Pearson Company

Book Business Special Issue: #FutureThink 2014
March 6, 2014

In our ongoing quest to bring you the very best strategic and practical information for growing your business, we've compiled the most future-focused articles published by Book Business in 2013. Building on the popularity of our Future Think brand, we chose stories that reflect the most cogent trends affecting book publishers and which provide actionable advice for our readers.

Vital Source Acquires eTextbook Provider CourseSmart
March 4, 2014

The e-textbook platform Vital Source on Monday acquired CourseSmart, the academic publishing industry's door to the e-textbook market. The deal could signal a change in the publishers' attitudes toward digital educational materials.

Founded in 2007, CourseSmart was a consortium of five major academic publishers -- Cengage Learning, John Wiley & Sons, Macmillan Higher Education, McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson -- forming a common front in the e-textbook market. The company now estimates it offers more than 90 percent of e-textbooks used in higher education

New All-Digital Curriculums Hope to Ride High-Tech Push in Schoolrooms
March 3, 2014

On Monday at an education conference in Austin, Tex., Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City public schools and the current chief executive of Amplify, the education unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, will introduce a digital English language arts curriculum for middle school.

McGraw Hill, the textbook publisher, will also announce this week that it has signed a partnership with StudySync, a company that creates digital English curriculum tools that have been deployed in 22,000 classrooms and are priced at about a third of Amplify's rate.

Pearson Profits Down 9%
February 28, 2014

Over 3,300 employees have left Pearson in the last year as the company bids to transform from a print to a digital busines

Opportunities for Publishers in The Common Core
February 25, 2014

The new Common Core standards, which are essentially descriptions of things kids should have learned and know by various ages and grades, are now being adopted and adjusted to by elementary and secondary schools across the country. Common Core, besides providing the standards, encourages the practice of educating kids using content not created expressly for an educational purpose. In other words, teach kids with regular books, newspapers, magazines, videos; not just with books and educational materials prepared by textbook publishers.

Adaptive, Attractive, Interactive: A New Chapter for Digital Textbooks
February 25, 2014

It sometimes seems that not a day goes by without another article on the death of the textbook. This is perhaps with good reason; the classroom of the future is one that's connected, collaborative, and built around tablets and digital devices. That's if it even exists physically; many point to MOOCs and virtualized learning environments as the way forward. Either way, the isolating world of the print textbook seems to be one that will soon be consigned to the dustbin.

Publishing Giant Pearson Points to Tough Conditions in U.S. Education Market
January 29, 2014

By a number of recent accounts, the prospects for companies doing business with schools in the United States have brightened recently, with state and local governments slowly climbing out of gloomy doldrums of the "Great Recession" and its extended aftermath. But one of the biggest names in education, Pearson, recently described its own, recent performance in less favorable terms, saying its financial results had been "weaker than expected," particularly in North America. In a trading update released in advance of a fuller report on its 2013 earnings next month, Pearson said that "cyclical, policy-related, and structural pressures" had

Should You Bet on a New Day at Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt?
January 14, 2014

Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has had a decent reception in its return to the public markets, with a solid gain since its November 2013 initial public offering. The company was a victim of the changes sweeping the book-publishing business, including a shift to digital distribution delivered via e-readers and tablets, which has generally led to lower product pricing and profit compression for publishers. After a trip through bankruptcy court in 2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has reemerged more focused and lighter, having rid itself of close to $3 billion in debt. So, is it a worthwhile play for investors?

Pearson’s Nonprofit Arm Settles Investigation
December 13, 2013

The nonprofit arm of publishing giant Pearson Inc. agreed Thursday to pay $7.7 million to settle an investigation into whether it improperly sent government employees on international junkets.

The London-based company didn't admit wrongdoing in the settlement with the New York state Attorney General's office. The bulk of the settlement, $7.5 million, will go toward 100Kin10, an organization that is trying to place 100,000 highly-qualified math and science teachers in classrooms across America by 2021.