Beyond Digital, Globalization and Emerging Markets are the Next Frontier for Publishing

I took this post wholesale from a press release issued by Dr. Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting who also happens to be BEA's Director of International Affairs, announcing his latest results for global rankings of the publishing industry.   Ruediger has long been a key member of the BEA team, with varied responsibilities, but is primarily focused on BEA's Global Market Forum program.   


Dr. Wischenbart does many other things in the world of publishing besides his consulting and work on BEA as he is a working journalist and also teaches at the University in Vienna.  His work in compiling accurate figures for the global rankings has been a long term project that has been missing on the international publishing landscape.  This data is extremely useful in understanding the scale and size of the whole market for publishing.

Press release

June 25, 2012

Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2012
2010 > 2011	Rank	Publishing Company (Group or Division)	2011 m€
±	1	Pearson	6.470 €
±	2	Reed Elsevier	4.395 €
±	3	ThomsonReuters	4.181 €
±	4	Wolters Kluwer	3.354 €
˄	5	Hachette Livre	2.038 €
˄	6	Grupo Planeta	1.772 €
±	7	McGraw-Hill Education	1.763 €
˅	8	Random House	1.749 €
˄	9	Holtzbrinck	1.501 €
±	10	Scholastic	1.466 €
		Top10 Groups combined	28.690 €
		% of Top 50	54,00%

The Livres Hebdo Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2012, co-published by Livres Hebdo (France), Buchreport (Germany), Publishers Weekly (USA), The Bookseller (UK) and PublishNews Brazil (Brazil) maps old champions and new contenders fighting over the global knowledge society.

The top five, as portrayed in the updated “Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry” shows, at the top, a bunch of old champions in the global knowledge society: British Pearson, made of the uncontested leader in Education, and one of the biggest brands in fiction and nonfiction Trade books, Penguin, followed by Reed Elsevier, Thomason Reuters and Wolters Kluwer, spearheading mostly digital services for scientific and professional information, and French Hachette, the new comer to knowledge in a truly worldwide perspective.

Those five companies are giants with yearly publishing revenues (not counting newspapers, magazines, TV of advertising) of more than 2 bn € (or 2.5 bn US$), and imposing a strong presence truly around the globe, to provide book or similarly ‘complex’ content, notably leading journals, to the world.

The ranks beneath the very top mirror a landscape of ultimate change though, with new contenders, including Spanish Grupo Planeta, which owns both a massive share in Latin American and in French publishing, or a lineup of mostly educational publishers from emerging markets, like Brazil’s Abril Educacao, and Saraiva, or “China Education and Media Group”, a recently government sponsored merger of several Chinese publishers into a new global actor, or Russia’s EKSMO (which only a few weeks ago, saved its closest rival, AST from going under, by acquiring it). In Korea, publishers have successfully learned to operate not only entire schools, but hire 30,000 or so teachers for after school tutoring on their materials, and aiming at having entirely digital textbooks by 2015. India, which harbors not one publisher in the Ranking, as its knowledge is still governed from abroad, mostly from market leaders in the UK, has announced a 60$ tablet and grooms its domestic rival to Amazon for distribution, branded Flipkart, to step into the new global race for reading and, more importantly, for learning.

As a consequence, what matters most in the newest update of the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry, is probably as much to be found at the top, as at its long tail, which is growing rapidly in both length and substance.

The Global Ranking has been initiated by the French book trade magazine Livres Hebdo (www.livreshebdo.fr ) in 2007, and is researched by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, and currently co-published by buchreport (Germany, www.buchreport.de ), The Bookseller (UK, www.TheBookseller.com )), PublishNews (Brazil, www.publishnews.com.br/ ), and Publishers Weekly (US, www.PublishersWeekly.com ). It lists all publishing companies worldwide with revenues from publishing (excluding newspapers, magazines, or financial services) of more than 150 m€ (or 200 mUS$).

Streaming numbers from BEA

The biggest change for BEA this year was the introduction of streaming for many of the author events live from BEA which are now available for viewing on demand.  The best place to watch is from the  BEA Livestream Channel or the BEA homepage.  


