Stephen King’s publisher could be taken private

Book sales are declining globally but the princelings of private equity still think there’s money in publishing. The WSJ says KKR is in advanced talks to buy Simon & Schuster from Paramount Global for $1.65 billion. That’s a good deal less than the $2.2 billion Paramount hoped to get for S & S from Penguin Random House earlier this year, but that deal was blocked as anti-competitive by a federal judge. This probably won’t be, analysts say, because KKR is not a publisher itself even though it has an interest in Politico via a stake in Axel Springer. In another age, Simon & Schuster published Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald. It still draws big names, including Stephen King, Bob Woodward, Trump’s ex-Vice President Mike Pence (So Help Me God) and Colleen Hoover, the Texan phenomenon whose bodice-rippers were initially self-published but are now often displayed, elbowing all rivals aside, under the sign “TikTok made me buy it.”

Photograph Getty Images