News Corp, owner of HarperCollins Publishers, has expressed interest about buying the publishing company Simon & Schuster from its owner, CBS Corp, according to News Corp-owned The Wall Street Journal.
This comes following News Corp's unsuccessful, last-minute bid for Penguin, shortly before its announced merger with Random House. "The people described the talks as preliminary and cautioned that a deal isn't imminent," wrote the Wall Street Journal.
HarperCollins is currently part of the new publishing company being created by the division of News Corp into two entities.
In recent years, publishing had been dominated by the Big Six: Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Holtzbrinck/Macmillan.
However, as Amazon's growth continues to threaten their future activities based on the current publishing model, the industry seems to be turning to consolidation to defend itself.
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