c-span's book tv. and this is about books, book tv's program and podcast, which looks at the business of publishing. well, in just a few minutes, we'll 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 albany's is a senior writer with publishers weekly and he's followed the case from the beginning and he joins us now. so mr. albany's remind us of what this merger was. to begin with, this merger was said to be the the coming together of the world's 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? what's 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 department's position really interesting here, because most times when we talk about antitrust cases, we're 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, it's 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 justice's 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. that's 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 can't make money on their books or can't 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, that's 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, it's 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 can't block a deal as anti-competitive based on this really small subset. but judge warren's 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 anti-competitive sense in the book business. and andrew albany's 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 didn't have a lot to say that was on point in terms of the legal case. what he did say resonated loudly, though, and that's 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, i'd 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 defense's, you know, their attempt to sort of characterize king's testimony as not really pertaining to the case. but i think if you read judge pan's decision, there's a lengthy section in there about consolidation and competition in the book business. i think she clearly was affected by king's 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 who's going to be their corporate owner. nevertheless, they've 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 it's a little more complicated. i think they would like to i think they're 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 it's 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, we're looking at the age of streaming and technology and content and things are changing rapidly. books are mature industry. you know, we're not getting like a ton of innovation from the book business, right? we're 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, there's not a ton of growth that you're going to squeeze out an industry that that's mature, like the book business and not a lot of innovation to come there. so i think they just didn't see that aligning with their strategic goals and decided that it was time to move on. well, andrew albany's of publishers weekly, thanks for the update on this case. my pleasure. and this is about books. this is book tv's 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, she's written a book about it. blurb your enthusiasm. book tv's john mcardle sat down with her recently to talk about her new book. louise welder what's 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., it's more commonly used to describe an advanced endorsement that this, an author will give for another author's 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 it's 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 they've been around a lot longer than we think. the word blurb was in. i think it was coined that there's 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 don't person. and so this whole thing is lumped in the language of literary hype. you can see the art. if you look for online, it's got a photo of a woman they call misspelled in a blurb and the art of blurb. and she's saying how this book is so wonderful that it's going to make you want to crawl through miles of tropical jungle and bite someone on the neck because it's so spectacular. so the whole idea is that it's 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 don't 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, that's quite strong, isn't it? yes, i think it's 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, i'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. so, you know, i think everyone's everyone's in on it. but orwell did have quite a lot of obviously a lot of control over the words that went on his covers. there's there's some letters between him and his his editor when they would just before the publication of 1984. and he said, you know, i really don't like the way you've 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 you're no stranger to writing blurbs. how long have you been in the blurb business? yeah, the blurb business. it's it's it's 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. that's 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? we're doing in a sense is marketing to to the consumer directly. you know, there's 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 we've 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. i've worked in various departments, so i've 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, it's it seems to be the same where wherever i am, you know, often will get, you know, we're working with a book that might not yet be written or we'll just have a few lines about it and not know that much. you know, hopefully there's a manuscript that we can get our hands on, but that's not always the case. but it's yeah, it's been such an instructive, an amazing experience. you know, i've got to read incredible works of literature. i've 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 that's 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 it's really important that a blurb will make an emotional connection with the reader, whether it's 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 that's been on margaret atwood's novel, the handmaid's 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 you're 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 don't have any emotional connection to, that you're not that you're not feeling that with? oh, that's a good question. and i really i think sometimes it can be easier because you don't you're not involved. so or, you know, if it's something that i'm 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 i'm kind of like the layman, you know, i don't 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 i'm there to do. and i think and i think, you know, perhaps with a novel, it's not that great, you know, i like to be positive and think that there's always something that you can find to love in a book. and it's 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, it's. it's like a kind of a white lie. there's 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 doesn't 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 it's 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. they're aware of what's 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 book, i would have sent him away right. i have to buy this book. and so it works for me. and, you know, i knew that i was being manipulated, but at the same time, i just couldn't resist. well, of course, everybody wants to know, did you write the blurb for your own book? why? well, initially, as a kind of experiment, i got six copywriters who i knew from from my days in publishing, who i do still work in the industry or freelance. and we i asked each of them to write a blurb for my book. and i thought, you know, maybe the best one go on that bit because i have this theory that ideally an author shouldn't write their own blurb because you need an outsider's perspective. an author can often be far too close to the material, and in the end they would just all so great and so different that we decided to put them as an appendix at the end of the book, along with a blurb that i used, a kind of computer generated blurb, there's a program you can use to do them, which was just terrible and made me feel really glad that, you know, i, i'll still be at a job because computers definitely can't write blurbs at the moment. and so in the end, and i did end up kind of ignoring my own advice and my editor and i worked on the globe, on my book together, which actually had to be incredibly short because i've actually i've got a copy of it here in you might not be able to see, but that's the sort of that much space for the blurb because i was lucky enough to get some really nice endorsements for the book as well. and so we really just had to try and employ that. there was a lot in there, you