Pearson Company

busuu - the world's largest social network for language learning at 40 million users - has signed a distribution partnership with Pearson English, a newly formed business unit of the world's largest education company, Pearson PLC. The deal will be exclusive for the next 4 months, after which Pearson will be free to sign similar deals with other partners, should it choose to do so. However, it gives Busuu and edge over its competitors, given that the bulk of foreign language learning is to learn English. 

The promise of electronic text has been largely unrealized in academia, where students still pay thousands for books that lose most of their value within months. Here's why.

College students today stream movies from Netflix, queue up music on Spotify, and order late-night snacks on Seamless. But when it comes to buying textbooks, many students are still doing things the old-fashioned way: buying pricy paper copies from the campus bookstore at the start of the semester, then selling them back for a fraction of the purchase price when classes are done.

Publishing and education company Pearson has teamed up with Foursquare to launch a new app to help students find more productive places to study.

Launched today (27 March) the 'Inspired Locations of Learning' app utilises data from Foursquare along with student tips to list the best places to study around universities and cities.

Cengage Learning emerged from bankruptcy on Tuesday, returning to the textbook market with less debt and more funding, but also with the same challenges facing the academic publishing industry.

Saddled with $5.8 billion in debt, Cengage filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2013 as part of its restructuring efforts. The publisher reached a settlement with its creditors this February, eliminating $4 billion of the debt, and secured an additional $1.75 billion in exit funding.

The international media company Bertelsmann invested heavily in expanding its businesses in 2013, as the company increased its revenues, operating result and Group profit. Investments in implementing the Group's strategy amounted to €2 billion, including financial debt assumed, up from €655 million in the previous year, and its largest sum since 2005. Group profit increased by 42 percent to €870 million. This is the highest Group profit since 2006, and is well above the latest expectations.

Today German-based Bertelsmann, owner of Penguin Random House (PRH), released its 2013 fiscal-year results. In a letter to PRH staff, CEO Markus Dohle predicted a bright future for the company.

The hotly debated topic "The future of eBooks: the impact of the digital eBook phenomenon" will be the key focus at this year's South African Book Fair, where the impact of eBooks in the South African education system will come under the spotlight.

Riaan Jonck, CEO of Pearson South Africa, a leading supplier of educational materials and technologies to the student and educator market (and a main exhibitor at this year's Fair) believes that for the next five years print

Spanish media group Prisa said yesterday it had agreed to sell Alfaguara, publisher of Nobel-prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa and several other editorial brands, to Penguin Random House for 72 million euros (US$100 million).

Penguin Random House is majority owned by German media group Bertelsmann, while Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times, holds a minority stake. Bertelsmann and Pearson last year completed the merger of their publishers Penguin and Random House.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt set a new record for trade publication sales last year, and the Boston publisher has a furry-footed friend to thank.

HMH's trade publication revenue  grew by 9 percent in 2013, the company said last week, to reach an all-time high of $171 million for the year.

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.

This tablet and mobile optimized digital edition features:

• The Social Publisher
• Q&A with Pearson's Paul Belfanti
• Education Publishing's Adaptive Future
• Bill Kasdorf on Getting the Most Out of EPUB 3
• How Analytics Can Make You a Smarter Publisher
• Special Report: Identity Publishing
• An Original Essay by Jason Merkoski on Post-Book Authoring