The global report offers insights into today’s traditional publishing industry as well as the challenges of measuring it
For more than 10 years, the annual Global 50 report has tracked and reported on the biggest 50 publishers in the world based on annual book-publishing revenue. And it is a truly global report, spearheaded by the French publishing trade magazine Livres Hebdo, in partnership with other publications in China, Germany, the United States, Brazil, and Spain.
This year, one major headline coming out of the report is that RELX (Reed Elsevier) has surpassed Pearson as the world’s largest publisher. Reed Elsevier publishes books, journals, and other materials primarily for higher education; LexisNexis is a RELX product. However, because of reduced spending on higher educational materials (which we covered earlier this month), seven of the top 10 publishers saw revenue declines in 2018, including RELX.
A few key takeaways from the report:
- Nearly 60 percent of revenue from the top 50 publishers comes from professional and academic publishing.
- The top 10 publishers own a bit more than half of the included market; the next 10 largest publishers add another 20 percent. So the list is top heavy, but this hasn’t really changed over the past decade.
- Rapidly growing Chinese publishers have changed the composition of the list, with five Chinese companies making the list this year.
- Mergers and acquisitions have resulted in “remarkably high levels” of industry consolidation, according to the report. For example, in Germany, the combined imprints of the three corporate houses account for two-thirds of combined revenue generated by the country’s 20 largest trade publishers. And, of course, in the US, Penguin Random House has continued to make acquisitions, buying Rodale, a stake in Sourcebooks, and the backlist of F+W Media.
Of the top 50 publishers:
- Eight are based in Germany: Bertelsmann (which holds a 75 percent stake in Penguin Random House) and Springer Nature are in the top 10.
- Five are based in China; the highest ranking is Phoenix Publishing and Media Company at number 12.
- Five are based in the United States, with three in the top 10 (Wiley, HarperCollins, and Scholastic).
- Five are based in the UK, with Pearson (which holds a 25 percent stake in Penguin Random House) in the top 10.
This report is notable for whom it doesn’t include or can’t measure—most significantly, Amazon Publishing. Now in its 10th year, Amazon Pub releases about 1,000 new titles per year, with a backlist of 10,000 titles housed under 16 imprints. Plus, it works occasionally with blockbuster authors (e.g., Patricia Cornwell and Dean Koontz) even though its titles rarely see the inside of a brick-and-mortar store. But Amazon Publishing has never disclosed its revenue. The only useful figure available—which the report shares—is how much Amazon pays to self-published authors whose works are available in Kindle Unlimited. In 2017, those royalties amounted to $223 million total, which by itself would qualify Amazon for the Global 50 ranking. Also noted in the report: China Literature, which in 2017 reported a profit of €71 million on €524 million in sales—but 2018 figures were not available.
Bottom line: The authors of the report note that, when they set out in 2007 to produce the first annual ranking, they decided to limit what could be included as part of a book publisher’s revenue—and excluded any revenues from newspapers, magazines, B2C, radio, TV, games, music, or any other kind of pure business service. However, they write, “Drawing a clear line becomes increasingly a challenge when the scope, and the value chain, of this industry, are deeply changing, and its reach, business models, and strategies expand in both ambitions and complexity.” For most publishers to either survive or flourish today or in the future, they must exploit and profit from their intellectual property in any way they can. The report makes plain that publishers are not just competing against each other: they are competing against Netflix, Disney, Apple, and others for whom storytelling is their “center of gravity.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
