This is one of several papers presented at a Federal Trade Commission Symposium on Media Concentration. It reviews the controversy between book publishers and the Authors Guild concerning the control of already published materials and the future of publishing, and it analyzes the market structure in order to put the issues into perspective. Some of the reported findings concerning the market structure indicate that: the major shift in concentration in book publishing occurred between 1958 and 1963; the four largest publishers control only 16% of the market, but the first four firms in the mass paperback submarket control an estimated 59% of the market; none of the seven major paperback firms is an independent enterprise; and the top 50 firms have considerably increased their share of the market over the last two decades. A series of connected research questions are suggested: (1) the analysis of the structure of the market and the relations between firms needs to be extended to all subfields in the industry and, where applicable, to suppliers, wholesalers, etc.; (2) a major hypothesis emerging is that there are a number of specifiable advantages of bigness; and (3) a thorough analysis of mergers and acquisitions in which publishing houses have participated since World War II combined with an evaluation of the life cycle of new and independent firms is required. (MKM)