Book Publishers
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Current Conditions, Industry Structure, How Firms Operate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 2,100 book publishers in the US perform design, editing, and marketing activities necessary for producing and distributing books in print, electronic, or audio form. Book categories include the Trade sector, learning and classroom materials for K-12 education, Higher Education books and materials, and professional, technical or scholarly journals. The Trade sector can be broken into Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Juvenile Non-Fiction, and Religion subcategories.
Growth of Self-Publishing
Ten years ago, authors were dependent on book publishers to reach readers, but today authors have the option of self-publishing their work in either eBook or printed formats.
Competition from Alternative Media
Trade books compete with other forms of entertainment for consumers’ time and dollars.
Industry size & Structure
The average book publisher operates a single location, has 26-27 employees, and generates about $14 million in annual revenue.
- The US book publishing industry consists of about 2,100 firms that employ 55,400 workers and generate $29 billion in annual revenue.
- The US book publishing industry sells 2-3 billion units annually, according to the Association of American Publishers.
- The industry consists of many small publishers (63% of establishments have less than five employees) but is concentrated, as the largest 20 firms represent 74% of industry revenue.
- The "Big Five" US trade book publishers are Hatchette Book Group (part of French media company, Lagardere), HarperCollins (a subsidiary of News Corp.), MacMillan Publishers (part of Germany's Holtzbrinck Publishing Group), Penguin Random House (jointly-owned by Germany's Bertelsmann) and Simon and Schuster (owned by CBS Corporation).
- Large textbook publishers include Pearson, Cengage, McGraw-Hill Education, Scholastic, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
- Large publishers of professional and technical books include RELX Group (formerly Reed Elsevier, UK-based) and Thompson Reuters.
Industry Forecast
Book Publishers Industry Growth
Recent Developments
Jul 18, 2024 - Employment Increases, Wages Decrease
- Book publishing industry employment increased slightly during the first five months of 2024 while wages for nonsupervisory employees decreased slightly, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Personal consumption expenditures, an indicator of book sales, increased 3.1% year over year and 0.5% month over month in March, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.
- The comic book and periodical industry is experiencing consolidation of small companies and acquisition of large companies by even larger, multi-genre publishers, according to information sector news site Clownfish TV. Boom! Studios recently sold itself to Penguin Random House, for example, and Dark Horse sold to Embracer Group in 2021. Many small comic book firms struggle financially, leading to mergers and to creators seeking movie and animation deals for financial success, according to Clownfish TV. Some larger comic book companies were started with the intention of selling them to major publishing firms. The comic book industry is facing distribution changes and low sales, but there is still high demand for certain products, according to Clownfish TV.
- A federal antitrust lawsuit that accused e-commerce giant Amazon and others of causing consumers to overpay for eBooks has been narrowed to include only Amazon. Plaintiffs' claims against Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishing Group, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster were dismissed, with the the presiding judge finding that the plaintiffs had not shown a conspiracy between Amazon and the book publishers. The plaintiffs alleged that Amazon and the book publishers restricted competition on price through what the complaint called "coercive contractual terms," leading to higher eBook prices. The lawsuit said Amazon curbed the ability of publishers sell eBooks for lower prices on non-Amazon platforms.
- The Internet Archive (IA) has appealed its loss in a major ebook copyright case. Lawyers for the IA argue that district court judge John G. Koeltl misunderstood the facts and misapplied the law in finding that the IA’s scanning and lending of print library books infringed publishers’ copyrights. Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House sued the IA in 2020 after it opened a program dubbed the National Emergency Library. The National Emergency Library expanded the Archive’s long-running Open Library program, which lets people digitally “check out” scanned copies of physical books. Publishers called both systems “willful digital piracy on an industrial scale.”
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