Pearson tops global publishing ranking

Pearson has once again topped the ‘Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry’, an annual survey of publisher revenues, compiled on behalf of Livres Hebdo, Buchreport, the Bookseller and Publishers Weekly. Publishers Weekly reports that despite ‘a fair amount of deal making among the global book publishing giants last year, those mergers and acquisitions did not have much of an impact on the top of the annual ranking’. Pearson, which recorded US$9.33 billion (A$9.91 billion) in revenue in 2013, was followed by Reed Elsevier, Thomson/Reuters and Wolters Kluwer. All four educational and professional publishers held the same positions on the list in 2012. Penguin Random House (PRH) was the highest ranked trade publisher, in fifth place, with Penguin’s revenues for the last six months of 2013 attributed to PRH and its revenues for the first six months attributed to Pearson. PRH recorded US$3.66 billion (A$3.89 billion) in revenue in 2013. Publishers Weekly reports that Brazilian publishers have fallen down the list in the past two years ‘due in part to a severe decline of value of the [country’s currency]’, while China ‘had two publishers on the 2013 list and may have more next year if additional information becomes available’. The survey is based on publishers’ own reported revenues, and is only based on ‘publishing’ sales, including books, journals and professional information in commercially run databases.

Category: International news