Merger and acquisition activity in trade publishing played out along the lines most insiders had expected in 2024. Though there were no billion-dollar deals along the lines of private equity firm KKR’s 2023 sale of RBmedia and purchase of Simon & Schuster, the year did produce a number of notable acquisitions that indicate a few developing trends.

At the Big Five

No Big Five publisher was the target of an acquisition in the year, but four of the Big Five made deals of their own. S&S turned the tables in 2024: rather than being an acquisition target, it made two purchases, both in the international arena, thereby fulfilling pledges to both expand the company and to grow in the international market. In May, S&S acquired Veen Bosch & Keuning, the largest book publisher in the Netherlands, for an undisclosed price, as is typical in such acquisitions. VBK has 280 employees and publishes about 1,500 titles annually. In August, S&S Australia agreed to acquire the Melbourne-based independent publisher Affirm Press, also for an undisclosed price. Founded in 2010, Affirm has a backlist of approximately 750 titles and publishes about 100 new books annually.

Penguin Random House made three purchases in 2024, all in the second half of the year. In July, the publisher announced that it was buying the comic book and graphic novel publisher Boom! Studios. When the deal closed this summer, Boom! become part of the Random House Publishing Group’s Random House Worlds imprint. In November, PRH’s Penguin Publishing Group agreed to buy the assets of Amber-Allen Publishing, the independent publisher of personal development books, which had been a PRH Publishing Services distribution client since 2018. The Amber-Allen list is being managed by the TarcherPerigee imprint, where titles will remain published under the Amber-Allen name for the foreseeable future.

Less than a month later, PRH’s Crown Publishing Group acquired Compendium, the publisher of illustrated books, journals, and notecards. Compendium will remain a standalone imprint under Ten Speed Press, retaining its “distinct editorial identity” and continuing to “lead the creation and promotion of its portfolio,” per the acquisition announcement. It is worth noting that, in announcing all three deals, PRH emphasized the three distinct publishing groups under which the newly-acquired publishers would reside, perhaps providing a little more visibility into how the publishing giant operates.

Although Hachette Book Group only made only one acquisition in the year, it was perhaps the largest domestic trade publishing purchase: in November, HBG acquired Barnes & Noble’s publishing division. Under the agreement, all staff, publishing assets including its roughly 14,500-title backlist, and trademarks of Union Square Publishing, formerly Sterling Publishing Co., were transferred to HBG, where it now sits under the Grand Central Publishing Group. HBG also assumed distribution for all of Union Square’s distribution clients as part of the deal.

The last of the Big Five publishers to make an acquisition in the year was HarperCollins. In early December, it expanded its international reach with its purchase of the German guidebook publisher Gräfe und Unzer. Later that month, at a press conference, HC CEO Brian Murray said that the company remains open to more deals, noting that scale remains important for publishers in the contemporary business landscape, especially when dealing with such giants as Amazon and Spotify.

Midsize Houses Build Out

Publishing giants were not the only companies scaling up in 2024, with three of the larger mid-sized publishers, all owned by European companies, also quite active. U.K.-based Bloomsbury Publishing continued to show its interest in the U.S. market when it paid $83 million, in May, to acquire Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group’s professional and academic division. The acquisition will likely push Bloomsbury’s annual sales in the U.S. close to $300 million and move its total revenue close to $500 million.

Abrams Books, owned by France’s Média-Participations, added 900 titles through its own May purchase, of Taunton Books. In addition to acquiring books that complement its existing publishing programs in the craft, food, and gardening spaces, the deal expands Abrams’s reach into such new areas as homebuilding and woodworking.

In April, Rizzoli International Publications, the New York–based subsidiary of Italy’s Mondadori Group, acquired Chelsea Green Publishing for about $5 million. Based in Vermont, Chelsea Green, now an imprint of Rizzoli International, publishes books focused on politics and sustainability; it brought in $8.1 million in sales in 2022.

A fourth foreign publisher looking to grow in the U.S., London-based indie Pushkin Press, acquired New Hampshire’s Steerforth Press, which has a backlist of 75 titles, and its sister company, Hanover Publisher Services, in May. The two companies were merged into Steerforth Press and Services, with Steerforth cofounder Chip Fleischer staying on as a senior editor.

South Carolina’s Arcadia Publishing once again proved active in M&A last year. In February, the house bought Cleveland-based Belt Publishing, known for its commitment to publishing diverse voices and stories from the Rust Belt, from founder Anne Trubek, who remains publisher of the 11-year-old press. And in May, which proved a particularly active month for acquisitions, Arcadia picked up independent children’s publisher Dry Climate Studios—best known for its alphabet books spotlighting notable locales across the country—whose titles are now part of the Arcadia Children’s Books imprint.

Oregon-based Blue Star Press was another U.S.–based independent publisher to grow via the acquisition route when—in a twist—it acquired fellow Pacific Northwest publisher, Sasquatch Books, from PRH, which distributes for both publishers. The purchase of Sasquatch added more than 1,000 titles to Blue Star’s backlist and increased the size of its workforce by a third.

After it sold its professional division to Bloomsbury, Rowman & Littlefield sold its supplemental literacy solutions company, Sundance Newbridge Publishing, to Lerner Publishing in September, leaving R&L’s publishing holdings centered around its trade publishing arm, Globe Pequot Press. Lerner followed up the Sundance purchase in December with a more trade-oriented deal, agreeing to buy Soaring Kite Books in a transaction set to close January 1. The purchase adds more than 3,600 children’s books titles to Lerner's list.

Other Book Business Deals

Audiobook giant RBmedia, which was bought from KKR in 2023 by private equity firms Francisco Partners and H.I.G. Capital, acquired fellow audio publisher Dreamscape Media, founded in 2010 by Brad Rose and boasting an audiobook list of 7,000 titles, in July. The move followed RB’s January purchase of Berrett-Koehler’s audiobook publishing business.

In October, Mackin Educational Resources acquired Booksource, marking a major deal in the educational wholesaling business. The former is a provider of Pre-K–12 print and digital titles, educational products, and classroom materials, while the latter provides books for classroom and school curriculum use.

Montreal-based software company Valsoft Corporation acquired Above the Treeline, the developer of the digital book catalog, marketing, and sales platform Edelweiss, in November. Edelweiss hosts 95% of U.S. frontlist titles, serving as a central workflow hub focusing on frontlist and backlist sales management, analytics, workflow tools, and other related activities for publishers, librarians, and booksellers. The purchase marks Valsoft’s second major investment in publishing industry software following its majority stake purchase in Klopotek in August 2023.

Finally, in the bookselling sector, Barnes & Noble acquired the Tattered Cover for $1.83 million in June, retaining a majority of the 53-year-old Denver bookstore chain’s 70 employees across its four Colorado locations, along with its name and branding. In Australia, online bookseller Booktopia was sold to DigiDirect, a chain of camera stores, in August. And that same month in Germany, bookselling chain Weltbild shuttered, with rival Thalia picking up its assets.

Given slow industry growth and the drive for publishers of all sizes to scale up in the interest of benefiting from economies of scale, the M&A outlook for 2025 appears to be much like that of 2024: no blockbuster deals, lots of niche purchases.