Communicating Knowledge Publishing in the 21st Century Topics in Library and Information Studies

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The Author

John Feather has been Professor of Library and Information Studiesat Loughborough University in the United Kingdom since 1988. Hehas served as Head of his department, Dean of the Faculty and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University. Before going toLoughborough, he had worked both in librarianship and in publishing.

His many publications include A history of British publishing(Routledge, 1988); Publishing, piracy and politics: an historical study ofcopyright in Britain (Mansell, 1994); The information society: a studyin continuity and change (3rd ed., Library Association Publishing,2000); and, with James Dearnley, The wired world: an introduction tothe theory and practice of the information society (Library AssociationPublishing, 2001). With his colleague Paul Sturges, he is the Editor ofthe well-known International Encyclopaedia of Information andLibrary Science (2nd ed., Routledge, 2003).

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Contents

Preface ixTables xiFigures xiiAbbreviations xiii

Chapter One Publishing from the Past to the Present 1Introduction: what is publishing? 1From printing to publishing 6The language of publishing 14The internationalization of publishing 20

Chapter Two Publishing in the Global Economy 27Introduction 27The international book trade: a statistical overview 30The British and American book trades 35Publishing companies 40Conglomerates and independents 45The legal framework of publishing 48Conclusion 53

Chapter Three Forms of Publishing 59Introduction 59The variety of published material 60The sources of published material 75The formats of published material 79

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Chapter Four The Publishing Process 97Introduction 97What is an author? 99Authors and publishers 105Creative relationships: authors and editors 106Business relationships: contracts and rights 112From author to bookseller 116Conclusion 123

Chapter Five Selling Books 131Introduction 131Selling consumer books 133Book clubs and direct selling 137Book prices and the demise of the Net Book Agreement 139Wholesaling and the distribution of books 144E-commerce and the book trade 147Selling to libraries 149

Chapter Six Information Technology and Publishing 159Introduction 159ICT and print publishing 161Electronic publishing 164The impact of electronic publishing 169ICT and the business of publishing 178Authors and readers 180

Chapter Seven Publishing in a Networked World 185Introduction 185The great convergence 187The use of information media 192Copyright: the threatened asset 198The business of publishing re-made 202

Bibliography 211Index 225

viii Table of Contents

Preface

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, systems of communica-tion are undergoing profound change. Some analysts see this change asrevolutionary, comparable with the invention of printing in the westin the fifteenth century, or even of written language itself in the ancientworld. Others see it as merely evolutionary, a further application ofnew technologies to the process of storing, transmitting and commu-nicating information. All agree, however, that there has indeed beengreat change, symbolised by the development of the global system ofcommunication between computers which we call the Internet. TheInternet, however, is only the outward sign; it is the power of thecomputer itself which really underpins what has happened and whatcontinues to happen, for this is the most powerful tool in history forthe handling of information.

For the publishing industry, the development of new media of information storage and transmission represents a particular challenge.Publishers are essentially dealers in knowledge, and hence in thelanguages and symbols in which knowledge is put into permanentform for present and future use. The printed book – so recently theiconic cultural product of western society – suddenly seems in realdanger of displacement not merely as a medium of entertainment and a tool of leisure (where its position has long been under threat),but also in the sphere where it has been almost unchallenged for 500 years as the container and purveyor of learning and ideas.Publishing itself is increasingly seen as merely one part of a larger

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complex of industries, which includes the mass media, other leisureactivities and other aspects of culture. Its place in this complex is farfrom clear. For some commentators it is primarily and manifestly aknowledge industry; for others it is a cultural industry; for others againit is a part of the leisure and entertainment industries. In fact it is allof these, while yet retaining its own identity.

The domain of publishing is being redefined by social, cultural andtechnological change. Within a generation it seems likely that some ofits characteristic products – the reference book and the learned journalfor example – will have been transformed both physically andcommercially. But changes in the form of the product, and even in howit is traded, do not change the fundamental importance of the industryitself. The products of the publishing industry – books, magazines,newspapers, electronic formats – continue to be created, bought, soldand used throughout the world.

This book is a study of the publishing industry at this time ofchange. Beginning with a brief historical introduction, and someaccount of the business structure of the industry, it then deals withwhat publishers produce, how they do so, how they sell what theymake, and how all of this is changing under the impact of new tech-nologies and new approaches to living and learning. The account isbased partly on the writings of those who work, or have worked, inthe industry; partly on the analyses of observers, not all of them acad-emics; and partly on a study of the companies and organisations whichtogether constitute the publishing industry. It has also benefited frommany in the industry itself and in academic world who have (bothwittingly and unwittingly) informed me and helped me to form myviews over many years. It is intended to give the reader a snapshot ofthe oldest of the knowledge industries at this time of profound trans-formation.

x Preface

Tables

Table 1.1 The European world languages 17Table 2.1 Titles published, c.1996 30Table 2.2 Countries with a favourable balance of trade in

books 1996–97 33Table 2.3 British and American book output by title 1989–99 36Table 2.4 Destinations of British book exports 1999 37Table 2.5 US book publishing by category 2000 38Table 2.6 British publishing by category 1999 39Table 2.7 British publishing by value of sales 1999 39Table 3.1 UK daily newspapers: circulation and readership

2000–01 74Table 3.2 Authors and their products 76Table 3.3 Fixed costs and copy costs 83Table 5.1 Retail space for bookselling 1998–99 141Table 5.2 The impact of discounts on profit margins 143Table 7.1 Communications systems compared 192Table 7.2 Book reading in the UK 194Table 7.3 Ownership of media 195

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Figures

Figure 3.1 Costs in Publishing 81Figure 4.1 Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication 98Figure 4.2 From author to reader: the simplified version 98Figure 4.3 Composing for publication 104Figure 4.4 The author and others 104Figure 4.5 From Author to Reader: a less simplified version 117Figure 4.6 From Editor to Warehouse 119Figure 4.7 A simple model of distribution 123Figure 4.8 The publishing process 124Figure 7.1 The domains of publishing 186Figure 7.2 The publisher as organizer 205Figure 7.3 Publishing: an interactive model 207

Abbreviations

ASLIB Proc Aslib ProceedingsATL Advanced Technology LibrariesBIR Business Information ReviewBJSE British Journal of the Sociology of EducationBRQ Book Research QuarterlyCRLN College and Research Libraries NewsD-Lib M D-Lib MagazineElec Lib Electronic LibrariesIFLA J IFLA JournalInf Soc The Information SocietyIWR Information World ReviewISTC Issues in Science and Technology LibrarianshipJASIS Journal of the American Society for Information ScienceJ Comm Journal of CommunicationsJ Doc Journal of DocumentationJEP Journal of Electronic PublishingJIS Journal of Information ScienceJIT Journal of Information TechnologyJOLIS Journal of Librarianship and Information ScienceJPHS Journal of the Printing Historical SocietyJSP Journal of Scholarly PublishingLAR Library Association RecordLP Learned PublishingLRTS Library Resources and Technical Services

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MCS Media, Culture and SocietyOLM Online Libraries and Microcomputers PW Publishers’ WeeklyPRQ Publishing Research QuarterlySci Comm Science CommunicationSer R Serials ReviewSLJ School Libraries JournalSP Scholarly Publishing

xiv Abbreviations

CHAPTER ONE

Publishing from the Past to the Present

Introduction: what is publishing?

Communication is a fundamental characteristic of all animals. It is notonly human beings who have developed communication skills of a highorder. Uniquely, however, we have developed verbaland visual languages,which have become our primary means of communication with eachother. Indeed, the development of language is taken as one of the indica-tors of the distinctiveness of our species, and the evolution of languageskills in the young is a key indicator of personal, social and intellectualdevelopment. The use of language as a communication medium is, how-ever, subject to physiological constraints; there are limits to the distanceover which we can make ourselves heard, to the time for which we canremember what has been said, and to the quantity of information whichany one person can remember. The differences between individuals – the volume of the voice, the sharpness of the hearing, the retentivenessof the memory – are marginal compared with these universal limitations.

The invention of systems of preserving and transmitting language is another distinguishing characteristic of the species. In pictures,symbols, scripts and alphabets, people in many different parts of the world have, over a period of many thousands of years, developedelaborate and sophisticated means for overcoming the physicalconstraints on spoken language.1 Facts, ideas and thoughts can thus betransmitted from one to many as well as from one to one; and they canbe transmitted over distance and time, even from the dead to the living.

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Preserved and transmitted language has thus become one of the prin-cipal means by which we have expressed ourselves. Visual and oralcommunications have, of course, remained critically important; indeedboth have been substantially revived in the most literate societies in thehistory of the world because of the evolution of technologies whichallow them also to be transmitted widely, as we shall see. But the trans-mission of written language has, for many centuries, been at the heartof the cultural enterprise of the west.

The invention of writing is at least 5000 years old. The invention ofprinting is far more recent, just over 500 years ago in Europe and a littlelonger in the Far East. Each, however, represented a formidable leap inthe intellectual evolution of mankind, although the full impact of theformer took millennia to be fully realized, and even the impact of printing was initially slow and partial. Developments were uneven,temporally and geographically; even today, when in some countries literacy is almost universal, in others it is still limited by such factors associal class, economic status, gender and race. In the past, such distinc-tions were even more marked. In Western Europe 2000 years ago, forexample, there was a Latin-speaking literate elite; 1000 years ago thatelite was probably an even smaller percentage of the population as awhole, but there was also, partly overlapping with it, a larger groupwhich was literate in one or more vernacular languages, some of whichwere derivatives of Latin. Two hundred years ago in Britain, almosteveryone in the upper and middle classes could both read and write;among the poor, many men could do so, but fewer women. Neither the class nor the gender imbalances were fully corrected until the beginning of the last century. Even today, there are adult illiterates inBritain whose first and only language is English; there are others whoare literate in some other languages (such as Gujerati, for example) but not in English. At any time and place in history where literacy isto be found, a similar story of variations can also be found.2

It is against this background that we have to understand the devel-opment of publishing, the activity which is the focal point of this book.We must begin with a definition. The Concise Oxford Dictionary(COD) offers three senses:

1) make generally known, noise abroad;2) announce formally, promulgate (edict, etc.);3) ask, read (banns of marriage).

2 Publishing from the Past to the Present

Only then does it add:

‘(of author, editor, or publisher) issue copies of (book, engraving ,etc.) for sale to the public’.

