Topic: Pearson Publishing

Sir Martin Sorrell resigns from advertising giant WPP following an internal investigation into personal conduct. The hosts discuss the massive consolidation in the PR and marketing industries. Dvorak shares an anecdote about Pearson Publishing buying up computer book companies to avoid paying royalties by cloning successful titles under different imprints.

The hosts examine the market dominance of Pearson Education, which has acquired numerous major publishers including Prentice Hall and Macmillan. They describe a "roll-up" strategy where Pearson allegedly clones successful books from its royalty-paying subsidiaries and republishes them under work-for-hire imprints like Que to maximize corporate profit. This practice is cited as a primary example of the lack of antitrust enforcement in modern business.

Pearson is identified as the primary corporate beneficiary of Common Core, owning a vast array of educational publishers. The hosts describe Pearson's historical business tactics of buying competitors to avoid paying author royalties. They also examine the "America's Promise Alliance," founded by Colin Powell, as a network of wealthy trustees and corporate partners supporting these educational shifts.

The global advertising and public relations industry is dominated by three massive holding companies: WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis. This consolidation extends to the publishing world, where Pearson has acquired numerous imprints, effectively monopolizing the computer book market. Authors describe a "work for hire" scam where publishers replace royalty-paying bestsellers with in-house versions to avoid paying writers.