Reactions to Penguin-Random House merger

       As the Penguin-Random House mega-merger becomes reality, 'The Bookseller asked a range of industry insiders what the new management team should do'.
       Among the comments: Patrick Neale depressingly suggests:

I suspect that the real drivers of the publishing world will remain much the same, those being profit, price and sales figures. Authors and shareholders will want what they have always wanted dividends and that number one slot.

       And Dennis Johnson dreams that they might:

Try to restore the literary culture to meaningfulness by breaking myself up. I'd sell off Penguin, Knopf, Dial, Pantheon and all my other various imprints to individual private owners, in hopes they would then restore those legendary companies to businesses that are at least as concerned with art-making and politics as they are with the bottom line.

       Alas, that seems ...unlikely.