Strategy: The Big Merge
As to why this is happening, Norris thinks the move was not born of a strategic need, but rather "because someone at either Pearson or Bertelsmann finally figured out that ebooks aren't going to step in and save the industry and wanted out of the consumer books business."
Norris emphasizes that he hopes the new entity will be successful, but qualifies that he'll be measuring that success against a different yardstick than shareholders will: "on the extent that they can get more people who don't buy books to buy one book. Simba estimates over 100 million adults didn't buy a single, solitary book in the last 12 months, and everyone in the industry needs to start figuring out how to make content worth the wait instead of simply shortening the distance between the voracious reader and the cash register."