WASHINGTON—The Justice Division filed a lawsuit Tuesday that seeks to dam Penguin Random Home from buying rival Simon & Schuster for practically $2.18 billion, the most recent in a collection of aggressive antitrust instances introduced beneath the Biden administration.
The division’s criticism, filed in federal court docket in Washington, D.C., centered not on the costs customers pay for books, however as an alternative on the competitors between publishers to safe rights from authors, particularly bestselling ones. The trade paid authors over $1 billion in advances final yr.
