Pearson Education, one of the major college textbook publishers and one of my best clients, has encouraging news about recent textbook sales. Here are relevant passages from an October 20 press release:
Our education business is performing ahead of expectations despite challenging conditions in US School publishing. In education we are gaining significant market share, with substantial growth in digital services and continued expansion into new market segments and geographies.
In education, we continue to accelerate our transformation from book publisher to the leading global learning technology and services company.
In North America, this strategy is enabling us to gain share and grow faster than expected, with headline sales growth of 30% in the first nine months (CER growth of 4%). We are also benefiting from the integration of the Harcourt Assessment business and the creation of a single North American education company serving students and educators from pre-school to adulthood.
We have continued to see weak conditions for the US School publishing industry caused by state budget pressures and a lower new adoption market opportunity. However, Pearson outperformed the US School publishing market, which declined by 21% in the first eight months of the year according to the Association of American Publishers.
Our Higher Education business is having an exceptional year, buoyed by healthy market conditions (industry sales up 11% in the first eight months, according to the AAP) and our leadership in the rapidly-growing digital learning segment. For instance, more than 2.5m students have enrolled in an online course provided by eCollege in the first nine months, an increase of almost 30% over last year. Almost five million college students have registered for our subject-specific digital learning services, an increase of almost 40% on last year.
Good news for we freelance writers who create textbook supplements and ancillaries for college textbooks, especially those published by Pearson. Strong textbook sales means more projects for us, and hopefully with good pay.
For in-depth instructions on how to determine how well college textbook publishers are doing financially, see my blog post:
Focus on Pearson Higher Education, Major Textbook Publisher and Employer of Supplements Writers
Here are the major college textbook publishing imprints of Pearson Education:
- Addison-Wesley
- Allyn & Bacon
- Benjamin Cummings
- Longman
- Prentice Hall