The origin of the word, the Latin verb publicare, is actually bestreflected in the most comprehensive and least specific of these senses,‘to make generally known’. But it is in the most restricted sense thatthe word is normally understood as to ‘issue copies . . . for sale to thepublic’. It is in this sense that it is used here, recognising that even thissense is very broad. If we take COD’s exemplary ‘book, engravingetc.’, we can multiply the examples: magazines and newspapers areobvious extensions. But what of computer software, or recordedsound, or videos, or indeed multi-media products which effectivelycombine all three? These are also ‘issued for sale to the public’, andcontain knowledge and information in textual and visual (as well asaural) form. The dictionary definition still makes logical sense, and –perhaps more to the point – still relates to the reality which we can seeand analyse in the world today.

We should not, however, focus only on the media which arepublished. The other element in the definition draws our attention tothe commercial dimension of the activity: ‘for sale to the public’. Indue course we shall look more deeply at what we actually mean byboth ‘sale’ and ‘public’ in this context; for the moment, it is enough torecognize that in the definition of an authoritative dictionary,publishing is seen as being an essentially commercial transaction.3 Forall practical purposes, therefore, we can take it that ‘publishing’ is abusiness activity; and that a publisher is concerned with making a profit.

There are, of course, other activities which do make information oropinion ‘generally known’ and even make use of media which are alsoused by publishers. Perhaps the most obvious contemporary exampleis a Website which can be accessed without charge, but it is equallytrue of advertising posters on billboards, or broadcasts on radio ortelevision. In each of these examples, the intention is certainly to ‘makepublic’; in some of them a commercial transaction is involved, but the relationship between provider and end-user is widely understoodto be different. Exactly how different it really is, and the practicalconsequences of that difference, we shall explore in a later Chapter.4

Publishing from the Past to the Present 3

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If, for the moment, we take the commonly understood meaning of‘publishing’, we can trace its European history back to the Mediter-ranean world in the last few centuries before the Common Era.Manuscripts were copied by scribes for sale to customers; some werewritten on commission, but others appear to have been produced spec-ulatively with a view to subsequent retail sale.5 This practice vanishedwith the Roman Empire, but the copying of manuscripts, of course,did not. A trade in the copying of manuscripts re-emerged in Paris inthe twelfth century,6 and thereafter spread unevenly around westernEurope, principally in cities which had universities or other centres of scholarship. By the fifteenth century, secular and vernacular manuscripts were a part of this trade, and it was partly because of thedemand for such manuscripts that there was a search for a more cost-effective and rapid means of book production. The solution wasprinting, invented in the Rhine Valley in the middle of the fifteenthcentury. During the next generation, printing was taken to the heart-land of contemporary western civilization – France and Italy – andthereafter to the more peripheral countries – the Low Countries,England, Poland and the Iberian Peninsula. The details of this need notdetain us, but one important point must be made.

Even from the brief, and vastly simplified, account in the last para-graph, it should be clear that publishing and printing are two separateactivities, and that they are not dependent on each other. Publishingexisted before printing; printing was merely a tool, a means to an end,and the printed book simply a product in which publishers could deal.Of course, printed books came to dominate, indeed virtually to define,the publishing industry for the next five hundred years, but the oldertrade in manuscripts had been a form of publishing, just as in our ownday the process of selling many other information products is, in allits fundamentals, an activity which can be defined as publishing.

Printing, however, made possible the publishing industry, as we nowunderstand it. Its development was slow and fitful. There are complexinterrelationships – not yet fully explored or understood – between thehistory of publishing and wider history of western culture. The printedword, the dominant communication device of early modern andmodern Europe, facilitated advances in learning and education, and canbe argued to have had a critical influence on political, social and economic change. Europeans took with them their assumptions aboutliteracy, and the technology of printing which supported it, as they


crossed the globe. In European settlements from Mexico in the sixteenth century to the south Pacific in the nineteenth, the ruler or the missionary with a printing press became one of the instruments of European domination of the much of the world. Languages werereduced to writing for the first time so that they could be printed; thosewho spoke the language then had to be taught to read. But there waslittle available for them to read in many of these languages, and gradu-ally the language of the conqueror came to be identified with literacy,with ‘progress’ and with ‘civilization’. In central and South America,in Africa and across the Pacific, hundreds of languages simply vanishedbecause they were unsustainable in a print culture. Throughout itshistory, printing has had a normalising effect on language, and throughthe publication of the printed word has made cultures more uniform.

When the first printed Bibles were coming off Gutenberg’s press in the mid-1440s, there can have been little if any sense of the trulyrevolutionary nature of the event. In truth, however, the very tech-nology contained within itself the seeds of the revolution. Printing isa process designed to make multiple copies of identical items; it isindeed precisely for that reason that it was both cheaper and moreaccurate than the work of a scribe copying a manuscript. As a conse-quence, however, printing made little commercial sense unless multiplecopies were indeed produced. Printing involves significant capitalinvestment in both equipment (the press, type and so on) and mate-rials (paper and ink); all of that investment must be made before asingle copy of a book can be produced. Thereafter, it can only berecouped, and a profit generated, if enough copies of the book are soldat the right price in a reasonable time. These truisms were a step-change in the economies of book production in the second half of thefifteenth century. It was the recognition of them, albeit perhaps implic-itly, that created the modern publishing industry.

The history of printing and publishing is littered with bankruptcies;Gutenberg was the pioneer of this as well as of printing itself. It tooka generation for the trade to become a little more stable, as booksbegan to be widely distributed through existing trading networks,some of which had existed for centuries, which linked the markets andfairs of Europe.7 This was only possible because much of what wasprinted in those early years was in Latin, the common language of theWestern elite. Vernacular printing and publishing was a somewhat laterphenomenon, although our knowledge of it may well be distorted by


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lack of evidence caused by the loss of the books which were produced.8

Vernacular printing was established by the end of the fifteenth century,most notably in England where the first printer, William Caxton, wasa native who consciously developed a market for literature in English,partly perhaps because the small demand for Latin works could besatisfied by imported continental editions. The gradual displacementof Latin by the vernaculars as the language of printing and publishingis a long story, not wholly completed until the nineteenth century. Theloss of the universal language of the learned elite created the circum-stances in which linguistically defined, often national, publishingindustries could develop. Only in the present century has somethinglike a new universal elite language emerged which now dominates thepublishing world.

From printing to publishing

To describe Gutenberg or Caxton as a ‘publisher’ is at once both accu-rate and misleading. It is true that both were concerned with the saleand distribution of their books, but they were also the producers whoowned and operated the technology of printing. Although they haddifferent approaches and backgrounds (Gutenberg was a craftsman,Caxton a merchant), they both engaged in printing and bookselling,and were responsible for the capital investment needed for both equip-ment and production. It is the gradual separation of these variousfunctions which is central to an understanding of how publishingbecame the distinctive activity recognized in the dictionary definitionsof the late twentieth century.

Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was littledistinction between the three basic book trade functions: publishing,printing and bookselling. From that time onwards, however, theprinting function became gradually more distinct. The reason for thisis superficially simple, although the process by which it happened isnot yet fully understood, and varied in different parts of Europe bothin time and in significance. The essence of the change was that therewas a growing recognition, implicit rather than explicit in many cases,that both the skills and the business of printing were fundamentallydifferent from those of publishing. The printer was an employer oflabour; even to operate a single press required at least three specialist


craftsmen; two pressmen to operate the machine itself, and onecompositor to set the type. In practice, printers typically employedmore compositors than pressmen, although some owners may them-selves have worked in one or both capacities from time to time. Inaddition to labour costs, the printer also had to provide materials andequipment. The minimal equipment of a single press and a sufficientquantity of type represented a significant investment; materials such asink and (most importantly) paper also had to be bought, paid for andstored. The early modern printing house may have been a small-scaleoperation by later industrial standards, but it was by no means trivial.In early seventeenth-century London, we should envisage a masterprinter who owned the business, probably helped by his immediatefamily, employing three or four journeymen, having the help of one ortwo apprentices, and owning two presses and a large quantity of typeand miscellaneous equipment. He needed a workshop in which all thiscould be operated, and a warehouse in which supplies, and perhapsprinted sheets, could be kept until they were needed. He was dealingwith a number of specialist suppliers (paper merchants or wholesalestationers, and suppliers of ink) as well as with those who wanted thematerials which he was printing.9

The book trade was never wholly monopolized by the printers,although for most of the sixteenth century they were certainly thedominant force in the major Western centres of book production. Thiswas in part an artificial phenomenon. Governments wished to restrictthe circulation of printed matter. At a time when control of the presswas regarded as a norm throughout Europe, they could most easily doso by regulating the numbers of printers and the number of both theirpresses and their employees. This gave the printers a significant holdover the rest of the trade, and they found themselves in a position to charge high prices for their work. Printing became a prosperousbusiness, and its separation from the more speculative business ofpublishing was an obvious advantage to its practitioners. By operatingessentially as the paid agents of publishers, the printers ensured thattheir incomes were not dependent on the vagaries of the success orfailure of particular titles or editions. They printed what was commis-sioned from them, and were duly paid, regardless of the commercialfate of the material which they printed.

The printers’ domination of the London book trade was graduallyundermined, however, as their skills were more widely disseminated.


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Artificial attempts to restrict the number of master printers, jour-neymen and apprentices, which persisted for much of the seventeenthcentury, were only fitfully enforced. The printing trade developed itsown customs and traditions, including its own conventions about theemployment of labour. We can deduce some of this from contempo-rary records of relationships between masters and men, and some fromprinted sources. By the late seventeenth century, the master printers –the owners of printing houses – were actually under pressure from twodirections. Their customers were looking for the best deal they couldget; and so were their employees. In particular, the compositors whoset the type (a laborious and skilled handcraft process until almost theend of the nineteenth century) were nearly always in demand, and theycould command high wages whatever the official regulations mightsay. Moreover, they were, by definition, literate; by the end of the eighteenth century, primordial trade union organizations were negoti-ating with the employers in an early and successful form of collectivebargaining across the London printing trade.10

This pressure from within was made worse by the pressure fromwithout. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, some publisherswere actually dividing the production of some books between morethan one printing house. The reasons for this are a matter for specula-tion in most cases. In a handful of instances, it was for political reasons;dividing the work made the perpetrators of an undesirable book lesseasy to trace. Most books, however, had no such inhibitions placedupon them; so called ‘shared printing’ was forced upon their publishersbecause the small printing houses of the period, limited in both equipment and personnel by official regulation, were also limited inthe amount of work they could do. In a free market, some would haveexpanded; but the limitations on size were also a limitation on thecapacity to generate income. Printers, despite the demand for theirservices, became essentially the agents of publishers. By the middle ofthe seventeenth century it was the latter who dominated the formalstructures of the London book trade.

