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After its $2 billion-plus agreement to sell Simon & Schuster fell apart last October, Paramount Global has found a new buyer for the book publishing giant at a slightly discounted all-cash price point of $1.62 billion.

Private equity firm KKR has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Simon & Schuster, the companies said August 7. In opting to sell to a buyer not affiliated with the “Big Five” group of publishers — which includes prior suitor Penguin Random House along with HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan — Paramount appears to think this is the deal can finally clear regulatory approval.

“We see a compelling opportunity to help Simon & Schuster become an even stronger partner to literary talent by investing in the expansion of the company’s capabilities and distribution networks,” stated Richard Sarnoff, chairman of media at KKR.

Paramount CEO Bob Bakish added, “The proceeds will give Paramount additional financial flexibility and greater ability to create long-term value for shareholders, while also delevering our balance sheet.”

Simon & Schuster, run by CEO Jonathan Karp, has a roster that includes recent bestsellers from Stephen King, Colleen Hoover, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Ruth Ware under 20-plus imprints including Scribner, Atria, Gallery and One Signal that comprise 36,000 titles. Recently unveiled book deals include memoirs from Britney Spears, actress Nia Long, TV host Stephen A. Smith and director Edward Zwick. Leadership, including Karp as CEO and Dennis Eulau as COO, will stay in place as Simon & Schuster transitions to a standalone company in the KKR portfolio.

The road to the new deal, as Bakish put it last December in an earnings call, has been a “suboptimal journey” as the media giant has shopped for buyers for years since a “for sale” sign was hung on the publisher in March 2020, right before COVID-19 shut downs hit the U.S. At that time, the company was in the midst of pivoting to a streaming-first mentality that prioritized its video-based assets like Paramount Pictures and collection of TV networks (CBS, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV) as it prepped what would become a relaunched streaming service in Paramount+, which now has 61 million subscribers globally.

As part of a plan to slim down its asset portfolio to scale up its entertainment assets, Paramount shed tech site CNET for $500 million in 2020, CBS’ New York BlackRock headquarters building for $760 million and CBS’ Studio City lot for $1.85 billion in 2021. Leadership had thought it found a buyer for Simon & Schuster in late November 2020, when it entered an agreement to sell the publisher to German media giant Bertelsmann, owner of Penguin Random House.

That deal drew scrutiny of the Department of Justice, which filed a lawsuit in November 2021 to stop the megamerger, with court filings disclosing that Simon & Schuster held 11 percent of the total publishing rights market share, while Penguin Random House had 37 percent. The government argued that the deal would give the merged entity “outsized influence over who and what is published, and how much authors are paid for their work.” The agency also centered its argument on authors, claiming, “Publishers other than the Big Five cannot regularly pay the high advances and provide the unique bundle of services needed to secure the publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books.”

The DoJ’s case ultimately convinced U.S. Circuit Court Judge Florence Y. Pan to block the sale last year, with Pan calling the proposed 49 percent market share of the combined entity “concerningly high” and “more than twice that of its closest competitor.”

After initially considering an appeal, Paramount terminated its deal with Bertelsmann and received a $200 million break-up fee as it sought to restart the sales process. “There’s a lot of interest,” Bakish said of the Simon & Schuster suitor’s list in May on an earnings call, adding that “depending on who the ultimate buyer ends up being,” there’s “a path to potentially closing that deal this year.”

Asset manager KKR, which has health care, real estate, pharma and technology holdings, has made forays into in the media space, including investments in the Ari Emanuel-run Endeavor as well as Epic Games, Mediawan, Leonine Studios and Skydance Media. In August, shortly before the Simon & Schuster deal was unveiled, KKR sold an audiobook publisher RBmedia, which touts 66,000 catalog titles, to an affiliate of private equity firm H.I.G. Capital.