The Bookseller.com

7th September 2008

Scardino: textbooks now an 'add-on'

03.03.08 Tom Tivnan

Pearson Education will continue its shift to digital as the company predicts "strong, sustainable growth" for 2008. Speaking to The Bookseller following the company's full year results, Marjorie Scardino, Pearson c.e.o., said the education division was boosted by the company's digital initiatives such as homework and assessments packages MyLab and the UK-based ResultsPlus. She added: "The strategic plan is that we have been trying to move everything away from a textbook business. More and more we see the textbook as a kind of useful add-on."

Sixty-four percent of Pearson's overall 2007 revenue and profit came from its Education division, with sales hitting £2.6bn (2006: £2.6bn) and operating profit up to £404m from £383m.

Scardino brushed aside the suggestion that Penguin's trade business did not fit with the rest of the Pearson's portfolio: "Though we might see textbooks as receding, it is still a books business. A large number of Penguin titles are sold through our schools business and we have a number of design opportunities between Penguin and Pearson."

There will not be any major mergers and acquisitions in the coming year, Scardino added, but there may be smaller "ins and outs" in the education side. She said: "We are constantly finding bits that are no longer key to what we do and moving them on and then discovering assets that will fit."

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