They did not, however, call themselves ‘publishers’. The commonterm of the period was ‘stationer’, later displaced by ‘bookseller’. Theterminology is confusing, but its use has something to commend it. Inseventeenth-century London, ‘stationer’ was almost a technical term.It was used to describe a member of the Stationers’ Company ofLondon, the trade guild to which all members of the book trade


(including the printers) were legally obliged to belong. In other words,‘stationer’ was the generic term for members of the book trades. The‘bookseller’ was a practitioner of some of those trades. He (and occa-sionally she) was engaged primarily in the selling of books, but wasoften also responsible for financing their production. A seventeenth-century London bookseller sold books from a shop which wastypically in the premises in which he and his family lived. There werescores of such shops in an area around St Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of London, and others scattered elsewhere in the city, as well asone or more in most of the major provincial towns. We know littleabout the stock which they carried, but enough to know that it waslimited. Much of it was probably second-hand, or at least old. The newbooks were typically those which had been produced for the book-seller himself.

As a producer, however, the bookseller was not the physicalproducer of the book, as the printer or the binder. He was the orga-nizer and financier of the production, that is, what we now call thepublisher. This was reflected in the imprint which appeared on the titlepage; this example is typical:

‘London: Printed by Ruth Raworth for Humfrey Moseley, and areto be sold at the signe of the Princes Arms in Pauls Church-yard.1645.’11

The printer (Raworth12) is named; the bookseller (Moseley) is notmerely named, but has his address printed precisely so that thepurchaser knew where to obtain the book (the shop whose sign was the Prince’s Arms, located in the churchyard around St Paul’sCathedral). We should also note the words ‘by’ and ‘for’; from theseprepositions it is clear that Raworth is Moseley’s agent, working to hisorders. These imprints encapsulate the relationships within the booktrade, and it is from them that historians first began to reconstruct theirunderstanding of how the trade worked.

The key question which must now be addressed, and one which iscentral to an understanding of how publishing came to be a distinctiveactivity, is to understand why and how the bookseller (Moseley in this case) came to be in possession of the text which was printed forhim and sold by him. There was, of course, only one possible sourcefor a ‘new’ book – an author. In the example which we have chosen,


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Moseley explains how this happened; he claims to be an admirer ofMilton’s poems and implies that he persuaded him to release them forpublication:

‘The Authors more peculiar excellency in these studies, was toowell known to conceal his Papers, or to keep me from attemptingto solicit them from him.’13

This sentence appears in the preface, which is headed ‘The stationer tothe reader’ and signed ‘Humph. Moseley’. It leaves no doubt as to whois in charge of the enterprise.

The dominant role of the bookseller in this transaction is unusualonly in being so explicit. The underlying assumption, however, is thatMoseley has acquired these poems from Milton through some mech-anism which has conferred on him the right to publish them. At leastby implication, therefore, Milton is also a participant in the enterprise.Convention and regulation already existed which dictated the parameters within which the bookseller and the author had to work.Inside the book trade, there was an established system which allowedstationers (that is, members of the Stationers’ Company) to claim‘ownership’ of particular titles, or – to use the trade term – ‘copies’. Insoliciting his work from him, Moseley had, in effect, obtained fromMilton the right to print (or to have printed) these poems; in contem-porary trade terminology, Moseley now owned the ‘rights in the copy’.

The development of the concept and practice of ‘rights in copies’was long and complex. It originated in part from the desire of thecrown to control what was published, and in part from the desire ofthe stationers to regulate their own trade in an orderly way. Since itsearliest days (it was formally established by Royal Charter in 1557),the Stationers’ Company had maintained a register of rights in copiesowned by its members; these were variously acquired, but so far as theCompany was concerned, the essential point was the ownershipconferred the unique right to print a particular copy and it was thatfact which recorded by registration in their ‘entry book’ or ‘registerbook’ as it was variously known at different times. Although this wasessentially a matter of internal self-regulation for the book trade, itcould never be wholly so and, by and large, the operations of theCompany were supported by royal and ecclesiastical authorities as the system developed between the 1560s and the 1630s.14 Within the


trade, the system survived the collapse of royal authority in 1640;indeed it was if anything re-enforced by the need for effective self-regulation. Moseley’s publication of Milton’s poems reflects theoperation of a stable and well-regulated commercial system.

During England’s 20 years of civil war and republican rule(1640–1660), censorship of the press became increasingly stringent.This served to give even greater prominence to the regulatory regimewithin the book trade itself, and when the monarchy was restored theStationers’ Company’s powers were confirmed by statute in thePrinting Act of 1662. For the next 40 years, the regulation of the booktrade and attitudes to it swung with the political pendulum. For muchof the reign of Charles II (1660–1685), the 1662 statute was in force,although it was allowed to lapse in 1679. The date was significant: theattempt to exclude Charles’s Roman Catholic brother from the thronegave all political factions a good reason for wanting a less regulatedpress which they could use for propaganda purposes. When hisbrother did indeed succeed, as James II (1685–1688), the Act was reintroduced, but it barely survived the more liberal regime whichfollowed after the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) and the establish-ment of an essentially parliamentary system of government. ThePrinting Act finally lapsed in 1694, and since that date, except veryoccasionally in time of war, there has been no state-controlled pre-publication censorship in the United Kingdom. The book trade’sarrangements for the control of rights in copies, however, did survivethe end of the legislation under which they were, in part, regulated.After a period in which the anarchy feared by the trade establishmentnever quite happened, an act of parliament in 1709 brought the concept(although not the term) of copyright into the sphere of the statute law.

The existence of a legal basis for rights in copies was of great long-term importance for the book trade. It was now possible to use thecivil and criminal courts to protect the ownership and use of rights;throughout the eighteenth century, the trade became increasingly liti-gious as a consequence. There was, however, another dimension. The1709 Act imposed a time limit on the existence of rights – seven yearsin the first instance, with a further seven in certain circumstances. Thiswas to become a common characteristic of copyright law all over theworld, and indeed it still is. When the period of copyright expired, the copy is in what is now known as ‘public domain’, and can be freelyused by anyone and disseminated in any form.15 Between the 1730s


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and the 1770s, some of the most important members of the Londonbook trade used the courts over and over again to question themeaning of legislation; their efforts were doomed to failure, foralthough the language could be argued to be obscure and perhapsambiguous, the intention was plain. In a landmark judgement in 1774,the House of Lords confirmed that rights in copies existed only for amaximum period of 14 years after first publication.16

This judgement was one of several factors which drove the finalseparation between bookselling and publishing in the London book trade. The confirmation of the time limits on copy ownershipforced publishers to look for new books to publish and not to rely onreprinting old favourites. Reprinting could of course continue – and itdid – but it was now openly competitive. The monopolistic attitudeswhich had pervaded the trade almost since its very beginning were nolonger legally acceptable or commercially viable. The effect was tomake publishers more entrepreneurial, and not all of those who haddominated the trade in the mid-eighteenth century managed this tran-sition well. It was indeed a radical change, for between the mid-1770sand the mid-1820s the pre-industrial craft-based book trade was trans-formed into a publishing industry for an increasingly mechanizedsociety with a vibrant and expanding economy.

This transformation can be exemplified in the histories of threefamous names, all of which still survive: Longman, Murray andMacmillan. The house of Longman dates back to 1727, although in fact even that was a continuation of an older bookselling businesswhich had its origins in the late seventeenth century. For much of the eighteenth century, successive generations of Longmans were bothpublishers (in the modern sense) and retail booksellers. They wereowners, or part owners, of the rights in hundreds of titles, includingsome of the great bestsellers of the age. From the mid-1770s onwards,however, and particularly after about 1800, the firm began to concen-trate on publishing new titles and keeping its popular books in printfor as long as they were in copyright. At the same time, they slowlyabandoned their retail business. The transformation from eighteenth-century bookseller-publisher to nineteenth-century publishing housewas complete.17

John Murray came into publishing from the outside. Almost fromthe very beginning when, like the first Thomas Longman, he boughtan existing business (1768), he concentrated on publishing new books.


He had little choice, for he had no stock of inherited copies, and it wasdifficult for an outsider to buy his way into the charmed circle of thecopyright owners. He was fortunate, for his business career (he diedin 1793) coincided with the period when the London book trade wasbecoming more open to entrepreneurs such as him. He publishedhundreds of books, and barely engaged in retailing at all; his sonfollowed him into what was essentially a publishing house. Murray canbe argued to be perhaps the first successful businessman in the Londonbook trade who was primarily – and for much of the time solely – apublisher.18

For the Macmillan brothers, entering the trade in the 1840s, there wasa stark choice. After an apprenticeship to a traditional bookseller inCambridge, Alexander and Daniel established a shop there, and beganto publish books. They recognized that a London base was essential if this enterprise was to be successful, and after an abortive attempt inthe 1840s there was a gradual shift of emphasis until the whole publish-ing business was in London by 1863. Alexander Macmillan (his brotherhad died in 1857) had recognized the inevitable. Publishing and book-selling were now wholly separate activities; if a single firm was to pursue both, it had to treat them effectively as separate businesses. While there might be a good retail trade in Cambridge, publishing was an essentially metropolitan activity, as it always had been.19

These three great names of British publishing expose much of thestory of how publishing and bookselling came to be separate enter-prises. The collapse of the legal regime which protected the eighteenth-century copy-owning booksellers forced them to reconsider theconventions within which they worked. Publishing now needed enter-prise, entrepreneurship and a concentration on the most profitableactivity. That activity was the publication of successful new books.Longman made that transition; many others did not. Those who camein from outside were not hidebound by the conventions of centuries;they were entrepreneurs from the beginning, and found it compara-tively easy to compete in a trade which was conservative and reluctantto change. John Murray was such a man. Within a generation or so, thetransformation wrought at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies had itself become the conventional structure of the trade. TheMacmillans could be booksellers and publishers, but they had to see the two trades as what they were – separate and different. The printer-dominated trade of the sixteenth century had thus become what it has


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remained – an industry dominated by its capitalists and primary producers, the publishers who control the oldest and still the mostfamiliar of the knowledge industries.

