It’s the master of horror’s turn to be “worried”: Stephen King, author of frightening bestsellers, told a US court on Tuesday of his fears about the growing concentration in the publishing sector .
The father of works like shining and That testified in Washington against the proposed merger between its own publisher, Simon & Schuster, and the giant Penguin Random House, an operation valued at nearly $2.2 billion.
The US government opposes the birth of a juggernaut with “inordinate influence over the authors and works that are published, and the sums paid to authors”, and has asked Stephen King to be its witness featured in the trial.
Dressed in a gray suit and tie reflecting the seriousness of the issues, this 75-year-old man with a slender silhouette and angular features described for nearly an hour the developments in the sector during his long career.
“I’m here because I think consolidation is bad for the competition,” he explained.
“I’ve been in the book business for about 50 years. When I started, there were literally hundreds of publishers. One by one they were swallowed up by others or they went out of business. »
As a result, “it became harder and harder for writers to find enough money to live on.”
A “difficult world”
At the heart of the file: the advances on receipts that the publishers offer to their authors before the writing of the works. Newcomers generally have little or no right to it, but for popular authors, publishing houses compete and sometimes outbid each other.
Stephen King said his first check, in 1974, was for $2,500. He received it for Carriewhose sales exploded after its film adaptation.
After a handful of other books that sold well, including shining, he had proposed to his publisher to reserve his next three books for him in exchange for two million dollars. He had refused “bursting out laughing”.
Stephen King had gone elsewhere, had played the competition and had had a string of successes in the 1980s with renowned publishers, while continuing to publish some of his books with more confidential and less profitable houses.
“I was lucky to be able to afford it, to no longer have to follow my bank account, to follow my heart,” said Stephen King, who had already distinguished himself in 2012 by advocating for an increase in l taxation of the wealthiest, including his own wealth.
Well aware of being privileged, he lamented that his colleagues operate in “a difficult world”. At the end of the hearing, he added to be “very worried”, while signing autographs.
The trial is expected to last two more weeks.