'Big Fish Eat Little Fish' engraving by Pieter van der Heyden, based on a drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Big Fish Eat Little Fish , a 1557 engraving of a drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, provides a succinct, gory summary of conventional wisdom about corporate publishing acquisitions. A large bloated fish engorged on smaller fish lies on the riverbank, wide-eyed. Dead fish spill from its mouth.
A fisherman slashes open its belly to reveal yet more small fish, several of whom are eating even smaller fish. Another fisherman is about to hook a fish using a little fish as bait. The engraving is crammed with images of greed, cannibalism, waste and folly.
In September, Hardie Grant, an independent stalwart of the Australian publishing scene, announced the acquisition of Pantera Press, a smaller independent publisher, with an eclectic list dominated by genre fiction and commercial non-fiction. This followed the news in August that Affirm Press, an indie publisher with a huge list, had been acquired by a really big fish, Simon & Schuster (S&S). The corporate press releases were hardly Bruegelian.
Pantera declared it shared with Hardie Grant “a strong alignment in ...
missions and values — committed to fostering creativity, supporting authors, and publishing with purpose”. The S&S presser was studded with optimistic quotes from CEOs and managing directors: everyone is thrilled, delighted, proud and excited. ‘One word: Cashflow’.