The language of publishing

In the West, publishing has always been an international activity. Aswe have seen, the earliest printed books, like so many of their manu-script predecessors in Europe, were written in Latin, the commonlanguage of the educated elite. The emergence of the vernaculars asliterary and official languages in the fifteenth and sixteenth centurieshad many causes, of which indeed the invention and dissemination ofprinting may be argued to have been one. The essential point for ourpurposes, however, is that for whatever reason there was a gradual shiftfrom Latin to the major vernaculars as the languages of printing fromabout 1550 onwards. English led the way, but French and Germanwere not far behind. In the Protestant countries of northern Europe,the vernacular translations of the Bible had an immense influence onthe form and even the respectability of the languages into which it was translated, and indeed on vernacular literacy.20 The vernaculariza-tion of printing was slow and uneven. Latin continued to be the language of scholarship until late in the seventeenth century;Newton and Descartes – pioneers in their respective intellectualspheres – wrote major works in Latin precisely because it enabledthem to address an international audience. But they were the lastgeneration of natural philosophers for whom Latin was the normalmeans of communication.21

Long before Latin was displaced as the language of scholarship, ithad been superseded in trade and even in diplomacy. Trade had alwaysbeen conducted in the vernacular, and indeed printed guides to foreignlanguages are found from the sixteenth century onwards. It is onemark of the ever-growing importance of Britain’s international tradethat the teaching of modern languages became a profitable enterprisein the eighteenth century, and perhaps earlier.22 Diplomats continuedto use Latin in some circumstances until well into the eighteenthcentury; certainly in Catholic Europe it inevitably survived because it was the universal language of the Church and was used even in its secular correspondence. The vernaculars, however, were rapidly


gaining ground; the publication of authoritative grammars and dictio-naries gave them a greater formality and authority, and their use forofficial purposes in government, administration and justice firmlyimplanted them in the work of the state.23 As the major vernacularlanguages became respectable, their use became normal; it was avirtuous circle.

This development, however, left publishers with a problem, for thepotential market for a book was now confined by language as well asby subject matter. Translations inevitably became more common. Ofcourse, translation had always been practised, and long ante-dates theinvention of printing. Indeed, Greek texts were known in medievalEurope largely through Latin translations of Arabic translations of the originals written in a language which was unknown even to mostscholars.24 Caxton’s output of English books was inaugurated andcontinued to be dominated by translations from French. By the middleof the sixteenth century, many major texts in both Latin and newlyrediscovered Greek had been translated into English, French and other languages. Texts were also of course translated from one vernac-ular to another. The first English book to be widely translated wasBunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, first published in 1678, and translated intoDutch, French, German and Welsh before the end of the century.

Translation thus became the normal means of written communica-tion between speakers of different languages. There was, however,another development which ran in parallel with this: the search for acommon language to replace Latin.25 The choice of language followedpolitical and cultural power. In eighteenth-century Europe, the domi-nant language was French. There were good reasons for this. From theTreaty of Westphalia in 1648 to the outbreak of revolution in 1789,France was, despite many challenges, the predominant land power inEurope. During the earlier part of this period, her music, painting andarchitecture dominated Western culture. Politically, the absolutistmonarchy symbolized by Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715), and lessconvincingly continued by his successors up to 1789, was a modelwhich was imitated in style and substance across Europe from theProtestant kingdoms of Scandinavia to the great monarchies of Austriaand Prussia. Even the French opposition became fashionable:Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire, writing in their native tongue,created a new mode of liberal thought which was as influential as thepolitical system which it helped to undermine. Much of their writing


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was indeed translated into other languages,26 but it was also widelycirculated in the original. Reading and speaking French was as muchthe mark of a cultured and educated man in the eighteenth century asa knowledge of Latin had been in the sixteenth. English was littleknown, and English books barely read outside England, at least untillate in the century.27

Nevertheless, where French had led the way, English eventuallyfollowed. Britain inherited France’s mantle of political and culturaldomination after the Battle of Waterloo (1815). Throughout much ofthe nineteenth century, British influence predominated in Europeanaffairs, and indeed in many other parts of a world increasingly domi-nated by European powers. In the 1820s and 1830s, as the Englishbegan to travel again after their long confinement during the waragainst France (1793–1815), publishers in Paris and Leipzig began to publish reprints of English books both old and new. Some wereauthorized editions and some were not, but all, despite being intendedfor English speakers, helped to create a large body of English materialwhich was easily available in continental Europe. Gradually, know-ledge of the English language spread among Europe’s elites. Englishbecame a commonly taught second language in schools in France,Germany and Scandinavia. And when Britain’s political power beganto implode in the middle of the twentieth century, her languageremained as the common currency of business across much of thecontinent.

The spread of English outside Europe began in the sixteenthcentury, and followed trade and the flag for the next 300 years. In itself,this is not surprising. Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands tooktheir languages to their colonies in the Americas, Asia and Africa.Indeed, they survive there today. Spanish is the predominant languageof the whole of central and South America except Brazil (wherePortuguese prevails), Surinam (Dutch) and Guyana (English). This isa straightforward legacy of colonialism and empire, but it is note-worthy that it is almost 200 years since Spain withdrew from hercolonies on the mainland of America. The use of Spanish has not onlysurvived; it has been embedded in the national cultures which emergedin the wake of decolonization. The importance of Spanish in theWestern hemisphere has been further enhanced by both the legacy of Spanish colonial settlements north of Rio Grande (especially inCalifornia and Texas), and by a huge inflow of Latin American


immigrants into the United States during the last 100 years. In LosAngeles, Miami, New York and many lesser cities, Spanish is at leastthe equal of English as the language of the streets in many areas.

The linguistic legacies of the European empires seem destined tooutlive the empires themselves by centuries if the example of Spanishis a foretaste of what it to come. Certainly, French still flourishes inmore than 50 countries which are or were French colonies. Dutchresidually survives in Indonesia, and modified into Afrikaans is an offi-cial language in South Africa. There are even pockets of Germanspeakers in southern Africa, over 80 years after Germany’s Africanempire was handed over to others. Russian is still widely known in theformer Soviet satellite countries in eastern Europe (although its use isoften rejected on principle), and is widely used in the former Sovietrepublics in western and central Asia. But above all, English hasbecome something akin to a universal global language.

Four European languages have exceeded all others in their migrationaround the world. The figures in Table 1.1 are probably underesti-mates, and of course they change all the time. It is clear that Englishhas far outstripped the other languages which have spread beyondtheir native continent.28 Indeed, the estimate of 572 million Englishspeakers does not take into account the millions more who have alimited knowledge of the language, or who are learning it for purposesof education or business; when these people are included a widelyaccepted estimate is of the order of 1200 to 1500 million.29 The wide-spread knowledge of English throughout Europe and the wider worldfrom the middle of nineteenth century onwards explains much of thestructure of the modern publishing industry which we shall analyse in


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Table 1.1 The European world languages

Language Estimated number of speakers (in millions)

English 572Spanish 300French 170Russian 150Dutch 15.3

(Source: see note 28)

later chapters of this book. Underpinning that, of course, is a factor farmore potent than fashions among cultured Europeans of 150 years ago, for Britain’s language is also America’s language. One of the keys to understanding the modern international publishing industrylies in the simple fact that all but a tiny percentage of the 270 millioninhabitants of the world’s predominant political and economic powerare either monoglot English-speakers or speak it as their first or secondlanguage.

Publishing and language are symbiotically connected. When alanguage is known to tens or hundreds of millions of literate people,there is a market for its books, magazines and newspapers. The morereaders there are, the larger the total market, and the greater the like-lihood of a viable number of potential readers even for the mostspecialized literature. This in turn makes such languages attractive tothose who, while not being native speakers themselves, seek an audi-ence among those who read the language. Since the middle of thetwentieth century this has increasingly meant, in practice, one thingonly: that more and more authors, especially of academic and profes-sional books, write in English regardless of where they are in theworld, or what language they use in their daily lives. Until World WarII, German was as important as English as a medium for scientificpublication. But the diaspora of German scientists in the 1930s, andthe physical destruction of the German scientific and industrial infra-structure in 1942–45, brought this to an end.30 British and Americancompanies are not the only publishers who benefit from the domi-nance of English. There is a significant trade in the publication ofEnglish books in India, for example, where it is the largest of morethan a dozen publishing languages,31 and there are publishing indus-tries in all the major English-speaking countries such as Australia,South Africa and Canada. But the world’s largest book market, definedby language, is very largely supplied by the two countries which havethe largest number of native English speakers, the United Kingdomand the United States.

The other world languages are, of course, also used by publishers.Spanish in particular is of increasing importance, partly because of itsdomination of Latin America, but also because of its rapid expansionin the United States and the political connotations which that carries.It is particularly significant that there is a large and growing market forchildren’s books in Spanish in the USA, suggesting continued future


growth.32 Ironically, this growth is probably benefiting the Americanpublishing industry rather than that of the Hispanophone countriesthemselves.33 Spanish-language publishing in the USA is, however,something of an exception. The harsh fact is that for most countries inwhich one of the European world languages is used for cultural andeducational purposes, book needs are largely met through importsfrom the language’s native country.34 Indeed, the predominance of British and American publishers in the Anglophone world is re-enforced by the apparently universal desire to learn English; books forlearners of the language (children and adults) are typically importedrather than produced locally.35

The only non-European language which has had an impact remotelycomparable to that of English, Spanish and French is Chinese. Thereare well in excess of 1000 million speakers of the various Chinesedialects, although many of them are in countries where the literacy rate is low. Moreover, they are scattered all over east and south-eastAsia, and to a lesser extent in the rest of the world. Significant Chinesecommunities are to be found in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.But there are Chinese communities across the globe from Sydney andSan Francisco to Manchester and Milan. This is not, however, theresult of Chinese colonialism in the European sense, but rather of whatis now called economic migration.36 Indeed, many of the overseasChinese communities were founded because people were escapingfrom China rather than because they were promoting her interests.Since the communist revolution in 1949, the political divide betweenhomeland and overseas Chinese has perhaps grown even greater, andChina certainly cannot seek export markets for books (or very muchelse) among the children of her diaspora. Some recent developments inthe use of the Internet to publish Chinese language materials for theinternational Chinese community only serves to emphasise the funda-mental differences with the international English-language market.37

All of this leaves those who are not native speakers of a world language, and even worse, those who have no knowledge of such a language, in serious cultural difficulties. This is true even for educatedmulti-lingual speakers of some of the less commonly known Europeanlanguages;38 for speakers of many Asian and most African languages,the problem is acute. They are, to a very great extent, excluded from the process of higher-level communication for professional, eco-nomic, educational and cultural purposes.39


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The internationalization of publishing

The growth of the European colonial empires, which reached itsapogee in the second half of the nineteenth century, made certainEuropean languages politically predominant over large parts of theworld. In turn, this phenomenon created a market for books in thoselanguages far away from their homelands. In a sense, this was even truein the United States, although by the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the book trade in the newly independent republicwas becoming genuinely independent of its British ancestor. The tradedeveloped in the USA throughout the nineteenth century, but it wasin the period after the Civil War, from 1865 onwards, that the trade,like the country itself, expanded confidently and rapidly.40 In America,as in Britain, publishing houses were established at that time whosenames survive to this day, and some of which still retain their identityeven if they have lost their independence.

