Global 50 2024: The big maneuvers

The culmination of major consolidation battles. This is how the year 2023 can be summed up for the major players in global publishing. Published on the eve of the Frankfurt International Book Fair (October 16-19) by a group of professional media including Weekly Books In France, Publishers Weekly in the United States, Bookdao in China, -Digital Publishing Report in Germany and The Bookseller in the United Kingdom, the Global 50 ranking of the world’s leading publishers reflects a year 2023 which will have seen the book world reshape. If the world top 10 once again varies very little compared to previous years, complex internal maneuvers have seen it reformed in depth, on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, Simon & Schuster was finally bought by the investment company KKR Private Equity, after the competition authorities banned its acquisition by its rival Penguin Random House, which remains in the fold of the German conglomerate Bertelsmann . In France, the leading publishing group, Hachette, parent company of Hachette Book Group in the United States, has, at the end of a series that readers of Weekly Books were able to follow on a daily basis for three years, also changed ownership and is now under the aegis of the Vivendi group. To satisfy the European competition authorities, Vivendi had to part ways with Editis, number two in French publishing, sold to CMI, the group of Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky. In addition to these large-scale examples, consolidation strategies have extended to smaller national publishers, as the acquisitions of the Delcourt group by Editis and of -Christian Bourgois publisher by Madrigall have recently proven.

Digitalisation et diversification

Beyond that, publishing is experiencing a pivotal period around questions of artificial intelligence. If scientific and professional publishers, who for another year dominate the world ranking, already had the reputation of resisting all circumstances, they managed to adapt with panache to the wave, integrating AI into all their offers and revolutionizing their profession. Today, RELX, the world’s leading publisher, which carries out 90% of its activities digitally, is one of the first concrete cases of successful use of generative AI on a large scale. A phenomenon which questions the separation between what is part of publishing and what is no longer part of it, a distinction that is increasingly difficult to draw.

Several other fundamental trends are shaking up the foundations of the book planet: acceleration in the consumption of audio books, dynamics of subscription reading models (vs. unit sales), appearance of direct sales models to consumers, etc. “The common denominator of all these transformations is a digitalization which is not limited to the introduction of new digital book formats, but to an in-depth restructuring of publishing houses, as part of a fully integrated value chain , and new consumption habits on the part of readers”, notes the Ruediger Wischenbart firm in its analysis of the new world ranking. “It is foreseeable that the implementation of artificial intelligence-based elements and workflows will further accelerate these processes,” can also be read there.

These deep restructuring strategies are expanding to all sectors of the global publishing industry. Scientific, then educational, publishers had been the spearheads, offering subscription models, or no longer producing only school textbooks but more broadly “educational content” on digital platforms. Note that educational publishers, in Korea and then in Brazil, are starting to acquire educational establishments to directly integrate their content. Now, in turn, mainstream publishers, all over the planet, are surprised by the growing appetite of their readers for these models outside of traditional publishing: digital reading platforms, audiobooks and podcasts, reading on smartphones, animated stories in series, webtoons, role of Booktok in the sale of traditional books…

New models and profound changes on the planisphere

These phenomena have led to numerous structural changes in the Global 50 ranking. In recent years, several medium-sized publishing groups have experienced significant, and sometimes surprising, increases in their turnover. This is the case of the Swedish group Bonnier, which has jointly strengthened itself in traditional publishing, bookselling and digital, but also of the Planeta group, the former Spanish owner of Editis, and the British Bloomsbury.

Another particularly telling case: that of Cambridge University Press and more generally “EdTech” educational models. This academic publisher, among the most prestigious in the world, goes from 37^e at 15^e place in the ranking thanks to the addition within its scope of activities of “content creation and evaluation”, now an integral part of the activities of a publishing house. “Once again, publishers operating across various industries are looking to add recurring revenue models to their traditional business models, to expand the commercialization of their content and expertise,” notes Ruediger Wischenbart, referring to the dual economic model of selling books on the one hand and selling digital subscriptions to university libraries or directly to students and teachers on the other. Growth models made possible by significant technological investments can also be noted at the Brazilian Cogna Educação, the German Klett or the Finnish Sanoma.

These openings towards new technical and commercial fields question the very definition of publishing. And in wanting to diversify too much, some formerly major players in the global book industry have now crossed the line of changing professions. This is the case, for example, of the German professional publisher Haufe, ranked 36^e rank of the -Global 50 2023, which indicated this year that it no longer defined itself as a book publisher, but as a technological publisher and organizer of professional training. And was therefore removed from the 2024 edition of the Global 50. Premonitory?