Unlike a few hundred years ago, today, the competition among the best authors and best publishing companies has increased due to the technological advancement in the publishing industry. Publishing in this modern age, where there is a tough competition going on among the new authors emerging in every corner of the world is a very difficult task.

Due to this technical advancement, mass Publishing has become possible for the best publishing companies which are the main reason for the success of modern publishers. In this article, we will be discussing the best publishing companies for general readers as well as the students. Also, we have recommended a few other significant publishers for the book worms as well.

Top 5 trade publishers:

• Penguin Random House:

Annual revenue: $3.3 billion

Imprints: Knopf Doubleday, Viking Press, Crown Publishing

Significant titles of 2019: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, The Guardians by John Grisham, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. 

Penguin Random House was formed in 2013 from the merger of Random House, a German company, and Penguin, a British company. It is a multinational conglomerate and is one of the 5 best publishing companies in the world. In 2013, Penguin Random House employed about 10,000 people across the world and published 15,000 titles per year under its 250 divisions and imprints. These titles include fiction and non-fiction for adults and children in print, audio and digital.

• Hachette Livre:

Annual revenue: $2.7 billion

Imprints: Grand Central Publishing, Mulholland Books, Little, Brown, and Company

Significant titles of 2019: One Good Deed by David Baldacci, Little Weirds by Jenny Slate, Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Hachette Book Group is the largest publishing company in France owned by Hachette Livre which is also the third out of five best publishing companies for education and trade in the world. The current version of the company was formed on March 31, 2006, when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner. HBG publishes over 1400 books for adults, 300 books for youngsters, and 450 audiobook titles (including both physical and downloadable-only titles). The company had 214 books on the New York Times bestseller list in 2016, 44 of which reached No. 1.

• Harper Collins:

Annual revenue: $1.5 billion

Imprints: Avon Romance, William Morrow, Harper, Harlequin Enterprises

Significant titles of 2019: The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin, Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis, On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

HarperCollins was formed in 1989 through a multi-company merger that adopted names from former publishing companies, Harper & Row and William Collins. Brian Murray is the worldwide CEO of Harper Collins today. The company has publishing groups in countries like India, The US, Canada, The UK, New Zealand, Australia, and China. The company publishes a variety of imprints, both new imprints, and former independent publishing houses, and is on the list of the best publishing companies in the world.

• Macmillan Publishers

Annual revenue: $1.4 billion

Imprints: Straus and Giroux, Picador, Farrar, Thomas Dunne Books

Significant titles of 2019: The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, Me by Elton John

Macmillan Publishers Ltd was created in London in the year 1843 by Alexander Macmillan and Daniel. The company has been a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1999, and has its offices in forty-one countries across the world and has operations in more than thirty other countries. The company has published the original works of authors like Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and W.B. Yeats.

• Simon and Schuster:

Annual revenue: $830 million

Imprints: Scribner, Howard Books, Touchstone

Significant titles of 2019: Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, The Institute by Stephen King

Simon & Schuster is a subsidiary of ViacomCBS, which is a publishing company based in America, created in New York City in the year 1924 by M. Lincoln Schuster and Richard L. Simon. In 2016, Simon & Schuster was publishing 2000 titles a year under 35 different imprints. The company’s 2019 revenue was around $830 million. The company was the original publisher of the ‘lost generation authors’ like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and has also published many eminent authors like Stephen King and Dan Brown.

Top 5 educational publishers:

• McGraw-Hill Education:

Annual revenue: $1.7 billion

Imprints: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill

Significant titles of 2019: New editions of test prep books (SAT and ACT) and elementary school math textbooks

McGraw-Hill is an American company that provides its customers with customized software, educational content, and services for pre-K. The company currently has operations in twenty-eight countries, employs more than five thousand employees across the globe, and offers services and products to over 135 countries in over sixty languages. The company was purchased by Apollo Global Management in March 2013 for $2.4 billion.

