Perseus CEO David Steinberger, aka "The King of the Indies," pictured at his secret underground bunker

In a startling New York Times investigative report, ace book reporter Motoko Rich has uncovered the fact that the mysterious “independent publisher” that was the fourth bidder in the aborted Houghton Mifllin Harcourt auction (after Hachette, Random House and an investment group headed by former HMH exec Wendy Strothman) is none other than the well-known little undergound indie, the, er … the Perseus Book Group?

It was a shocking revelation to people of reasonable cognitive power and others who previously understood Perseus to be a group of several large publishers (including Basic Books, PublicAffairs, De Capo, Running Press, and Vanguard) and the owner of three book distribution companies (PGW, Consortium, and the former CDS, which it renamed PDS, for Perseus Distribution Services), and was, seemingly, a company that precisely fit the dictionary’s definition of a conglomerate, even to the extent of calling itself, after all, the Perseus Book Group.