![]() ![]() In acquisitions that were announced on consecutive days in November, the Swedish audio streaming subscription service giant Spotify announced it had reached an agreement to acquire Ohio-based digital audiobook distributor Findaway. The audiobook industry was the focus of several deals in 2021. Formed in 2009 by onetime HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, Open Road was acquired for a purchase price reported to be between $60 million and $80 million, and had annual revenue approaching $50 million. With the sale, Follett’s business is now centered on Follett Higher Education.Īnother newly created equity group, led by veteran publishing executive David Steinberger, was assembled to acquire Open Road Integrated Media. The deal involved all of B&T’s related businesses, which include Baker & Taylor Publisher Services, Baker & Taylor UK, collectionHQ, and James Bennett. The FSS deal was Francisco Partners’ second purchase in 2021 in the educational technology business, having acquired Ingram Content Group’s VitalSource digital learning platform in the spring.Īpproximately two months after completing the sale of FSS, Follett sold Baker & Taylor to an investment group put together by the wholesaler’s CEO and president, Aman Kochar. The sale came after a failed attempt by Follett to enter the school book fair business and the determination by Follett that if FSS was to expand in the educational technology space it needed additional capital. In late summer, the company sold its K–12 software and content division, Follett School Solutions (FSS), to the investment firm Francisco Partners. The year also saw the downsizing of Follett Corporation. The acquisition was HBG’s sixth in the last eight years. With sales of $134 million, Workman was one of the largest independent trade publishers remaining in the U.S. In September, Hachette Book Group completed its purchase of Workman Publishing for $240 million. HMH sold the trade group, which had revenue of $192 million in 2020, to focus on its efforts as a technology learning company. The biggest was HarperCollins’s acquisition of the trade division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for $349 million. The trade side of the business had two significant deals in the year. The acquisition also took place about one year after a proposed merger between MH and Cengage fell through after running into opposition from the Justice Department. The second billion-dollar deal was Platinum Equity’s $4.5 billion purchase of McGraw Hill, a purchase that came eight years after Apollo Global Management acquired MH for $2.4 billion. The deal was opposed by the advocacy group SPARC, which represents more than 240 academic and research library members, who said the combination “pushes this market to the brink of a monopoly.” (The deal did not included Bowker, which remains part of Cambridge, a separate unit of ProQuest.) The combined company has over 11,000 employees, with 45,000 customers in over 200 countries, and Clarivate’s 2022 revenue is projected to be between $2.87 billion and $2.93 billion. The biggest acquisition came in the information and library publishing market, where London-based Clarivate bought ProQuest for $5.3 billion. Even as Penguin Random House fights with the Department of Justice to win approval for its $2.18 billion purchase of Simon & Schuster, the consolidation beat in publishing continued in 2021 with the consummation of some of the biggest deals in several years. ![]()
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