Relations between the British and American book trades were difficult for much of the nineteenth century. In Europe, there was arapidly developing regime of international protection for copyrightthrough a series of bilateral treaties which gave mutual recognition todomestic copyright laws. This movement reached its climax in thesignature of the Berne Convention in 1886.41 The basic principle of theConvention – that a book published in any signatory state was fullyprotected under the copyright laws of all signatory states – was notacceptable to American politicians or publishers. Throughout thecentury, British authors were subjected to unauthorized reprints oftheir books by American publishers, from which they derived nofinancial benefit. Dickens was probably the most famous, and certainlythe most vociferous, of those who suffered form this ‘piracy’.42 It wasnot until the very end of the century, in 1891, that foreign authorscould easily obtain some reasonable protection under American law.43

One consequence of the long-running copyright dispute was thatBritish and American publishers were in competition with each other. Partly as a protective measure, a number of British publishersestablished offices or branches in the United States. Macmillan had aNew York branch as early as 1869;44 Longman followed suit in 1887,45

and Oxford University Press in 1896.46 During the same period, some American publishers began to have a presence in London; theseincluded Putnams and Harpers, although they were apparently more


interested in acquiring British books to publish in America than theywere in selling their American books in Britain.47 After the end of thecopyright difficulties, however, it was not only books which flowedacross the Atlantic. The British and American publishing industriesbegan to grow very close to each other. Some of the establishedbranches of British houses in New York gradually transformed them-selves into semi-independent companies which published books intheir own right. This happened to both Macmillan and OxfordUniversity Press before the end of the nineteenth century. It was not,however, one-way traffic. Chapman and Hall, a venerable Londonhouse which was closely associated with Dickens, was in financialtrouble by the 1890s, and was badly managed. As part of an attemptto rescue the firm, it became the London agent for John Wiley and Son,an even more venerable American publisher which was beginning tospecialize in educational and scientific books. Before long, the Wileytail was wagging the Chapman and Hall dog.48 Doubleday Page ofNew York bought Heinemann of London in 1920, and J. M. Dent wasable to continue the distinguished Everyman’s Library only because ofa long-term agreement with the New York firm of E. J. Dutton.49

These were the straws in the wind: American capital was beginning tosustain British publishing.

Fifty years later, the wind had become a gale. Since about 1950, therehas been an almost continuous process of takeovers and mergers in theAmerican publishing industry. Where historic names survived, theyoften did so only as parts of larger organizations. This was the driverof significant cultural change within the industry in the United Statesitself, but was also a significant factor in the growing internationaliza-tion of publishing throughout the world. By the 1980s, eight groupsdominated American publishing;50 by the end of the century, it wassix.51 There were parallel developments in Britain from the late 1970sonwards, although some of the major houses retained their indepen-dence for much longer (notably Macmillan) and a few still do (notablyFaber and Faber). The creation of conglomerate publishing companies,however, was only one aspect of a multi-faceted process. Thesecompanies were competing with each other on a global scale. A tradi-tional understanding that British and American publishers divided theworld market in English language books between them collapsed in1976 under the threat of legal action in the United States.52 Undera cosy arrangement known as the British Commonwealth Rights


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Agreement, the American edition of a book was not marketed in theBritish Commonwealth (except Canada), and the British edition wasnot sold in North America. This enabled publishers on both sides ofthe Atlantic to negotiate profitable deals with their opposite numbersfor the sale of the American, and British and Commonwealth rights,respectively. The end of the Agreement opened up vast markets topublishers in both countries, which could now only be regulated bycontracts with individual authors about the territorial rights in theirbooks.53 Since the early 1980s, therefore, the vast global market forbooks in English has seen intensive competition between British andAmerican publishers. It was inevitable that some should fall by thewayside. Gradually the process of conglomeration which had begun in the USA and which was imitated in the United Kingdom became an international phenomenon. From the late 1980s onwards, thepublishing conglomerates became transnational and then multina-tional corporations. There are now key players in English languagepublishing whose holding companies are based in Germany, Franceand Australia as well as in Britain and America. The publication ofbooks, like their distribution and sale has become a truly internationalbusiness.54

The dominant position of the multinational conglomerates in theworld publishing industry has had many consequences – cultural,economic, educational and political – which we shall encounter regu-larly throughout this book. At the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury, it is indeed truly global in scale, although dominated by prod-ucts in the English language, and hence by publishing companies basedin Britain and the United States. Many of the major publishing housesare integrated into companies whose activities take in the printed andbroadcast media and the Internet, as well interests which are nothingto do with communications at all. In Chapter Two, we shall try toquantify some of this, as we explore in more detail the current state ofthe industry which began as small craft-based trade in north-westEurope 500 years ago.

Notes and references

1 For a general history, see Geoffrey Sampson, Writing Systems, London:Hutchinson, 1985.


2 See Harvey J. Graaf, The Legacies of Literacy, Bloomington, IN.: IndianaUniversity Press, 1987.

3 It is perhaps worth adding that this sense is given more emphasis in other dictionaries; COD is of course derived from the great OxfordEnglish Dictionary, which has an essentially historical and etymologicalapproach. In the Collins Softback English Dictionary, for example, and inthe Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, both of which areconcerned with current usage, and of which at least the latter is primarilyaimed at non-native speakers, the commercial definition is emphasized.

4 See below, pp. 187–92.5 Frederic Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome,

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932, pp. 82–3.6 Christopher de Hamel, Glossed books of the Bible and the origins of the

Paris book trade, Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984.7 Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The

impact of printing 1450–1800, Tr. by David Gerard, London: NLB, 1976,pp. 26–7.

8 This perhaps needs a little further comment. The Latin texts were typicallylarge folios, designed in imitation of contemporary formal manuscripts;many copies went into libraries rather than into private hands. Size, valueand institutional ownership made them more likely to survive than thesmaller, cheaper and less highly regarded vernacular works. Hence, the total loss rate of such books is assumed to be higher than among thelarger and more valuable items.

9 There is an extensive scholarly literature on all of these matters, of whichthis is the barest summary. For a brief introduction, see Philip Gaskell, ANew Introduction to Bibliography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 171–5. For the London printing trade of this period, see Adrian Johns,Print and Knowledge in the Making, Chicago, IL: Chicago UniversityPress, 1998, pp. 81–100.

10 See John Child, Industrial Relations in the British Printing Industry: Thequest for security, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967, pp. 47–73.

11 This is the imprint of Poems of Mr. John Milton, London, 1645.12 Unusually at this date, a woman.13 Milton, Poems, 1645, page a4. I have retained the original spelling.14 This is a vastly complicated subject, which I have explored in greater detail

in John Feather, A History of British Publishing, London: Croom Helm,1987, pp. 29–42; and in John Feather, Publishing, Piracy and Politics: Anhistorical study of copyright in Britain, London: Mansell, 1994, pp. 15–36.

15 I shall return later to some of the commercial and scholarly conventionswhich have arisen out of this. See below, pp. 50–51, and note 76.

16 See Feather, History, pp. 77–83.


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17 Philip Wallis, At the Sign of the Ship: Notes on the history of the House ofLongman, London: Longman (privately printed), 1974, p. 14.

18 See William Zachs, The First John Murray and the Late Eighteenth-century London Book Trade, Oxford: Oxford University Press for theBritish Academy, 1998, pp. 19–24.

19 See Charles Morgan, The House of Macmillan (1843–1943), London:Macmillan, 1943, pp. 65–7; and David McKitterick, A History of CambridgeUniversity Press. Volume 2. Scholarship and commerce 1698–1872,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 337.

20 Among the key biblical translations are those of Luther (German,published 1522), Coverdale (English, 1535) and the French version of1530. There were also translations into some southern European languages(Italian, 1471; Catalan, 1478) but in these Catholic countries they had far less influence on cultural and linguistic developments.

21 See Anne Goldcar, Impolite Learning, New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1995.

22 These languages were not of course taught in formal education until latein the nineteenth century. In both Oxford and Cambridge, Latin andGreek were the principal subjects of study (and Latin still a mode ofcommunication) until the middle of the nineteenth century. In the Germanuniversities too, Latin survived as a living language, although the subjectsof study were more broadly based than in England and the teaching prob-ably more assiduous and more effective.

23 The study of vernacular grammar began in the fifteenth century, with thepublication of Antonio de Nebrija’s grammar of Castilian Spanish. Thefirst attempt to produce an authoritative dictionary of a west Europeanvernacular was that instituted by the Académie Française in the late seven-theenth century. The first English dictionary was that of Robert Cawdreypublished in 1604, and others were published in the seventeenth and eigh-teenth century. But the great English landmark is generally, and rightly,taken to be Samuel Johnson’s work, published in 1765. For a publishingand linguistic perspective on this see Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary 1746–1773, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990.

24 Lisa Jardine, Wordly Goods: A new history of the Renaissance, London:Papermac, 1996, pp. 365–6.

25 I am not concerned here with attempts to develop artificial ‘universal’languages, such as Esperanto, although that too is a strategy which hasbeen considered since the eighteenth century.

26 For example, Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes was translated into Englishin 1722, and his L’esprit des Lois in 1750; Voltaire’s collected worksappeared in an English translation by Tobias Smollett between 1761 and


1765; and Rousseau’s Du contrat social was published in English in 1764.See George B. Parks and Roth Z. Temple, The Literatures of the World inEnglish Translation: A bibliography. III. The romance languages. Part 2.French literature, New York: Frederick Unger, 1970.

27 Goldcar, p. 67.28 The data come from a variety of sources on the World Wide Web, which

I have collated in an attempt to produce estimates which seem to be widelyaccepted. The exception to this is English, for which I have used theauthoritative account in David Crystal, English as a Global Language,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 54–63. This wholesection is heavily indebted to Crystal’s book.

