Its like cattle futures. Special deals to fund special people. The rest of us buying S & S published books by other authors just pay the freight for this back-door gimme.
Simon and Schuster is owned by Comcast. Comcast has issues before regulators with the potential to save or cost them billions of dollars in the coming decades. 14 mill is chicken poop, a tiny bribe, and the money that it costs will come from consumers, even if they do not use Comcast.