How big a business is publishing?
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007How big a business is publishing?
According to statistics compiled by industry expert Dan Poynter (as he states on his Web site at http://parapublishing.com/statistics), books sales totaled approximately $26.9 billion in 2002 (Source: Association of American Publishers, www.publishers.org/industry/index.cfm).
This amounted to a 5.5 percent increase over 2001 (Publishers Weekly, March 10, 2003, www.PublishersWeekly.com).
Today, six huge, multinational conglomerates dominate the book-publishing business; together, they put out about 80 percent of all books sold. Four of these giants are foreign owned, but all have headquarters in New York City, which is the world book-publishing center. As a result, the big six are considered “New York Publishers,” which carries a certain literary cachet, even though they’re actually owned by corporations based in Munich, London, or Sydney.
The six publishing biggies are:
1. Random House, Inc., a division of Bertelsmann AG (a German Corporation), is the world’s largest English-language general trade book publisher. It publishes some seventy imprints, including Anchor, Ballantine, Bantam, Broadway, Crown, Dell, Del Ray, Dial, Doubleday, Fawcett, Fodor, Dell, Knopf Group, Pantheon, Random House, Villard, and Vintage. It also owns the Literary Guild.
2. The Penguin Group, which is owned by Pearson (United Kingdom), is the second largest publisher in the United States and Canada and the largest in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India. Its imprints include Allen Lane, Avery, Berkley Books, Dutton, Hamish Hamilton, Michael Joseph, Plume, Putnam, Riverhead, and Viking. Penguin also publishes children’s brands such as Puffin, Ladybird, Dutton and Grosset & Dunlap.
3. HarperCollins, a subsidiary of the News Corporation Limited (Australia), has annual revenues of over $1 billion. Its imprints include Amistad, Avon, Caedmon, Ecco, Eos, HarperBusiness, HarperCollins, HarperSanFrancisco, Perennial, Rayo, ReganBooks and William Morrow. Its Zondervan unit publishes Bibles and Christian books, and its e-book imprint is PerfectBound.
4. Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings, (Germany), publishers imprints that include Argon; Bedford; College-Group; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Freeman; Hanley & Belfus; Henry Holt; Hill & Wang; Macmillan; North Point Press; Picador; St. Martin’s; Scientific American; Times Books (partnership with New York Times Group); Urban & Fischer, and Worth.
5. Time Warner Book Group Inc. (United States) owns the Book-of-the-Month Club and the imprints Aspect; Back Bay; Bulfinch; Little, Brown and Company; Press Warner Books, The Mysterious Press and Warner Books (Warner Business Books, Warner Faith, and Warner Vision). It also distributes publishing lines for Hyperion, Arcade, Disney, Harry Abrams, Time-Life Books, and Microsoft.
6. Simon & Schuster, Inc., is the publishing arm of Viacom (United States). It publishes Aladdin Paperbacks, Atheneum, Atria, Fireside, The Free Press, Little Simon, MTV Books, Margaret K. McElderry, Pocket Books, Scribner, Simon & Schuster, Simon Spotlight, Star Trek, Touchstone, Washington Square Press, and Wall Street Journal Books.
A seventh biggie is Disney Publishing Worldwide (United States), a subsidiary of the entertainment giant the Walt Disney Company. It publishes ABC Daytime Press, ESPN Books, Hyperion, Miramax, and Theia.
In addition to the giant publishers, Dan Poynter reports that some 300 to 400 medium-sized publishers exist, along with more than 85,000 small and self-publishers. With the explosion in electronic books, printing on demand, and other innovations, the field continues to expand.
An excerpt from the National Bestseller Author 101: Bestelling Secrets from Top Agents by Rick Frishman and Robyn Freedman Spizman
http://www.amazon.com/Author-101-Bestse … amp;sr=1-5
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