“Everything is random in publishing. Success is random. Best sellers are random.”

I’ve been dipping in and out of the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster antitrust trial, the results of which are due in the next few months. Dipping in, because as someone currently querying their first novel, it’s an industry in which I’m invested. Dipping out because I don’t have the kind of brain that can handle the minutae of trials and legal jargon.

Luckily my beloved vulture.com has been doing sterling work with the details in a trial which could see the Big Five publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan) become the Big Four should Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merge.

Like a lot of people, I enjoyed hearing from the likes of Stephen King, who took the stand to share his experiences of being a writer in the industry. But also like a lot of people I cannot relate to someone worth $500 million who made bank back in the day when Not Every Single Person In The World Is A Writer™

But of all the noise and information coming out of the trial, one comment from Penguin Random House chief executive officer Markus Dohle landed like one of those anvils that gets dropped on Wile E. Coyote’s head:

“Everything is random in publishing. Success is random. Best sellers are random. So that is why we are the Random House!”

The comment has stuck with me because I couldn’t figure out if it made me feel better or worse.

For the most part, I think Dohle’s being overly cute. Feeding into the mythology that absolutely anyone could find themselves in the right place at the right time, which simply isn’t true. Even those lucky right place right timers will have, to some extent, engineered the right place in which they had to be.

Best sellers are, by and large, not random. They stick to formulas (Jack Reacher, enemies-to-lovers), exploit the algorithm (Wattpad fanfic), flat out dangle content carrots and story arcs that are not delivered (Alex Aster’s Lightlark).

None of this is random. It is calculated, designed, packaged and delivered just like a McDonald’s cheeseburger, but no one likes to admit that because we cling to this idea that art designed by a committee is somehow less than.

On the other hand, some success does come completely out of the blue, tuning into the zeitgeist in way that straight up sneers at what an agent or publisher might personally think.

So, is everything random in publishing?

No… but also yes.

But mostly no.