S&P Global Reports Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2024 Results

Print sales of unit books rose 1.6% last week over the week ended June 6, 2020, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. While the juvenile categories have usually led the week-to-week gains since the pandemic hit, last week it was the adult categories that led the increase, in particular adult nonfiction. Unit sales rose 4.4% last week in the adult nonfiction segment. According to BookScan, print sales in the history/law/political science segment, where most titles about race and social justice are classified, jumped 28.7% in the week.

In late 2010, I was thinking quite a bit about book use in research libraries. The conventional wisdom was that “no one uses print books anymore” in libraries like mine, and indeed annual data provided by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) showed a pretty clear decline in book circulations: between 1991 and 2008 (the most recent data available at that time), the number of initial circulations in ARL libraries had fallen by over a quarter. And when I ventured into the book stacks in my own library I usually found them spookily deserted. But I was haunted by a passing comment a colleague had made to me a few years earlier, noting that the conclusions we draw from library usage data can easily be confounded by changes in the library’s user population. It occurred to me that if we really want to understand what’s happening with regard to library patrons and printed books, we need to take into account the changing nature of our patron base. And the simplest and most consistent change in that population is growth over time: university enrollment tends to grow from year to year. Click Read More below for more of the story.

The international media, services and education company increased its revenues by 1.3 percent year-on-year to €12.1 billion (previous year: €12.0 billion). Bertelsmann's strategic growth businesses were particularly instrumental in this development: RTL Group's digital activities continued their dynamic growth, increasing by around 30 percent to €560 million. The music company BMG grew by 29 percent; the Bertelsmann Education Group recorded growth of 38 percent. Overall, the share of total revenues contributed by the high-growth businesses increased to 32 percent (previous year: 29 percent). Group profit increased to €694 million at September 30, surpassing the previous year's figure by 6.4 percent (previous year: €652 million). The result before sale of investments was therefore at a record level. With capital gains of €69 million, the Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI) fund once again made a high contribution to earnings. Click Read More below for additional information.