Book Publishers Industry Profile

The US book publishing industry consists of about 2,700 companies with combined annual revenue of about $25 billion. Major companies include John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Scholastic, as well as publishing units of large media companies such as HarperCollins (owned by News Corp); Random House (owned by Bertelsmann); and Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS). The industry is highly concentrated: the top 50 companies generate about 80 percent of revenue.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Demand for books is driven by demographics and is largely resistant to economic cycles. The profitability of individual companies depends on product development and marketing. Large publishers have an advantage in bidding for new manuscripts or authors. Small and midsized publishers can succeed if they focus on a specific subject or market. The industry is capital-intensive: average annual revenue per worker is more than $320,000.

PRODUCTS, OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY

Publishers produce books for general reading (adult "trade" books); text, professional, technical, children's, and reference books. Textbooks and adult trade books each account for about 25 percent of the market, professional books 20 percent, children's books 10 percent, and reference books 5 percent.

About 290,000 new books are published in the US every year. The number of non-traditional books -- on-demand titles produced by reprint companies specializing in the public domain as well as self-publishers and "micro-niche" publications -- has grown significantly in recent years.

Operations include acquiring content, managing relationships with authors, editing, designing books, manufacturing, ...