know, it covers all sorts of subjects and areas, but just do it in this tiny space. so yes, i completely ignored my own advice. well, authors always want to read their own works, so go ahead and read out the blurb that's on the back of your book. oh, you might hate it. so it says this is the outside story of bits from blurbs to titles, quotes to checks, jacket, cute animal designs. this is a joke because it has a little cute mouse on the front and via author for you to writing trick's classic literature bunker busters plot spoilers and publishing secrets discover why it's good to judge a book by its cover, maybe even this one for an american audience. what's a bunker buster? yeah. so it's. it's. it's a little bit readers, i think they were also known as sex and shopping novels. so i think possibly a bunker buster is how they do it in the in the uk. so it's all those marvelous eighties and huge doorstop novels by the likes of jackie collins and shirley conran, which i do go into quite a you know, there's one chapter devoted to them, my book, just because they were an important part of my teenage reading experience, well, you can't obviously have any complaints about your own blurb, but do you find in the 5000 or so blurbs that you've written in you in your career, do authors like the blurbs? what's their relationship as as you create these for other authors? i think it really varies. i think some are incredibly protective of their work and they want to control every area of it. and others are very happy to have this outsider step in. but often, you know that their idea of what is what will sell something and mine are quite different life, you know, a lot of authors will try and make things really long. and one wrote to me saying, you know, this blood is a comprehensive. nobody's going to have to buy the book now, which is completely not our aim. and and yeah, the mercy quite reasonable. i had a i had a letter from john updike, which was lovely. you know, obviously, you know, quite a few years ago now, i'd rewritten the blurb for his novel couples, and it was meant to be very short and very snappy and and it's such a charming letter. he includes the blurb that he wrote for the first edition and said, you know, this is this is by far less giddy attempt to describe its contents and at the end, you know, he sort of did this. and then just says, oh, my, have have it your way. so that was a lovely example of an author agreeing to what i'd written. but, you know, there have been far worse incidents, you know, some some i would name any names, but someone being pretty horrible. a friend of mine has had, you know, blurbs torn up in front of him. he's had to write, you know, 21 different versions of a blurb. and there was the british author, jeanette winterson, who really hated the blurbs on her assignments and reissued some of her backlist novels. they gave them new covers and they rewrote the blurbs at the same time. and she hated them so much that she decided to set fire line of her own books in her garden and then put it on social media, which is, i think, possibly the most extreme example of blurb hating i've come across. what are some of the other examples of well-known books that our readers might have seen that your words are on the back of? oh yeah, a lot of penguin classics, things like that. there was i am not quite sure how it translate to to the united states. there was a novel called alone in berlin that did incredibly well here. it was became a sort of an international bestseller. and i was i was really pleased to have have worked on that book. you know, a lot of the time, i think that i never know if i'm that pleased to see my blurb some books because invariably they've been changed by somebody, either an editor or an author. you know, they've always been slightly tweaked. and so i never know if i'm really 100% happy, but i'm sure that's the same with people who write anything, you know? is it true that that j.d. salinger wanted only his name and title on the back of his books, and he wanted to let his books speak for themselves? yes, it's absolute really true. and and you know, delving into publishing history, nobody really seems to know why this is the case. but he had it in his contracts. they stipulated that it should only his name and the book's title should appear on the cover. nothing else? no. no information about him. so no biography and no quotes and absolutely no blurb. he was notoriously published shy. so perhaps, you know, this was part of it. i also found the blurb on like the original edition of catcher in the rye did have a blurb on it. this is obviously before he instigated this rule and it was pretty terrible. i wasn't sure if that was anything to do with it. but yeah, i think it's it's gone. it's, you know, it's a publishing mystery, but a but one that has been adhered to well before we ended. i wanted to to get your thoughts on some of the words that stuck out to me looking through my bookshelf, reading blurbs of books that i have. these are some of the words that just kept coming up compelling, refreshingly unique, fascinating, readable, timely, intimate and revealing. oh, yeah, so right. you're so right. and that readable. that's the worst one, isn't it? it's like, well, it's a book, of course. it's readable. yeah, i, i feel very ashamed too. and i say this because i do think there is this kind of language of publishing cliche where all too often, you know, people who work in the industry will fall back on these adjectives, you know, hauntings and other one. and, you know, they're often kind of light references, you know, dazzling, luminous, searing, like, you know, why do we use these words? obviously, i try and avoid using it wherever possible. and i think one rule with copy with all good writing is to try and avoid, you know, it's the show, don't tell, you know, avoid just sounding like a publisher telling people why they need to read this book and why it's that most earth shattering thing that's ever, ever been written. and instead, going back to the work itself, think of something concrete from the book. you know, orwell talked about using pictures and sensations. to get your message across, which i think is far stronger than you know, any kind of landmark ground breaking putdown of all all of those kind of words that we use the book is blurb your enthusiasm in a to z of literary persuasion. the author is louise wielder appreciate your time on about books. thank you very much. and this is about books book tv is program and podcast looking at the business of publishing. well, each tuesday, dozens of new books are published. here's a recent sampling. republican senators tom cotton of arkansas and ted cruz of texas both have new books out about the political battles facing america today. senator cotton's book, which focuses on national defense and foreign policy, is titled only the strong reversing the left's plot to sabotage american power. and senator cruz's newest book is aimed at the judiciary and us legal system. it's titled justice corrupted how the left weaponized our legal system. meanwhile, the wall street journal senior writer john hilsenrath is out with a new book. it's a biography of treasury secretary janet yellen. it's titled yellen, the trailblazing economist who navigated an era of upheaval. also each week, national publications review newly released books. here's a couple daily based in usa today columnist david rothkopf. new book america and resistance earned a kirkus review. kirkus calls it a revealing book about how government professionals, the so-called deep state, kept the trump administration from wreaking even more havoc than it did. rothkopf kirkus writes rescues the reputations of some officials, such as kirsten nielsen, secretary of homeland security, while further lowering those of white house adviser stephen miller and jared kushner and the washington post took a look at linda kintzler as new book come to this court and cry. how the holocaust ends. in her grippingebut to the washington post writes, kinstler traces how the crimes of world war two have been prosecuted. and justice attempted over generations. how memories have been formed and used, usurped and admitted. and watch for these authors and programs in the near future. on book tv. well, thanks for joining us on about books, a program and podcast produced by c-span's book tv. book tv will continue to bring you publishing news. a new author programs and to get this podcast and all other c-span podcasts go to our c-span now app. and a reminder that all book tv programs are available to watch online at book tv dot org.