36 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ OCTOBER 14, 2019
publishers who made this year’s cut (i.e., those with sales of at
least $150 million). The next 10 companies on the list gener-
ated another 20% of total revenue. This basic ratio has hardly
changed over the past decade.
The largest publishers were built in large part through acquisi-
tions, but the biggest deal impacting the publishers in this year’s
ranking involved a divestiture. Spain’s Groupo Planeta sold its
French subsidiary, Editis, to French multimedia company
Vivendi—the company from which Planeta had acquired Editis.
The result of the transaction was a drop in Planeta’s revenue to
just over $1 billion, and its standing in the world ranking fell to
#22, down from #7 in 2017. Vivendi, meanwhile, entered the
list at #25, with publishing revenue of $858 million.
Last year also had its share of niche purchases. In the U.S., for
example, Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House subsidiary
acquired Rodale Books, and the company continued to push
further into Spanish-speaking markets. And there is another
big deal in the works this year, involving the 12th- and 13th-
largest publishers (McGraw-Hill Education and Cengage,
respectively). The merger, which has faced some opposition in
the U.S., would create an educational publishing company with
revenue of around $3 billion, shooting it up to sixth place in
the global ranking. The acquisition is expected to be completed
in the first quarter of 2020.
This year’s ranking also includes the return of five Chinese
publishers. After appearing for the first time on the ranking in
2015, the Chinese publishers were excluded in 2016 and 2017
because of changes in Chinese government policies. But another
change has allowed the publishers to come back for the 2018
list. The largest of the Chinese publishers, Phoenix Publishing
and Media Company, was the 11th-largest publisher in the
ranking, with revenue of $1.6 billion. ■The producer of STM and legal materials overtakes Pearson as the world’s largest publisher
BY JIM MILLIOT
D
eclining sales in Pearson’s North America
business combined with divestitures dropped
the company from its longtime perch as the
world’s largest book publisher and into
second place on Livres Hebdo/Publishers
Weekly’s annual ranking. The new book publishing leader is
RELX Group (formerly known as Reed Elsevier), which posted
publishing revenue of $5.28 billion last year.
RELX moved into the top spot despite a 6% decline in
publishing sales in 2018 compared to 2017. The decline was
due to a drop in sales from the company’s legal division—which
is built around its LexisNexis database—that offset a gain in its
scientific, technical, medical group. Revenue from RELX’s
events group (which owns BookExpo, among many other trade
shows) and its risk assessment division are not included in the
publishing revenue figure.
RELX’s accession to the top spot among publishers also high-
lights how companies that began primarily as print book and
journal publishers now rely on digital publishing to support
growth. In 2018, about 74% of RELX’s revenue came from
content sold in digital format.
Pearson’s publishing revenue fell 14% in 2018, though strip-
ping out the impact of divestitures and currency movements,
revenue was down 1% in underlying terms. That 1% dip was
due to a decline in the company’s U.S. Higher Education
Courseware unit of 5% and mid-single-digit declines in its U.S.
K–12 Courseware division, largely offset by the rest of the busi-
ness growing in aggregate at over 1%. Pearson sold the K–12
Courseware unit in the first quarter of 2019.
Revenue in 2018 fell in seven of the world’s top 10 pub-
lishers, due in part to lower spending on educational materials
in the U.S. (According to the Association of American
Publishers, sales in the higher education market fell 7.3% in
2018 compared to 2017, while revenue to the K–12 market
declined 4.4%.) Still, the top 10 companies in the ranking
accounted for slightly over half of the total revenue of the 56The full report from which this ranking is drawn, as well
as profiles of all the publishers listed, can be viewed at
publishersweekly.com/global50.