29 Ibid., p.61.30 See Heinz Sarkowski, ‘The growth and decline of German scientific

publishing 1850–1945’, in: Einar H. Fredriksson (ed.) A Century of SciencePublishing: A collection of essays, Amsterdam, IOS Press, 2001, pp. 25–34.See also below, p. 32 and note 15.

31 See Urvashi Butalia, ‘India’s fourteenth language: a publisher’s rumina-tion’, Logos, 4:4, 1993, pp. 181–8.

32 See Teresa Mlawer, ‘Selling Spanish-language books in the United States’,PRQ, 10:4, 1994–95, pp. 50–3.

33 Compare the comments in K.N. Kiser and S. Taylor, ‘Spanish languagepublishing: special supplement’, PW, 245:37, 1998 (which notes the flour-ishing Spanish-language publishing industry in the USA), with GuillermoSchavelzon, ‘Why not a unified Spanish-speaking book market?’ Logos,8:2, 1997, pp. 117–19 (which argues that Latin American publishers arenationalistic and inward-looking). See also below, pp. 31–32.

34 For the international trade in books, see pp. 30–35, below.35 See below, pp. 114–15 for the significance of this for British publishers.36 There is a marginal exception to this in the so-called Straits Chinese

communities in Malaysia and Singapore, but it is numerically insignificantin global terms. For a useful summary of the issues, see East AsiaAnalytical Unit, Overseas Chinese Business Networks in Asia, Canberra:Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 1995, pp. 13–33.

37 See Kewen Zhang and Hao Xiaoming, ‘The Internet and the ethnic press:a study of Chinese electronic publications’, Inf Soc, 15:1, 1999, pp. 21–30.

38 Svein Kyvik and Ingvild M. Larsen, ‘The exchange of knowledge: a smallcountry in the international research community’, Sci Comm, 18:3, 1997,pp. 238–64. The authors examine the issues from the perspectives of theirnative Norway.

39 I return to this point on pp. 34–35, below.40 SeeJohnTebbel,BetweenCovers:TheRiseandTransformation of Book Pub-

lishing in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 79–88.


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41 See below, pp. 48–50 for a slightly more detailed account of this.42 Technically, it was not piracy, because there was no legal obstacle to the

practice, provided the books were not sold in any country which was asignatory to the international treaties or the Berne Convention.

43 For a detailed account of this, see James J. Barnes, Authors, Publishers andPoliticians: The quest for an Anglo-American copyright agreement1815–1854, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974; and Simon Nowell-Smith, International Copyright Law and the Publisher in the Reign ofQueen Victoria, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, pp. 64–84.

44 Feather, History, p. 204.45 Tebbel, p. 152.46 Peter Sutcliffe. The Oxford University Press: An informal history, Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1978, pp. 89–91.47 This is the view of Tebbel, p. 81.48 For Wileys, see Tebbel, pp. 21–3. For this episode, see Feather, History,

p. 203.49 Ibid.50 See Tebbel, pp. 444–52. For some of the consequences, see below,

pp. 45–48.51 Jason Epstein, Book Business: Publishing past present and future, New

York: W. W. Norton, 2001, pp. 10–11.52 Peter J. Curwen, The UK Publishing Industry, Oxford: Pergamon, 1981,

pp. 75–6.53 For territorial rights, and similar matters, see below, pp. 50–51.54 For further details, and some of these companies, see below pp. 40–45.


CHAPTER TWO

Publishing in the GlobalEconomy

Introduction

A publishing industry is to be found in every country in the world,although in some it is on a minuscule scale. At the other end of thespectrum, there are a few countries in which publishing is a majorindustry, and some of those countries are also players in the globalmarket for publications. As we have suggested in Chapter One, thereis a close link between language and the size of the publishing industryin the countries in which a particular language is predominant. As inso many other industries and services, the marketplace in whichpublishers operate is increasingly global. Textual material is, of courselanguage-dependent, so that the language of publication can sometimesbe a barrier to distribution. Nevertheless, millions of published prod-ucts are sold through channels of international trade every year. Theexport of books and magazines (and to a lesser extent newspapers)from the major producer countries in the world languages has been afeature of the book trade since the late nineteenth century, but has beenintensified by the economic, political and linguistic trends of the lastquarter of the twentieth century.

In the wake of the growth of international trade in the finishedproduct, it was perhaps inevitable that the production itself would beinternationalized. Although this also has a nineteenth century origin,in the establishment of overseas branches of European publishinghouses and the influx of American capital into the trade in Britain,1 it

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is an essentially late twentieth-century phenomenon. At the presenttime, the global publishing industry is increasingly dominated by a small number of multinational corporations with holdings on several continents. Although the historic names of some imprints hasbeen retained within these conglomerates, they have introducedprofound change into the industry, particularly in the United Statesand Britain. Moreover, the conglomerates typically have significantinterests in addition to print publishing. These are usually – althoughnot invariably – in the communications and media industry, andinclude terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasting, video, movie and recorded music production and distribution, Internet serviceprovision, and telecommunications systems and services. In thepublishing field itself, conglomerates publish newspapers and maga-zines as well as books. It is impossible to understand the workings ofthe publishing industry without gaining some insights into thesemassive enterprises.

At the other end of the scale, there are still ‘small’ publishers, independent houses which survive and even flourish in the gaps whichthe conglomerates cannot fill. Although there are parts of someconglomerates which will take risks, it is, in general, the indepen-dent houses which are more likely to try to operate in small nichemarkets for poetry, local history and special interest books of all kinds. The conglomerates and the independents can coexist, althoughproblems can arise when they are competition with each other for space in retail bookshops.2 But if the independent publishers indeveloped countries have their difficulties, publishers in many lessdeveloped countries are almost overwhelmed by theirs. Third Worldpublishers are typically undercapitalized, lack easy access to modernproduction facilities, are constrained by an underdeveloped nationalmarket for books and limited facilities for distribution and sales, andmany other obstacles. In the competition with the global conglomer-ates, they are even less well placed than the independents in Europeand North America.3 Their weakness reinforces the power of themultinationals.

A global trade can only operate effectively if there are some rules of engagement. The publishing industry operates in the same eco-nomic culture as other industries. Since the 1980s it has been exposedto the development of free trade across the world, with the loweringof duties and a movement towards the use of private capital even in

28 Publishing in the Global Economy

countries which still have some vestiges of socialism in their social and economic provisions. This, however, is only one aspect of theregulatory and legal regime which surrounds the publishing industry.Unlike many products, printed matter is not always neutral. Controlof the contents of printed matter still characterizes many countries inthe world, and acts as a limitation on free trade in books, magazinesand (especially) newspapers. Even in countries in which there is little or no censorship, and even in those in which there is a philo-sophical commitment to a free press, there are still legal constraints.These arise largely from the existence of an international copyrightregime which is, in effect, the regulator of the global marketplace forpublishing.

As we have seen, international copyright was developed during thelast quarter of the nineteenth century as a protection for both authorsand publishers.4 That is still its purpose today, expressed in the two great international agreements, the Berne Convention and theUniversal Copyright Convention, to one or both of which virtuallyevery country in the world is a signatory. The effect of internationalcopyright law is to guarantee to a publishing company that everythingwhich it publishes is a unique product; it cannot be reproducedwithout permission, and can be sold only in the form in which it wasoriginally produced it or in some other form of which the publisherapproves. This regime is, of course, equally applicable to the largestand the smallest, but is most beneficial to those who are best able toaccess an international market, that is the large publishers in the majorpublishing countries.

All of these issues need to be explored in some detail to set thecontext for a study of how the publishing industry works. In thisChapter we shall provide the framework for that study, and pursuesome key lines of enquiry. Specifically, this Chapter considers:

• statistical data relating to publishing, and what it can tell us;• the ownership of publishing companies and the impact of cross-

media ownership;• the impact of the multinational conglomerates on independent

publishers;• the practical impact of copyright and other legal and regulatory

issues on the publishing industry.

Publishing in the Global Economy 29

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The international book trade: a statistical overview

Statistical data about the publishing industry is not difficult to find,but it is not easy to interpret. It must be used with great caution. Thelargest single source of data on a global scale is in the UNESCOYearbook, but that is dependent on statistics submitted by individualcountries. The returns are not uniformly reliable, and are far frombeing complete or current. Nevertheless, it is all we have which canprovide some sort of broad framework within which we can begin toassess the size of the global publishing industry. The latest data whichis available from this source is from the mid-1990s, typically 1996, andwe shall take this as our baseline for answering some key questions.5

These questions are:

• how many books are published?• where are they published?• who published them?• in what languages are they published?• what are the patterns of international trade in books?

We shall take each in turn, but we immediately confront a problem.The UNESCO data on titles published, which is the basis of Table

2.1, unfortunately has no information on North America.6 The sourcewhich has been used may well be more reliable than much of the datasupplied to UNESCO by many countries, but it is not strictly compa-rable, and includes data from the USA only, not from Canada. Even


Table 2.1 Titles published c. 1996

Continent Number of titles published

Africa 9 598North America (USA only) 139 309South America 28 322Asia 270 605Europe 367 626Oceania 11 358


with these caveats, however, it is clear that Asia, Europe and the UnitedStates, as we might expect, dominate world publishing.

