Publishing's World Leaders

With headquarters in 14 countries and operations that span the globe, the world's 45 largest book publishers generated revenue of approximately $73 billion in 2006, according to a new ranking commissioned by Livres Hebdo, PW and other trade magazines in several countries. Since most of the largest publishers mix books with other media properties, such as journals, databases and various forms of digital products, the listing includes sales from all of these activities, in addition to books. Magazines are excluded from the figures, as are units that are not connected to publishing, such as Reed Elsevier's Business division (which includes PW and BEA).

Sitting atop the ranking is Reed Elsevier, with revenue of $7.60 billion, followed closely by Pearson, which had sales of $7.30 billion. Overall, the top 10 publishers generated approximately $48 billion, about two-thirds of the $73 billion in sales recorded by the 45 publishers included in the ranking.

The companies that dominate the top of the list were built through acquisitions, and the wheeling and dealing in publishing has continued into 2007, with several major transactions. Among the biggest is Reed's agreement to sell its Harcourt Education group, a move that will drop Reed from the top spot in 2007 while boosting the ranking of Pearson (which acquired Harcourt's testing and international operations) and Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep (which bought the U.S. education group, including the trade and supplemental divisions).

In 2006, Reed's revenue came from the STM and legal markets, in addition to education. Pearson's sales reflect sales from its worldwide education group plus Penguin. Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Corp. have also recently left the education business. Kluwer sold its education group, which mainly published for the elhi market in Europe, to the private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital this spring for approximately $1 billion, while Thomson sold Thomson Learning to Apax Partners, one of the largest private equity firms in the U.S., and OMERS, a Canadian pension fund. (Since Thomson announced its intention to sell Thomson Learning last fall, TL's revenue is excluded here; Wolters Kluwer Education group is included.) Without its education group, Thomson's sales are from the legal and science and healthcare areas. With its pending purchase of Reuters, Thomson's businesses are moving further away from the book industry.

Bertelsmann is the world's fourth largest publisher and the largest to derive most of its sales from trade books. Its sales for 2006 include revenue from Random House and the Direct Group, which operates music and book clubs (including Bookspan). Hachette Livre, in sixth place overall, is the second company generating the majority of its sales from the trade market, but unlike Bertelsmann, the majority of sales come from outside of the U.S. The largest U.S. publisher, in seventh position, is McGraw-Hill Education, followed by Reader's Digest. Figures for RD are for the period ended June 30, 2006, and include sales for the entire company. RD was acquired by the private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings in a deal that closed in the first half of 2007.

The recent Harry Potter craze can make it easy to forget that Scholastic is much more than just a one-book publisher. The combination of its trade publishing, distribution, educational, media and international operations makes it the ninth largest publisher based on sales from fiscal 2006 (fiscal '07 sales were $2.18 billion). Revenue for 2006 for Milan-based De Agostini Editore was not available at press time, but there were no dramatic events to believe that it wouldn't occupy the 10th spot on the list. De Agostini publishes in 13 languages in 30 countries and operates in both the trade, school and reference segments.

Japan's Kodansha, with revenue over $1 billion, was the 17th largest publisher in 2006, and the largest publisher based outside of the U.S./European orbit.