World-leading publishing companies in book publishing market

Book publishing is the largest media and entertainment industry. With an estimated value of US$151 billion, books have out-distanced music (US$50 billion), video games (US$63 billion), magazines (US$107 billion) and even film and entertainment (US$133 billion).

For a long time, the book publishing industry was controlled by a small number of players situated mainly in North America and Europe, before evolving into a truly global business, early in the 21st century. In a growing number of emerging economies (such as China and Brazil), the market for books and publishing has expanded over the past two decades.

At global level, however, the industry is still dominated by just six countries. In 2014, the USA was the largest book market in the world, followed by China, Germany, Japan, France and the UK. Together, they account for almost two thirds of global value created by publishers. Interestingly, China has now become the world’s second largest market overtaking Germany and Japan, which had been competing for this position for decades (see Figure).

Most importantly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to consider book publishing (and reading) separately from the adjacent content and media industries. Nevertheless, as yet, e-books are a critical factor only in a relatively small number of markets. These are led by the USA (13%) and the UK (11.5%), with Germany (5%) developing more recently. These are, however, key markets for the industry, both because of their size and because they host the headquarters of many of the global leaders in trade publishing (see Table).

Table – World-leading publishing companies by turnover (2010, million euros)

Rank	Company	Country	Ownership	Country of ownership	Revenue
1	Pearson	UK	Pearson	UK	6 102.09
2	Reed Elsevier	UK/NL/US	Reed Elsevier	UK/NL/US	5 387.47
3	Pearson Education	UK	Pearson Education	UK	4 880.51
4	Thomson Reuters	USA	The Woodbridge Company	Canada	4 297.93
5	Wolters Kluwer	NL	Wolters Kluwer	NL	3 556.00
6	Lexis Nexis	NL	Reed Elsevier	UK/NL/USA	3 073.12
7	Bertelsmann	DE	Bertelsmann	DE	2 897.00
8	Elsevier Science	UK/NL/USA	Reed Elsevier	UK/NL/USA	2 350.35
9	Hachette Livre	FR	Lagardère	FR	2 165.00
10	McGraw-Hill Education	USA	McGraw-Hill Education	USA	1 835.46

(Data source: European Commission, Analysis of the media and content industries: The publishing industry, 2012.)

Source: Ivana Katsarova, E-Books: Evolving markets and new challenges, European Parliamentary Research Service, Briefing February 2016. © European Union, 2016.