When we analyse these data at a more detailed level, some interestingfacts begin to emerge. In all six continents, there are very significantvariations between countries. At the extremes in Africa for example,we have South Africa with 5418 titles published in 1995 against a mere12 in Burkina Faso in 1996.7 Apart from South Africa, the only sub-Saharan country which exceeded 1000 titles was Nigeria (1314 in1995), with Malawi’s 117 (1996) being more typical. North Africapresents a somewhat different picture.8 Between them the countries ofthat region published 4549 titles in 1996, of which only 26 were fromLibya and no fewer than 2215 from Egypt. Some of the Tunisian andAlgerian output is in French, but the books published in Egypt arealmost all in Arabic. We shall return to this point. South America offersa similarly varied picture. At one of the scale Ecuador reported thepublication of 12 titles in 1995, while Brazil produced 21 574 in 1994.The largest output in a Hispanophone country was 9 850 in Argentinain 1996. Language is a relevant issue here as well, since the use ofSpanish theoretically opens up markets in both the United States andSpain itself. Again we shall return to this point.9

It is, however, in Asia that some of the most interesting nationalstatistics are to be found. The Asian total includes 100 951 titles fromChina in 1994. The second largest producer was Japan (56 221 in 1996),followed by Korea (30 487 in 1996). All three countries, of course, havedistinctive scripts as well as their own languages, and all three have a strong commitment to universal education, even if this ideal has not been achieved in China or, to a lesser extent, in Korea. Chinesepublishing is still essentially propagandist in purpose, but for that veryreason is made widely available to Chinese communities elsewhere inthe world, especially in Asia.10 On the other hand, as we shall see, thereis some Asian publishing in English, which is not insignificant, notablyin India. It is in Asia also that we can find confirmation of the impor-tance of Egypt in Arabic publishing. The Arab countries of Asiatogether report 6583 titles, of which 3900 were from Saudi Arabia in1996.11 Together, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have effectively cornered themarket in Arabic publishing.12

Europe also shows some striking variations. In 1996, the UnitedKingdom reported that 107 263 titles were published. The next largestproducer country was Germany with 71 515, followed by Spain


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(46 330), Russia (36 237), Italy (35 236), France (34 766) and theNetherlands (34 067). It is no surprise to find the UK heading this list,for it is the homeland of the international language of the twenty-firstcentury. The Russian publishers have to depend largely on their vastdomestic market. Spanish is the language of all of central and southAmerica except Brazil and Belize, and is widely spoken and read in theUnited States.13 French still has an international status, as the Europeanlanguage of much of north Africa and a number of countries in westAfrica, as well as of pockets elsewhere in the world.14 Despite the vestigial use of Dutch in Indonesia, neither it, German nor Italian is aworld language in same way. Why then do they appear here? All threecountries are major centres of international publishing. In bothGermany and the Netherlands, there are major companies whichproduce English-language material for the world market, especially in the academic field. This in no accident. Indeed one of the majorGerman scientific publishers took a policy decision as long ago as the1940s to concentrate on English-language publishing for its scientificjournals.15 Italy has long been the centre for the publication of inter-national co-published books, especially on artistic subjects. Elsewherein Europe, most countries have an established publishing industrycatering for the national market. A few (such as Belgium) have theadvantage of working in languages which are also used in other, larger,countries. Some have the disadvantage of a national language virtuallyunknown outside its homeland (Poland, the Czech Republic andLatvia, for example).

The predominance of the major publishing countries is emphasizedwhen we set these production figures against the available data on thebalance of trade in books. Table 2.2 show data (1996–97) on the coun-tries which, according the UNESCO Yearbook,16 have a favourablebalance, that is, which export more books (by value) than they import.The massive predominance of the United Kingdom and the UnitedStates is ample evidence both of the extent to which these two coun-tries dominate the international book market, and of the dominationof that market by their principal publishing language, English. Of theother world languages, Spanish generates trade for Spain herself, forColombia and for Chile; and French for France. The figures for bothRussia and China partly reflect the economic and (in China’s case)political restrictions on the import of books. There is a very clearpicture here of how the world trade in books is structured. The net


outflow of books from a handful of countries, in four or five languages,is a clear indicator of where the publishing industry is strongest, andhas wider political and cultural implications.

The cultural implications of the balance of trade are re-enforced if we look at the major importer countries, that is those which have the least favourable balances. This exercise must be undertaken withsome caution. A detailed analysis would have to take account of popu-lation, literacy levels and many other factors. But even raw data cansuggest some valid conclusions. The largest single importer country isCanada, with an unfavourable balance of US$777 001 000 in 1997; it isa reasonable assumption that most of this originated in the USA,although some would be British and some from France.17 Other majorimporters in the mid-1990s included South Africa (US$120 247 000),Zimbabwe (US$123 931 000), Mexico (US$134 597 000), Brazil


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Table 2.2 Countries with a favourable balance of trade in books 1996–97

Country Balance in US$

United Kingdom 855 714 000United States of America 698 001 000Spain 412 502 000Germany 386 861 000Italy 367 590 000Singapore 174 462 000Russia 164 378 000Hong Kong 151 740 000China 91 375 000France 30 776 000Slovenia 28 118 000Slovakia 21 573 000Colombia 18 067 000Finland 9 831 000Jordan 8 403 000Chile 4 154 000Dominican Republic 969 000Moldova 577 000St Vincent 1000

(Source: See note 16)

(US$235 237 000), Japan (US$145 195 000), Austria (US$223 850 000)and Switzerland (US$294 150 000).18 No other country had a deficit inexcess of US$100,000,000.

The list is instructive. With the sole exception of Japan, these are all countries in which indigenous languages do not predominate. InAustria, German is effectively the only language. In Switzerland,French, German and Italian divide the country between them, andmost educated people are fluent in at least two of these; the nativeRomansch is a minority tongue, spoken by only 65 000 people.19 InMexico the predominant language is Spanish, as Portuguese is inBrazil. In South Africa and Zimbabwe, English is the commonlanguage of commerce, politics and culture, and the first language of asignificant part of the population. Indigenous languages do exist, andsome material is published in them (and in Afrikaans in South Africa),but despite official support they are under pressure from the commontongue. A particularly acute case is that of India, where huge potentialmarkets exist for books in the indigenous languages, but the literatemiddle class prefers to use English. The reason is only partly becausethe language offers a common medium of communication. There isalso a social cachet attached to being Anglophone.20 This is anotherinsight into the extent of the international cultural domination of thecountries of origin of the world languages.

Linguistic, cultural and economic issues cannot usefully be sepa-rated in discussing this topic, as they continually re-enforce the fact ofthe historical dominance of European and American publishers overthe world book trade. UNESCO’s attempt to redress the balance inthe 1980s, through its New World Information Order, was perhapsdoomed to failure; it certainly failed. The reasons were partly political,as the then US administration found NWIO to be a useful peg onwhich to hang the reasons for withdrawing from an organizationwhich it distrusted and disliked. Even without this factor, however,top-down direction could not reverse the dominance of two or threeEuropean languages and the fact that the infrastructure of publishingand the other information and communication industries was betterestablished in a small number of developed countries.21 Nowhere isthis problem more acute than in sub-Saharan Africa, where ever sinceindependence governments have tried to encourage the developmentof publishing industries and the use of indigenous languages as animportant element in the assertion of self-identity.22


Even in Europe, the growth of national cultural consciousnessamong minorities in existing nation states can promote developmentsin the publishing industry, as happened in Scotland in the 1990s.23 Insub-Saharan Africa, however, book trade infrastructures are typicallyweak, and literacy levels are still low. The usual policy has been firstto encourage and then to require that primary education is conductedin indigenous languages, and to build a school textbook industry onthis basis. The problem is that for secondary education, learningEnglish is essential (especially for those who do not come from bilin-gual homes) if students are to make progress in careers in business or the professions. At tertiary level, English typically remains thelanguage of learning and teaching. Even advocates and supporters ofthe development of indigenous language publishing recognize thefundamental problem: there are many languages for which the marketis very small, and the infrastructure underdeveloped.24 The widespreaduse of Swahili in east Africa has created something of an internationaltrade in books within the region, but sales and distribution are aproblem even when there are no political obstacles. Indeed, the devel-opment of a book trade between African countries has been largely theresult of support from external agencies.25 Only in countries like Indiaand Indonesia with huge populations, reasonably effective educationsystems and partly industrialized economies have there been realsuccesses, and even those two remain net importers of books.26

Distribution for export remains a problem outside Europe and theUSA even for wholly developed countries like Singapore.27 The fact isthat the world book industry assumes a flow from north to south andfrom west to east, and this tradition is reinforced by the lack of skills,capital and markets in much of Asia and almost all of Africa.

The British and American book trades

The worldwide predominance of English-language publishing, and ofthe British and American publishing industries, is clear from theanalysis in the previous section. We shall now take a more detailed lookat both of them so far as the data permits. Table 2.3 shows a simplifiedversion of the 10-year trend of production in both countries.28 To putthis in an international context, 24 485 books were published in Francein 1999, and 80 779 in Germany.29


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These data suggest that during the 1990s there was a significantgrowth of publishing in Britain, both in absolute terms and in relationto the growth of the industry in the United States. Certainly we shallfind further evidence that the 1990s was a good time for British publishing and indeed for the British book trade in general, largelybecause of a significant restructuring of the domestic retail trade.30

Between 1998 and 1999, the number of titles published in the UKincreased by 5.7 per cent.31 Perhaps an even more telling statistic is thatin the same year there was an increase in the value of publishers’ salesby 5 per cent.32 The value of sales increased in every year but one (1991)between 1990 and 1999, and at the end of the decade was nearly 30 percent greater than it had been at the beginning.33 In 1999, UK publish-ers sold 825 million books, which generated a total income of £3176million.34 Comparable data for the USA confirm that the Americanpublishing industry was also going through a period of growth. Therewas a 6.3 per cent growth in total sales between 1998 and 1999; the totalvalue of retail sales in 1999 was US$24 480 600 000.35

A significant proportion of books published and produced in bothcountries is sold for export. In 1999, each exported books of approxi-mately the same value, with the UK reporting book exports to the value of US$1814 million, while from the USA there were sales worthUS$1846 million.36 A more detailed analysis of British book exports isalso instructive.37 By far the largest export market for British books isthe United States (worth £202 million); the next largest is Australia (£76million), followed by Germany (£68 million), Ireland (£66 million), andthe Netherlands (£64 million). In Table 2.4, this data has been presentedby continent to give a general overview of the destinations of Britishbook exports to the 71 countries which imported items to a total valueof more than £100 million, that is about 80 per cent of the total trade.