I can share that the total viewer minutes so far equates to more than 20,000 hours of total viewing which is = to 842 days or 2.3 years by more than 58,000 unique viewers.  It is worth noting that BEA enjoyed a very global audience that have tuned in.  Over the next 3 weeks, BEA will edit much of the footage we captured so it is more bite sized and we will also post audio from the majority of the great conference sessions.  The best place for everything that will be available for your viewing and listening pleasure once it is edited will be www.bookexpocast.com

Total Unique Viewers 6/1/2012 thru 6/11/2012:

Author Breakfast Channel:  10,014

Author Stage Channel: 48,340

Total Viewer minutes: 1,212,985

author breakfast channel: 511,688

author stage channel: 701,297

Top 10 Countries Viewing

Author Breakfast Channel:

1.     US

2.     UK

3.     Australia

4.     Canada

5.     Germany

6.     Italy

7.     Japan

8.     Sweden 

9.     France

10.   Philippines

Author Stage Channel:

1.     US

2.     UK

3.     Canada

4.     Australia

5.     Japan

6.     Germany

7.     India

8.     Spain

9.     Brazil

10.   Italy

BEA Numbers

One number to share is that I have logged 23+ miles within the confines of Javits since arriving on Sunday. It has been an incredible BEA which was punctuated by the eloquent and impassioned speech by John Green. It is important that you hear it for yourself as I cannot simply summarize his words without losing the impact. You can go to the player on the BEA home page and Mr. Green starts at the 26 minute mark of the Children’s Book and Author Breakfast. He perfectly lauded the power and importance of the act of reading. That it is a singular experience that transcends and trumps everything. I teased people with the title of BEA numbers knowing there is a clamor to know: what are BEA's numbers?!?!? yet I am writing about John Green??? My point is that BEA is a singular experience for every attendee and every exhibitor that cannot be replicated. It is a process to deliver accurate numbers for the attendance. Since Sunday I have gotten reports that had BEA's attendance up as high as 12% and as low as down 5% in comparison to 2011. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, know that BEA will fully disclose all of our figures as we always do and will not hide from anything, but I cannot for the life of me understand why people will not judge or stamp their success or 'failure' of BEA until they can attach an arbitrary number that we post against the business they conducted, the books they discovered or the new contacts they made. BEA is what it is, the largest gathering of trade professionals in the largest book market in the world - there are over 1,000 exhibitors from more than 25 countries and more than 12,000 attendees from more than 85 countries that are librarians, booksellers, retailers and publishing professionals along with more than 2,200 members of working media. These numbers are a given- the question will only be if we are up a few percent or down a few percent. I am not dismissing the value of metrics, but I do think that it is an old way of thinking and publishing is moving into very new territory that I strongly believe BEA is leading the way for. We now have to calculate the number of viewers watching events simultaneously which was consistently more than 1,000 from all over the world tuning in for the breakfasts and author stage events + the viewings that will take place for the next 6 months.

All of this said, I DO understand that people want some sense of size and the media need to report a number back to their readers.  I want to share BEA's raw numbers that includes BlogWorld, which means there will be a slight variance after everything is processed and are likely to go slightly up because this is as of 12:00 noon on June 7th.

• Total Industry Professionals 2012 = 22,365 - Up 1%
• Total Industry Professianals 2011 = 22,233
• Total Attendance 2012 = 14,057 - Up 5%
• Total Attendance 2011 = 13,412 

200+ NEW EXHIBITORS IN BEA 2012

This is from a brief press release that went out yesterday - stuff I love to share.

Areas of Growth Include Digital Zone, Children’s Pavilion,

Gift & Sidelines Companies

Norwalk, CT, May 30, 2012:  Officials at BookExpo America (BEA) have revealed that over 200 new companies, representing 20,000 square feet of exhibit floor space, will be participating in this year’s event.  This is an 18% growth in new exhibitors from 2011 to 2012.  In addition, 87 new exhibitors in 2011 have renewed their association for 2012 bringing the overall number of companies with only one or two years of participation to 289.  The areas of special interest for new companies signing up for BEA include the Digital Zone (27 new booths or kiosks); the Children’s Pavilion (24 new booths); and companies displaying Gifts & Sidelines (33 new booths).    

BookExpo America, which will take place in New York City at the Jacob K. Javits Center, June 4 – 7, is the largest book industry event in North America, and one of the largest gatherings of English language publishers in the world.  The show’s vast array of publishers, book industry services and related retail products provides attendees the chance to uncover unique and special products that make their stores and collections one of a kind.  

“While adding new companies and losing old ones is always part of the game, it has been particularly encouraging to see so many new exhibitors added in our current economic climate,” notes Steve Rosato, Show Manager for BEA.   “We have exhibitors from 26 countries, we have attendees from all 50 states, and we boast a huge gathering of the most famous authors writing today.  On top of this, we are based in the media capital of the world which offers special opportunity for everyone at BEA.   Our goal is simple … we want to provide unparalleled leverage and access for our exhibitors as well as our attendees.”

Some of the notable and high profile authors who will be speaking at BEA this year and bringing major national media attention to the show include Neil Young, Stephen Colbert, Barbara Kingsolver, Junot Diaz, Jimmy Fallon, Michael Chabon, and Chris Colfer, among many others.  

For a complete listing of new exhibitors please visit http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/NEW.  For other information about BEA please visit the website at www.bookexpoamerica.com.  You can also connect with BEA on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.