The career novelist

19

CHAPTER

Staying Alive in the Land

of the Giants

MEGA-MERGERS
IT IS A BALMY SATURDAY. YOU ARE HAVING A BARBECUE IN YOUR
backyard with your family. Suddenly, a two-hundred-foot-tall colossus,
blind in both eyes and drunk as a skunk, comes staggering through
your neighborhood, crushing station wagons and doghouses under his
massive, hairy feet. Worse, he is heading for your picnic! What do you
do? What else? You run for your life and then, hopefully, wake up.
Unfortunately, if you are a career novelist, this nightmare may
have a familiar feel. Giant media conglomerates are lurching
through your neighborhood, spreading paranoia and crushing
whole publishing houses as they go. They may be drunk with power,
hung over on debt, or maybe too nearsighted to see beyond the bot-
tom line of their next quarterly report. It does not matter. The effect
is the same: writers' careers are getting trampled and there is no
waking up. This is the land of the giants.
You don't believe me? Take a look at the business section of your
newspaper. The merger mania of the eighties is still alive today.
Simon & Schuster's owner, Paramount, has been sold to Viacom.
Little, Brown's corporate parent, Time Warner, is merging with
Turner. Hyperion's sugar daddy, Disney, is merging with ABC. MCA's
publishing stepchild, the Putnam-Berkley Group, formerly owned by
Matsushita, is now controlled by a distiller, Seagram, that wants to
get in on the media action.