Random House (a division of multinational media giant Bertelsmann AG), the world's largest publishing company, announced today its financials for 2005. Their operating profit was $202 million (an increase of 18% over 2004) on revenues of $2.21 billion (a 1.6% increase).
This robust performance was led in part by increased sales of John Grisham's The Broker and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
A profit margin of 9% is quite respectable, about equal to what you'd typically see in other industries, including software, telecom and oil.
So why, with numbers like that, is publishing believed to be such a poor industry?
You've got me.
