The World’s Largest Publishers, 2025

After a seven-year run, the RELX Group has given up its title as the world’s largest book publisher, displaced by ThomsonReuters. The Canadian-based legal and professional publisher had a solid 2024, with revenue rising 6%, to $6.43 billion. After a flat 2023, sales at RELX slipped slightly in 2024, falling about 1%, to $6.2 billion for the STM and legal publisher.

This year’s top 10 publisher list also includes a new addition, as McGraw Hill returns. The educational and professional publisher had been excluded for a number of years when its private equity owners refused to provide any financial data. But in July, MH returned to the public markets and according to its prospectus, the company had total sales in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025 of $2.10 billion, up 7% from fiscal 2024. The performance was good enough to put the publisher in seventh place on the ranking.

Rounding out the top 10 is a mix of trade, professional/STM, and educational publishers. Bertelsmann, with its educational publishing activities augmenting its large trade business as owner of Penguin Random House, was the third largest book publisher last year with the bulk of its revenue generated by PRH.

Lagardère’s publishing arm, Hachette Livre, was the world’s second largest trade publisher and sixth largest overall with total 2024 sales of just under $3 billion. HarperCollins was the third trade publisher to make the top 10 cut with its revenue from the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024 rising to just under $2.1 billion.

The annual global ranking of the world's largest publishers is compiled by industry consultant Rüdiger Wischenbart.