Although there was 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 Livres Hebdo/Publishers Weekly’s annual ranking, based on annual revenue, of the world’s largest publishers in 2013. Pearson came in first, with $9.33 billion in revenue, followed by Reed Elsevier, Thomson/Reuters, and Wolters Kluwer. All four educational and professional publishers held the same respective positions on the list in 2012 Random House was the largest publisher of trade books in 2013, and was fifth largest overall (its position also unchanged from 2012). The company benefited from its 53% stake in Penguin and the assumption of full control of Random House Mondadori in late 2012, which was renamed Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial at the end of last year. Together, Penguin Random House and RH’s German publishing group had sales of $3.66 billion in 2013 (with Penguin’s revenues for the last six months of the year reported in the PRH total; revenue for the first six months were attributed to Penguin parent company Pearson). Random House’s agreement with PRISA (ranked #24 on the 2013 list) to acquire the trade book segment of its Santillana Ediciones Generales business will likely be completed this year, meaning that the house will grow again in 2014.(Click here for the complete list and article)
