RELX Stays the World’s Largest Publisher in 2024

Despite ongoing consolidation in the global book market, PW’s annual ranking of the world’s largest publishers is largely unchanged from last year. There is one notable exception: Japan’s Hitotsubashi Group moved into seventh place due to the further integration of two publishers—Shueisha and Shogakukan—that the holding company owns. Shueisha was the 11th-largest publisher on last year’s list, and Shogakukan was in the 23rd place. (The current ranking is based on revenue for 2023 or fiscal 2023.)

RELX Group remained #1 this year, with sales at the STM and legal publisher holding relatively even at $6.3 billion. Thomson Reuters’s revenue inched over $6 billion for the first time, keeping it just ahead of Bertelsmann, where Penguin Random House and Bertelsmann’s educational publishing holdings together posted a 9% increase in sales, to just under $6 billion.

Hachette Livre maintained its hold on sixth place after being picked up by a new parent company, Vivendi. Wiley landed in ninth place based on $2 billion in sales, though in the wake of some asset sales it’s likely to drop in next year’s ranking.

HarperCollins is in 10th place with sales of just under $2 billion, down from the prior year. CEO Brian Murray attributed declines to a number of factors, including macroeconomic headwinds and the lingering effects of the pandemic.

PW’s full ranking of the world’s largest publishers, compiled by industry consultant Ruediger Wischenbart, has typically included at least 50 companies. That changed this year, with 47 publishers appearing on the list. The change is due to continuing consolidation and the fact that companies that had been educational publishers, such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, now consider themselves educational technology companies, not publishers.

Total revenue of the companies in the current ranking was $69.7 billion, up from $69.05 billion the prior year.
The 10 largest publishers generated combined revenue of $38.7 billion, 55.5% of all sales from companies on this year’s list. Between 2019 and 2023, total publishing revenue of the ranked companies rose by about 16%.