In our interview with Bonnier Books UK co-CEO Sarah Benton she likens the business to Wrexham Football Club – a plucky outsider team rising up the leagues thanks to heavyweight investment. For Wrexham that is Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, for Bonnier it is the family-owned Swedish media business that tracks its start to a book stall in Copenhagen in 1804, and is now a £2bn group.

There is something delicious with the analogy, with a previous version of Bonnier Books UK a touch, shall we say, Hollywood in how it went about things. But for Benton – and co-CEO Jonathan Perdoni – it is now less about buying growth, but using the backing to nurture talent. Though Bonnie Garmus isn’t a bad exception to the new rule.

Still, I sort of miss the crash-bang-wallop years when Bonnier promised a bigger shake-up of the status quo than actually happened. Today, we describe Bonnier as belonging to the mini-major category in the UK – sitting behind Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury and Simon & Schuster UK – but not quite yet in the same league as the big three, Penguin Random House (PRH) UK, Hachette UK and HarperCollins.

Of these, PRH UK has a near unassailable lead that is evidenced not just by its size and clout in the market, but also performance. Last week we reported that its sales rose 4% in 2025 to £625m. It is the first time for a while that we have had sight of PRH UK’s revenue numbers, and it will have been a sobering read for rivals, especially as these figures did not include parent group Bertelsmann’s other UK investments, DK (including some of Sourcebooks’ publishing) and Wonderbly.

I sort of miss the crash-bang-wallop years when Bonnier promised a bigger shake-up of the status quo than actually happened

But Hachette also reported a strong year – or another “record” one, as its PR statement put it – growing revenue by 3%. It does not break out UK (or UK originated) sales for us, but its parent Lagardère pointed to UK sales from all of its publishing units of £680m, which looks like a big number but also includes sales into Ireland, India, Australia and New Zealand, as well as business from other Hachette operations such as its Partworks group. In NielsenIQ terms, Hachette is 60% of PRH UK, but bigger in digital, and has a sizeable education business too. In short, Hachette UK may be bigger than we think.

HarperCollins is a little easier to figure. Its Companies House report showed UK-originated turnover down 3.6% for the year ended 30th June 2025, from £178m in 2024 to £171m in 2025. But its full-year NielsenIQ number was £158m – around 30% of PRH’s equivalent, suggesting total UK sales (including exports), might also be around £175m, accepting it too has an education division that might be a distorting factor in the analysis.

Bloomsbury is the only other publisher within this range to have revealed its financials recently (to end-February 2025). Its overall consumer revenue was reported to be £256m, but unlike those groups above, this also includes sales from the US, which will be substantial. Bloomsbury does not break them out in more detail (a separate number for its US publishing division also includes academic) but, in NielsenIQ terms, it is now at 17% of PRH.

Bonnier does have an ace in its hole, the mass-market publisher, Igloo, whose sales tend not to get tracked by NielsenIQ. Combined, this suggests a  business with a UK footprint far off the top three but within touching distance of Bloomsbury and Pan Macmillan, and on a par with Simon & Schuster’s UK business.

As for Wrexham, they are now playing in the Championship (the old second division) and a mere 20 points off the top. While the team may not make the Premier League this year, its sustainable approach – along with the occasional Hollywood deal – is not a bad model for book publishers to follow. All to play for, then.