By publishing sector, trade – or consumer book publishers – saw the largest winners. Science technical and medical (STM) as well as professional publishers fared well, albeit without major ups and downs, stabilizing after an earlier period of remarkable expansion in both revenue and offered services. In Education, some of the largest providers of higher education materials confronted challenges for some time, while some smaller contenders could strengthen their market position by diversifying their offerings and by some acquisitions.

Consolidation, seen across the board for several years, continued, with the two largest maneuvers still pending – the acquisition of American Simon and Schuster by Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House, and the announced takeover of Hachette, the largest publishing group in France, by cross-media giant Vivendi. But also, in logistics and fulfillment, and in retail, highly consequential structural shifts can be seen in many markets.

An industry traditionally focused on producing and selling products – books – is seeing a rise in complex services to the end consumer, as access and convenience in discoverability for highly specialized and segmented consumer demand are the drivers in today’s transformation.

The Global 50 Publishing Ranking is researched by Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, and published by Bookdao (PR China), The Bookseller (UK), buchreport (Germany), Livres Hebdo (France) and Publishers Weekly (US).

The Global 50 Ranking and CEO Talk are supported by Bookwire (www.bookwire.de )

The full Global 50 report, with the big list, an analysis and data rich company profiles will be available as a digital publication of around 250 pages from Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at www.wischenbart.com/ranking , and at websites of Bookwire, Bookdao, Livres Hebdo and Publishers Weekly.