Penguin Random House generated $4.5 billion USD in 2020, compared to $4.3 billion in 2019. This was primarily due to the critical success of Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, which sold more than 7.3 million copies worldwide across all formats and Michelle Obama’s Becoming. The publisher recently announced the takeover of U.S. publisher Simon & Schuster in November. The deal should be finalized sometime in the next three to six months.
The US division of Penguin Random House accounted for 58% of their total revenue, which was roughly $2.59 billion. In 2019, the U.S. represented 56% of PRH revenue, which is about $2.2 billion. One of the key driving points of the billions of dollars in revenue were the sales of ebooks and digital audiobooks as well as from physical books being ordered online, through retailers such as Amazon.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
