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AOL-TimesWarner Merger

© Richard Loeffler

The big news this week in the world of business and electronic publishing is the AOL-TimesWarner merger. The list serves have been full of predictions of doom and gloom along with cheers of adulation. Will the merger mean more and bigger markets for e-books? Or will it mean the cooping of the new emerging e-book industry to the villains of big business. In my opinion it will mean neither. I was a bookseller when Times-Mirror merged with Warner Brothers. The same debate erupted. Will this mean more exposure for books? Will it mean less opportunity for authors? Will it mean more opportunity for screen writers?

There were views on both sides of the argument and much fear and trepidation along with the euphoria. Nothing changed. From the book side, we didn't see tags on the movies or the videos saying "Buy and read the Warner book". We didn't see any cross merchandising offering discounts to movie goers to buy the book. We didn't see coupons in books offering discounts on buy the video. No ads in the magazines about the book, or the movie or the video.

I guess when companies get so big, there is this tendency to protect your territory. The book guys weren't talking to the movie guys. The magazine guys weren't talking to the TV guys. Everyone hunkered down to protect their little slice of the pie. And nothing changed except the price of the stock. Everyone outside the industry saw great opportunities for cross merchandising, everyone within the industry saw a chance to lose their area of influence. The only company that does a great job of cross merchandising but usually within their own area of influence is Disney. They offer coupons with every video toward the purchase of another video, trailers with each video advertising the next new release in the theatre, but even they do not promote their book sales with their video sales nor do they promote them in their theatre releases.

This always puzzled me because it is always the book that is the catalyse for the movie. I don't like what Disney does to the book when it makes it a movie. Perhaps the worst case of revisionist production was Disney's video of "Hercules". Maybe because I'm a Classics major, the inconsistencies stuck out more. But I'm told by others who are children's literature experts that their treatment of Hercules was not any worse than what they did to Bambi, or Cinderella, or Snow White.

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