The World's Biggest Publishers from Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly's Jim Milliot reports this week on "Publishing's Top Guns." Here's his list:

1. Thomson (Canada): $7.2 billion
2. Pearson (UK): $7 billion
3. Bertelsmann (Germany): $6.4 billion
4. Reed Elsevier (UK/Netherlands): $6.1 billion
5. Wolters Kluwer (Netherlands): $4.9 billion
6. Hachette Livre (France): $3.1 billion
7. McGraw-Hill Education (U.S.): $2.7 billion
8. Reader's Digest (U.S.): $2.6 billion
9. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (U.S./Cayman Islands): $2.5 billion
10. De Agostini Editore (Italy): revenues not available

Again, Americans might be surprised to see how far down the list you have to go before you hit a U.S. company. But most of the world's top companies own high-profile divisions and imprints in America.

And speaking of America, here's how our top publishers stack up:

1. McGraw-Hill: $2.7 billion
2. Reader's Digest: $2.7 billion
3. Scholastic: $2.1 billion
4. HarperCollins: $1.3 billion
5. John Wiley: $1.2 billion
6. Simon & Schuster: $886 million
7. Marvel: $398 million

Even the smallest of these is mind-bogglingly huge compared to where I work!