Pearson Stands on Top

For the second year in a row, there is a new company holding claim to the world's largest book publisher, as the U.K.-based Pearson overtook Thomson Reuters for the top spot. Pearson, parent company of Pearson Education and Penguin Group, has made a series of acquisitions in recent years that helped vault it past Thomson Reuters, which slipped to third place. The shift in position for Thomson Reuters reflects restructuring by the company that divided its businesses into a market division, which has no relation to book publishing, while putting most of its professional information publishing operations in the professional division. In a relatively quiet 2008 for Reed Elsevier, the professional publisher moved from fourth place to second. The sale of its North American club operations plus a soft year at Random House dropped Bertelsmann from third position to fifth.

In addition to a worldwide economic slowdown in 2008, international publishing was buffeted by a volatile currency situation, particularly the decline of the dollar against the pound and euro. While only eight of the largest 52 global publishers are headquartered in America, many have large operations there and converting dollars into their own currency tended to dampen results. However, there is no evidence to suggest that international publishers are looking to exit the U.S. market. Bertelsmann's sale of its club operation was due to its desire to only get out of the music and book club business in North America and not a sign it was looking to retrench in Europe. Indeed, Random House has made a number of niche acquisitions over the past 18 months with the most recent being Ten Speed Press. Hachette has made no secret that expanding in the U.S. is one of its top priorities.

Although the economic slump curtailed acquisitions in 2008, companies that did move up the ranks in significant fashion did so on the strength of a major purchase. John Wiley's acquisition of Blackwell pushed the publisher up from 21st place to 14th, even though the revenue figures are from the fiscal year ending April 30, 2008. Cracking the top 10 for the first time was Grupo Planeta, which moved from 13th to eighth mainly because of the purchase of the French publisher Editis. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt fell out of the top 10 as revenue at the Cayman Islands–registered publisher fell to an estimated $2.0 billion.

The only new publisher to make it onto the list of global players was the Perseus Books Group, which landed at number 45. The $300 million sales estimate includes only its publishing division and reflects the purchase of the Avalon Publishing Group; its distribution sales are excluded. The largest U.S.-based publisher remained McGraw-Hill Education despite a slight decline in revenue in 2008; sales for Reader's Digest have been revised to reflect only its book sales. Marvel's revenue includes both publishing and licensing.