The trend of large companies buying smaller publishers that began in the 1970s reached something of a climax in fall 1994, when it was announced that Farrar, Straus & Giroux, one of the few remaining major independent literary houses, was on the verge of being sold. FSG president Roger Straus said he chose to seek a buyer after his son decided he didn’t want to be in the family business. The speculation that Holtzbrinck was the “unnamed group” poised to buy FSG was confirmed in a story that ran in PW’s Nov. 7, 1994, issue.

From the Archive: October 24, 1994 by Publishers Weekly on Scribd