Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Monday, July 16, 2007


We wonder that the publishing biz, which considers itself almost as invincible as THE CONSPIRACY, hasn't had a mergermania of its own. It already believes in the same things as THE CONSPIRACY: TENTPOLES, merchandising, art-for-art's-sake to please the ad-blurbists. This deal between Houghton Mifflin and Reed Elsevier points to one great advantage of the biz: it controls a seller's market when it comes to textbooks, and while those fancy two- and three-digit profit margins might not finance hundreds of navel starers, we can see where the biz would be proud to do so -- if it weren't so heavily into obsoleting itself as fast as possible.

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