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Annual revenue: $1.4 billion

Imprints: Clarion, Sandpiper, Graphia, John Joseph Adams Books

Significant titles of 2019: Elementary school textbooks in all subjects, as well as cookbooks

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishes instructional technology materials, textbooks, reference works, and fiction and nonfiction for all types of customers. The current company was formed by the merger of Houghton Harcourt Publishing and Mifflin Company in the year 2007. The company gains most of its profits from the K-12 education market, culinary, and children’s titles as well.

• Pearson Education:

Annual revenue: $1 billion

Imprints: Adobe Press, Prentice-Hall, Heinemann, Wharton Publishing

Significant titles of 2019: Subject textbooks for higher education

Pearson Education is a Britain based education assessment and publishing service to corporations and schools, also directly for students. Although the company gains around sixty percent of its total sales in North America, it operates in more than seventy countries. The company was once owned by Penguin Random House and has recently partnered with DuoLingo, which is a language learning service. Like other educational publishers, textbooks remain a cornerstone of the company’s business.

• Scholastic:

Annual revenue: $1.7 billion

Imprints: Klutz Press, Arthur A. Levine, Orchard Books

Significant titles of 2019: Dog Man: Fetch-22 by Dav Pilkey, Guts by Raina Telgemeier, Diary of an Ice Princess by Christina Soontornva

Scholastic is an American based multinational education, publishing, and media company found in the year 1920 that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for parents, schools, and children. This company has its unique way of distributing products through schools via reading clubs and fairs. Besides, they also distribute their products through retail and online sales. This is the largest publisher and distributor of children’s books in the world and has published several popular works like the Harry Potter series and The Hunger Games.

• Cengage Learning:

Annual revenue: $1.5 billion

Imprints: Education To Go, Chilton, Gale, National Geographic Learning

Significant titles of 2019: Gale reference books targeted toward middle and high schoolers

Cengage is a company based in America that provides technology, educational content, and services for K-12 and higher education. It conducts operations in more than 20 countries in the world. The company has over 5000 employees across 38 countries. The company is linked to traditional publishing in the form of a library division called Gale which creates and maintains databases that are published online, in print, as e-books, and in microform.

Other recommendations for the book-worms:

• Oxford University Press:

Annual revenue: $1.1 billion

Imprints: Clarendon Press

Significant titles of 2019: Academic journals and new editions of literary classics 

Oxford University Press is the university press of Oxford University. No other university press is as large as OUP. It is also the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press.  It provides the best historical guides, dictionaries, and literary fiction, which came out of its Oxford World's Classics imprint. Today, the press publishes journals, books, and selections of sheet music by itself and a few distinguished imprints.

• Everyman’s Library:

Everyman’s library is a series of classic literature, mainly from Western canon which currently publishes in hardback by Random House. It was formed in the year 1905 by Joseph Malaby Dent, who intended to create a 1000-volume library of world literature that was affordable and attractive to every kind of person, from students to the working class to the cultural elite. The company is currently owned by Hachette Livre.

• Vintage Books:

Vintage Books is a trade paperback publishing imprint established in the UK, in the year 1954 by Alfred A. Knopf. The company was acquired by Random House publishing in April 1960 and thus, is a subdivision of Random House. The company began publishing some mass-market paperback books in 2003.

• Bloomsbury Publishing:

Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a Britain based company that publishes fiction and non-fiction worldwide. The credit of the company’s growth over the past 20 years can be primarily attributed to the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. For the titles of Academic, Educational & Professional Publisher, the Bloomsbury Academic & Professional division has won the Bookseller Industry Award of the Year in 2013 and 2014.

• Relx:

Relx plc, previously known as Reed Elsevier,  is a Britain based corporate group which comprises of companies that publish scientific, technical, and medical material, and legal textbooks; provide decision-making tools and; and organize exhibitions. The company came into being in 1992, as a result of the merger of Reed International and Elsevier. The company was re-branded in February 2015 as Relx. It conducts operations in over 40 countries and provides services to its customers in around 180 nations.

• Conclusion: