Each year, industry consultant Rudiger Wischebart and Publishers Weekly produce a ranking of the largest publishers in the world. This year’s list, which analyzes numbers from 2023, looks very similar to 2022, with one major exception: Japan’s Hitotsubashi Group moved into the seventh spot due to the further integration of two publishers the holding company owns. Shueisha was the 11th largest publisher in 2022 with revenue of $1.7 billion and Shogakukan was in 23rd place with sales of $902 million. Combined revenue of the two was $2.25 billion in 2023.
There was no change at the very top of the ranking, however—RELX Group remained in the number one slot, with sales at the STM and legal publisher holding relatively even at $6.3 billion. Thomson Reuters’ revenue inched over $6 billion in sales for the first time, keeping it just ahead of Bertelsmann where the combination of Penguin Random House and Bertelsmann’s educational publishing holdings resulted in a 9% increase in sales, to just under $6 billion.
Hachette Livre maintained its hold on sixth place in the ranking even as it picked up a new parent company, Vivendi, where it is part of the conglomerate’s mixed media group. Vivendi might have come in higher on the ranking, but it was forced to divest itself of Editis, the second largest publishing group in the French language—and in 25th place on the worldwide chart—to satisfy European competition authorities. Editis was acquired by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský.
Wiley landed in eighth place on the ranking based on results from the fiscal year ended in April 2023. Since that time, the research and learning company has sold assets that generated nearly $400 million in sales in fiscal 2023. The streamlined Wiley had fiscal 2024 revenue of $1.87 billion and with the divestitures now completed, sales will likely drop more—though the company said it expects sales from existing operations, whose sales were $1.62 billion in fiscal 2024,
to grow.
HarperCollins’ sales also reflect results from the fiscal year ended in June 2023, which was a difficult one for the trade book publisher. CEO Brian Murray attributed sales declines to a number of factors, including macro-economic headwinds, as well as the conditions tied to the pandemic. The over-printing by publishers and over-ordering by nearly all accounts to meet the surge in book-buying in the first part of the pandemic created a bubble that took longer than many expected to deflate, Murray said. HarperCollins’ performance improved in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, with sales rising 6%, to $2.09 billion, and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) jumping 61%, to $269 million.
The full list of the world's largest publisher will appear in PW later this fall.
