Was that really a million or a billion?

Yesterday at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova posted briefly about The $300 print textbook – the end is near. Her second paragraph about a publisher began by claiming:

“Since 2013, Pearson’s revenues had declined from $2 billion to $1.3 million.”

That would be a catastrophic drop of more than 99.9%. Clearly $1.3 million just is a typo, and she should have said $1.3 billion. Careful proofreading would have caught it. (The M key is just two spaces to the right of the B key).

That article by Eric Johnson in recode on August 2, 2019 titled “The $300 textbook is dead,” says the CEO of textbook maker Pearson which Jane linked to discussed a drop to $1.3 billion, a 35% decrease.

The article also mentioned annual sales of both 10 million and 100 million books. If we assume that an average book sold for $100, than sales of 10 million would multiply to a revenue of $1 billion, so the former sales number likely is correct.