WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 59
Global Publishing
Ups and Downs Among
The Largest Publishers
The reported sales declines in RELX
Group, Thomson Reuters, and Wolters
Kluwer—other members of the top
10—are largely due to our decision to
exclude revenue from some divisions
that have moved away from book publishing. (2015 revenue was not restated
for those companies.) But Bertelsmann’s
7% decline in 2016 revenue was due
entirely to a drop in sales at Penguin
Random House. The lack of a big new
bestseller hurt results at the company,
and it divested some smaller divisions in
the year. The decline at PRH was offset
in part by a sales increase in Bertelsmann’s
education division.
The small decline in revenue at
Hachette Livre was due to currency fluc-
tuations between the euro and dollar.
Excluding differences in the exchange
rates, Hachette Livre revenue was 2.5%
higher than in 2015. The sales increase
was due to strong sales for the U.K.
group (up 11%), thanks primarily to the
success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter
and the Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts
and Where to Find Them in English
worldwide (excluding Canada and the
U.S.). Partworks also performed well,
particularly in Japan and Spain. Hachette
Livre sales includes Hachette Book
Group USA, which had an increase in
sales in 2016 thanks to the $75 million
contribution from the publishing arm of
the Perseus Books Group, which it
acquired in March 2016.
Only two companies among the top
10 largest publishers had outright sales
increases in 2016. Spain’s Grupo Planeta
had a small sales gain, and Springer
Nature posted a 7% increase. Last year
was the first full year of operation for
Springer Nature, which was formed in
May 2015 through the merger of
Holtzbrinck-owned Macmillan Science
and Education companies (excluding
Macmillan’s U.S. higher-education and
trade properties) with Springer Science
+ Business Media.
Despite the weak financial performances by the 10 largest publishers,
their share of all revenue from publishers
on the list was 56%, up from 54% in
2015. Since we started ranking the
world’s biggest publishers, the largest
10 companies have accounted for 53%–
58% of the revenue of all the publishers
who have been featured in the ranking.
How the Americans
Fared
John Wiley, which was the ninth-largest
publisher in the world last year, was one
of three American companies, along
with Scholastic and HarperCollins,
whose ranking was based on fiscal 2016
figures rather than fiscal 2017. For the
fiscal year ended Apr. 30, 2017, Wiley,
which bills itself a global research and
learning company, had revenue of $1.72
billion, down by less than 1% from fiscal
2016.
Scholastic’s 2017 fiscal year ended
May 30, 2017, and its revenue rose 4%
from fiscal 2016’s to $1.74 billion. It
was a sales increase driven by strong
gains from its trade group, where sales
jumped 45% thanks to strong performances by Harry Potter and the Cursed
Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to
Find Them.
HarperCollins’s revenue for the fiscal
year ended June 30, 2017, fell by $10
million, less than 1%, to $1.64 billion.
HC, which sees international expansion
as key to long-term growth, was the
world’s 12th-largest publisher in 2016.
Overall, six American companies were
among the world’s 50 largest publishers.
Simon & Schuster, with revenue of $767
million last year, was the 23rd-biggest
publisher.
Changes to Other World
Players
Two Brazilian publishers returned to the
ranking in 2016 after dropping off in
2015 due to the plunge in value of
Brazil’s currency. Somos Educacao (for-
merly Abril Educacao) was the 32nd-
largest publisher in the world last year,
thanks in part to its acquisition of the
book division of Saraiva and an improve-
ment in exchange rates. Two acquisitions
helped to boost Russia-based Eksmo’s
revenue in 2016, and the publisher fin-
ished in 38th place on the global ranking.
The 2016 ranking excludes Chinese
publishers. We started including
Chinese publishers in 2014, when com-
panies in China began to provide verifi-
able information, and in 2015 five
Chinese publishers were included.
However, in 2016 China’s government
changed the selection criteria for China’s
Top 30 Cultural Enterprises (which
includes publishing). The new criteria
focuses on both the social and economic
benefits brought by candidate enter-
prises, with more consideration given to
the former. The result is that the govern-
ment is not encouraging publishing
companies to get involved in any rank-
ings based solely on economic criteria. ■
Despite the weak financial
performances by the 10 largest
publishers, their share of all
revenue from publishers on the list
was 56%, up from 54% in 2015.
continued from p. 56
