Sometimes, the thing you most anticipate actually does happen.
While the timing of the acquisition, by French media giant Lagardère, caught many by surprise, the fact that Time Warner Book Group had been sold was anything but; in fact, its sale could be filed under The Other Shoe Dropped.
Ever since the well publicized, ultimately disastrous Bertelsmann near-buy of two years ago—no, probably ever since the original and even more disastrous AOL Time Warner merger in 2000—everybody who cares about these things understood the books division, as Warner knew it, would be going away. CEO Larry Kirshbaum's departure last year nearly verified it; though he didn't say so at the time, his sudden decision, in the wake of two of the most successful years he or Warner had ever had, indicated to the smart kids in the room that change was coming—and it seemed likely that Kirshbaum chose to leave rather than to go through the agonizing process of sprucing up, pruning and dog-and-ponying that would surely be required to woo a new buyer.
So it happened last week that the French media company that owns, among other things, such Hachette magazines as Elle and Premiere came to buy this country's fifth-largest trade publishing house. Immediately, the questions started: (1) Why was Lagardère paying nearly twice what Bertelsmann reportedly offered back in 2000?; (2) Would newly installed Brit-import and Kirshbaum replacement David Young remain?; (3) And—most important to the actual toilers at 1271 Sixth Avenue—would staffers have to change offices?
The answers came fast and furious: (1) because the house had increased revenue by more than $100 million since 2002; (2) probably; and (3) looks likely. Few asked what would happen to BookSpan, the book club that is joint-owned by Time Warner and Bertelsmann; its fate remains unclear. But the question that matters most was the one asked most quietly, anxiously, especially by writers and agents with real or potential deals with Warner: What does it mean that another major American publisher is now under the control of a European conglomerate? Will it change the way Warner does business?
The answer to that one: probably not much. Here's the dirty little secret: the big news is actually no news. Despite whining to the contrary, history has shown that which foreign conglomerate (Holtzbrinck, Pearson, Bertelsmann, NewsCorp, sort of) owns your company has very little to do with day-to-day life on the book-buying and -publishing level. Culturally, of course, it's another story. But it's not as if the TW Book group was ever a perfect fit within its corporate culture, or that its executives are unused to dealing with business overlords. This is not a case of, say, family-owned Doubleday suddenly being swallowed by a big, bad corporation or, alternatively, Warner going private. This is mostly an even exchange: conglomerate for conglomerate.
Never mind that Lagardère will surely have its own expectations, ideas and idiosyncrasies. The whole deal looks to me like a classic second marriage: the new partner may look and sound and act different at first, but sooner or later, the two of you come up against the same old problems.
Or, to Francify the old saw: same church, different banc d'eglise.
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