My personal experience with Pearson is somewhat limited--I temped for them as a copyeditor for about a year so about ten years ago--but this is not surprising.

My personal experience with Pearson is somewhat limited--I temped for them as a copyeditor for about a year so about ten years ago--but this is not surprising. Even then they were already building the online material and pursuing draconian cost-cutting measures (my gig ended when the whole copyediting department got laid off). So if half their revenues are coming from digital now, that means the print books--which are very expensive--are less profitable. So not printing, warehousing, or shipping them saves a lot of money. Plus the staff needed to manage that.