Book Publishers Industry Profile

Companies in this industry publish fiction and nonfiction books in print and digital formats. 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 US book publishing industry consists of about 2,800 companies with combined annual revenue of about $28 billion. The output of US book publishers is expected to grow at a low rate over the next two years. Key growth drivers are consumer spending and technology innovation.

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 highly concentrated: the top 50 companies generate about 80 percent of revenue.

PRODUCTS, OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY

Textbooks and adult trade books (books for general reading) each account for about 25 percent of revenue. Other categories include professional books (20 percent of revenue), children's books (10 percent), and reference books (5 percent).

About 315,000 new books are published in the US every year, according to Bowker. The number of non-traditional books -- on-demand titles produced by reprint companies specializing in the public ...