Random House Told You the Truth

In the summer of 2022 the federal government sued to stop the biggest publisher in the world from buying the fourth biggest, and for two weeks the people who run American publishing had to explain their business under oath.Asked how publishing decides what succeeds, the CEO of Penguin Random House said this: “Everything is random in publishing. Success is random. Bestsellers are random. So that is why we are the Random House.”That isn’t a critic. It isn’t a bitter writer with a drawer full of rejections. That’s the man running the largest publishing company on earth, telling you the system doesn’t know.This is the first of a series of weeks on what’s actually happening in publishing right now, and what I think a publisher is for. Today: the real numbers, including the viral one that’s false. Why an indie musician gets romance and an indie author still gets an asterisk. And what the word hybrid actually means, which turns out to be a story about Mendel’s peas.Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group, a message-and-meaning press. More at chadprevost.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com