Following the release of Wiley's second quarter financial results were released in early December, it looks like the company's efforts to reinvest in its core businesses, including professional and trade book publishing, look to be paying off. In the quarter, which ended October 31, Wiley reported that the 8% sales increase in its Learning sector was driven by a 11% revenue rise in the professional division, led by higher sellthrough at its retail accounts.
Eileen Dolan, Wiley's SVP for learning who has oversight of the professional and trade division, told PW that the company began planning ways to refocus its trade business about a year ago, at which point it hired more editors and began looking for ways to publish more efficiently to improve the author experience. According to Dolan, those efforts contributed to Wiley’s new trade book output rising by 11% in the six months ended in October while also accelerating the acquisition of new books by 30% over the same period.
In addition to new editors, the faster acquisition pace has been due to a number of factors, Dolan noted, pointing to such actions as moving into new areas like personal growth and health/wellness while also upping new acquisitions in high-demand, traditional Wiley areas such as business, finance, and technology by about 20%. “We want to serve professionals in different parts of their lives,” Dolan said. The company is also putting more resources to expand the reach of high-profile authors who have “tremendous voices” in their areas of expertise. Recent solid sellers include Experiencing the American Dream by Mark Matson, Arise by Elena Aguilar, and The AI Edge by Jeb Blount.
A longtime centerpiece of Wiley’s trade business has been the Dummies series, now directly overseen by Shannon Vargo, which the company acquired in 2001. There are now more than 3,000 active Dummies titles, with Wiley publishing 250 new titles in the series each year. In the six months ending in October, sales were up 4%. “It’s a great, trusted, easy-to-use brand,” Dolan said in explaining Dummies' continuing appeal. In August, Wiley announced a collaboration with Marvel on a cobranded series of Dummies books featuring characters from Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The inaugural titles in the anticipated six-book series, Marvel Comics For Dummies and Captain America For Dummies, are set for release this February.
In October, Wiley published Generative AI for Dummies, which was written with the help of an AI tool. The Dummies book is just one title in Wiley’s growing number of books devoted to covering all things related to AI. “I think AI will pop up across all of our categories,” Dolan said. The publisher already has released AI-related titles in such categories as technology, business, finance, and education.
In addition to seeing strong sales through its physical and online retailers, digital distribution—especially for audio—has helped boost trade sales. “We want to reach our customers wherever they are and in the format they want,” Dolan said, adding that print continues to perform well in many channels while e-books remain popular in certain categories.
With annual revenue of more than $1.6 billion, Wiley is one of the few remaining U.S. publishers that has large academic, research, and trade operations. Dolan sees that mix serving the company’s mission of “unlocking human potential.” Because Wiley’s various business operations have undergone significant changes over the years, and due to its lack of fiction books, Wiley’s place in trade publishing is sometimes overlooked. But it ranks as a top 15 publisher at Circana BookScan, and Dolan said Wiley’s philosophy is to be “the top first or second publisher in the categories where we play.”
Dolan doesn’t expect Wiley to regularly publish blockbuster bestsellers (it had five books reach various PW bestseller lists in 2024), and she said Wiley’s approach to trade publishing is very deliberate. “The wonderful thing about trade publishing is that if you get it right, you are not reaching an audience for just three months” after a book’s release, she said. “I feel we are in a really good position to see growth continue. With the right focused investment, trade publishing is a very vibrant place to be.”
