German media group Bertelsmann has agreed to purchase publisher Simon & Schuster for $2.175 billion in cash from ViacomCBS, strengthening its presence in the US. Bertelsmann outbid Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in a contest for the publisher of Dan Brown, Hillary Clinton and Stephen King which Viacom put on the block earlier this year. The deal represents the second major move in CEO Thomas Rabe’s drive to consolidate Bertelsmann as the world’s biggest bookseller, after the 185-year-old publisher took full control of Penguin Random House less than a year ago.
Size is important in publishing as bestseller lists become dominated by a handful of blockbusters – such as Penguin Random House’s edition of ex-US President Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land. But overall US book sales have been growing by a mere 1 percent a year, according to the American Association of Publishers, as readers are distracted by social media and other online formats. Thomas described books as the “past, present and future” of Bertelsmann but also highlighted the US publishing deal’s significance for its digital content as people turn to e-books or listen to narrated ‘talking’ books.