american publishing is by far companies which is not to be center phobic, but the reason is viking is on pierson that owns the financial times which owns the whole group of ouster house, ect., ect., and leading publishers, so all of these people, many of whom wanted out of the trap of publishing in their own native language, right, one was willing to take a loss in need be in buying random house because they knew the market was limited, and once you were in english, you were safer. they even changed their name to random house which sounds funny in german. another basis for the business of books is all these companies owned newspapers, tv stations, cable, ect., ect., and they made a lot more money than publishing had ever made. now, publishing in all of western europe and the u.s. and england ect. throughout the whole 0th century -- 20 century made roughly 3-4% on average taking the most commercial and least commercial firms. it doesn't mean they went to the poor house. it was reasonable to make that kind of money, but it was not the huge gains you made in other areas which was fed by advertising