Table 2.3 British and American book output by title 1989–1999

Year UK Titles US Titles

1989 61 195 125 2091994 88 714 139 2501999 110 155 100 405


Of the top 20 destinations, eight are countries in which English iseither the principal language, or one of two or more official languages.The only country outside Europe which does not fall into this category is Japan. But perhaps the most striking conclusion to be drawn fromTable 2.4 is the huge importance of the European market to the Britishpublishing industry, taking over twice the value of British books as doesNorth America, despite the predominance of the use of English in both the United States and Canada. Almost all of the books exportedfrom the UK are in English; this is a measure of the English-languagemarket in the rest of Europe, where English has no official status in anycountry.38 Moreover, the bulk of this market is in western Europe,which took British books worth some £492 million in 1999.39 The for-mer Soviet Union and eastern Europe accounted for only £36 million,reflecting the continuing difficulties of doing business in a region wherethe retail book trade was undercapitalized despite the great hunger for books.40 By contrast, predictions of the potential benefits of the single market in the European Union seem to have been vindicated.41

What are all these books which sustain a multibillion pound (anddollar) industry, and which take the English language and British andAmerican books in English all over the world? We shall examine thisquestion more closely in Chapter Three, but it is useful at this stage toconsider some of the statistical data. It is not possible – and perhapswould not be very useful if it were possible – to compare directly thestatistics from the American and British book trades. Each country’spublishing industry has its own statistical data collected in a waywhich provides valuable management information in the industry. We


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Table 2.4 Destinations of British book exports 1999

Continent UK Book exports 1999 (£ m)

Africa 65North America 239South America 23Asia 168Europe 541Oceania 89


shall begin with the United States (Table 2.5). One suggestion whichcan be derived from these data is the importance of the market forprofessional books, and of the educational market (both school anduniversity) for the industry as a whole. Equally notable, and perhapsencouraging, is the growth in sales of books for juveniles (books forchildren and young adults in British parlance), although this has to beset against the decline in the market for adult books. All of this must,however, be seen in the context of longer term trends; the growth ofthe trade as whole from 1992 to 2000 was 5.2 per cent, with some indi-cation of slightly faster growth towards the end of the decade.42

The British data do not allow a comparable breakdown of sales,although we can gain some insights from looking at the number of titlespublished. (Table 2.6). While direct comparison is not possible, we cansee that in Britain, as in the United States, professional and specialistbooks of various kinds are critically important to the industry.

Published British data on book sales do not, unfortunately, allow thesame degree of detailed analysis as is possible for the Americanpublishing industry. The only publicly accessible source divides salesinto three categories, each further divided into home sales (by retailvalue) and exports (by invoiced price). These are brought together inTable 2.7, in an attempt to offers some sort of broad picture of theBritish trade from this perspective. A number of factors must beconsidered in interpreting the data.


Table 2.5 US book publishing by category 2000

Category Sales in US $ m % Change 1999–2000

Adult hardback 2686 –11.6Adult paperback 1901 –7.2Juvenile hardback 1202 13.2Juvenile paperback 753 16.4Religious 1247 2.5Professional 5130 8.7Mass market paperbacks 1559 0.5University presses 402 –2.4ELHI (school books) 3881 13.3Higher education books 3237 3.5


The categories which are used, although they are common in thetrade, and rather less precise than those used as the basis of Table 2.6,and only very general comparisons are therefore possible. But despiteall of these caveats, two important facts emerge:

• ‘consumer’ books, that is general adult fiction and non-fiction,dominate the home market, but are far less important in terms ofexports;

• school and English-language teaching books are critical to exportsuccess.

We can take this no further at this point, although we shall return tothe various categories in due course for a more detailed analysis.43


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Table 2.6 British publishing by category 1999

Category Titles published 1999

Fiction 9730School books 3963Children’s books 9043Scientific, technical and medical books 19 569Academic and professional books 35 445Non-fiction 30 994

(Source: Creaser et al, p. 193 (Table 6.8))

Table 2.7 British publishing by value of sales 1999

Category Home sales Exports (retail value in £) (invoiced value in £)

Consumer 2165 277School books and English-language teaching books 239 266Academic and professional 766 329TOTALS 3170 872

(Sources: Fishwick, Tables B1, D1, D2, D3.)

Publishing companies

The modern publishing industry developed in the nineteenth centuryout of a craft tradition of book production.44 The separation ofprinting from the other activities in the trade, and the later growth of a distinction between bookselling and publishing, created a struc-ture in which a supply chain was controlled by the publisher whoprovided the essential capital to support the process. Until well intothe twentieth century, however, this was largely a trade of small busi-nesses. It is no accident that publishing companies were referred to (and sometimes still are) as ‘houses’. They were family businesses,often handed from one generation to the next, and typically controlledby a single individual whose own tastes and interests were reflected inthe output, or list, of books which they published. Capital came fromwithin the family. The dependence on an individual or a family meantthat they were exposed to all the vicissitudes which that implies: ageneration which was not interested, or simply incompetent, coulddestroy a house, as could the failure to produce an heir, or the unex-pected death of the head of the firm.

This did not mean that all publishers were gentlemen of exquisiteliterary taste dedicated to producing ‘good’ books. Of course somewere, but there was always a need to make a profit. The problem was not whether publishers did business in a businesslike way; it waswhether they could keep a balance between commercial and otherfactors in determining the direction of their businesses. The history ofPenguin Books, one of the great innovative publishing houses of thetwentieth century, exemplifies both the strengths and the weaknessesof the traditional customs and practices of the trade. Allen Lane, thefounder of Penguin, had a through grounding in the business in apublishing house owned by his uncle, John Lane.45 He set up Penguinto follow thorough his idea that he could produce cheap editions ofmiddlebrow books at a low price and sell them through a multitude of unconventional outlets as well as in bookshops. His idea was, ofcourse, a brilliant success. He effectively created a new branch of theindustry. But he had no heir; as he approached retirement age, thecompany fell into disarray and almost went bankrupt. It was eventu-ally rescued by Longman, a house whose own history could be tracedback through a family line to the early eighteenth century, and wasabout to encounter its own problems.46 Except in Lane’s originality,


this is not an untypical story. The publishing industry in Britain andthe United States in the early 1960s was still recognizably that of ahundred years earlier.

Some vestiges still survive. Perhaps the most visible is the continueduse of familiar personal names in imprints. To Longman, we can addMacmillan, Butterworth, Routledge and Heinemann in Britain; in the United States we have Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin, Henry Holtand others. None of these is still a free-standing independent house runby the family whose name it carries. Yet the names – the imprints intrade jargon – do carry some weight. It is partly historical, but it is alsowhat the advertising industry calls a brand. For regular bookbuyers,not least for librarians, a particular imprint is suggestive of a certainkind of book, and can even be taken as a sort of prima facie guaranteeof quality.

The traditional publishing houses have been absorbed by large corporations within which they are allowed to operate, to a greater or lesser extent, as semi-independent entities.47 When this began tohappen in the late 1960s, it was partly because of the business dogmasof the time which argued that only big companies were efficient enoughto survive, and partly because of the ambitions of a few rich individu-als around the world. The trend accelerated towards the end of thecentury because technological developments made the dissemination ofinformation in any form, including print, an essentially internationalbusiness conducted in a de facto international language. The drivers ofchange were thus both commercial and technological. The combinationhas proved irresistible. As a result, the publishing industry at the begin-ning of the twenty-first century is largely embedded in the world of the media, telecommunications and the Internet. This is most easilyunderstood by looking briefly at a few of the world’s major publishingorganizations, although it would be impossible to describe most of thecompanies themselves as ‘publishers’.

We shall begin with the familiar name of Macmillan. The firm wasfounded in 1843 as a bookseller and publisher in Cambridge, anddescended through the family (which included Harold Macmillan,British Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963) until almost the end of thetwentieth century. It had a reputation for mainstream literature,although not without some adventurous authors, and solid non-fictionfor both the academic and general markets.48 It had an internationalprofile from mid-century onwards, but by the 1970s this was


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becoming the driving force of the firm. It had a presence in 70 coun-tries when, at the end of the century, it became part of the Germangroup, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. Holtzbrinck had itsorigin in Stuttgart in 1948 as one of the many new publishers whichre-established German publishing after the end of the Nazi era. Itgradually expanded into book clubs and other aspects of the trade inGermany, and began to seek a way into the lucrative English-speakingmarket. Macmillan was acquired in the mid-1990s as one means ofmeeting this objective.49

The Holtzbrinck Group now has extensive holdings on both sidesof the Atlantic, and is a major force in world publishing. In Germanyits imprints include Fischer-Verlag, one of the major general publishinghouses, and Kindler-Verlag. It also publishes Die Zeit, one of the mostinfluential of German newspapers which has an international circula-tion, as well as many German regional newspapers. In the UnitedStates, it owns Farrar, Straus and Giroux of New York, a publisherwith a prestigious list of literature and children’s books, and HenryHolt, one of the major New York publishers of general trade books(‘consumer’ books in American trade jargon) and books on history,politics and the environment. The acquisition of Macmillan gave the group its foothold in British publishing, not merely through theMacmillan imprint itself, but also through two of Macmillan’s ownacquisitions, Pan, a mid-range paperback publisher, and Sidgwick andJackson, a publisher of literary fiction and some academic non-fiction.Nor is this the end of the story. Holtzbrinck is also heavily involvedin publishing business information. It is the publisher of Wall StreetJournal Europe, and also of Handelsblatt, the leading German finan-cial newspaper. It is no surprise to find that the company is alsopublishing online, making use of its databases of commercial informa-tion. Finally, in the course of its various acquisitions, it became theowner and publisher of Scientific American, a magazine which spansthe gap between the popular and the academic.50

Holtzbrinck can be taken to exemplify the trends in the develop-ment of the commercial infrastructure of publishing in the latetwentieth century. It is multinational and has a wide range of interestsin books, magazines and newspapers. It is moving into electronicdistribution of some its high-value products. Yet its name is all but unknown outside financial circles and the higher reaches of thepublishing industry itself. A book is published by Henry Holt, or


Macmillan or Fischer-Verlag; Scientific American and Wall StreetJournal Europe still look as they always did on the news-stands. Whathas changed? Before we attempt an answer, let us look at some otherexamples.

We shall begin this time with an old and respected Americanimprint, Houghton Mifflin.51 Like Macmillan, the company can traceits history back to the middle of the nineteenth century. In the inter-vening 150 years it has built a solid reputation for academic books,reference books and above all text books for every level from kinder-garten to graduate school. Indeed, Houghton Mifflin books are almostan integral part of the American education system. Since August 2001, Houghton Mifflin has been a part of a company called VivendiUniversal.52 Again, the name may be familiar only to readers of thefinancial pages of the newspapers, but at least one of the companieswithin the group is known by hundreds of millions of people acrossthe globe – Universal Studios, one of the great names of Hollywood.Vivendi had its origins as a utility company in France in the nineteenthcentury, providing, inter alia, piped water to the city of Lyon. In the1980s, a shrewd management team saw the way of the future, andreoriented the company towards the media and telecommunicationsindustries. It was the creator of Canal+, a highly successful indepen-dent French television channel, and moved rapidly into cable andsatellite broadcasting. From there it was but a short step into becominga telecommunications company and an Internet Service Provider. Itnow has 290 000 employees, and in 2000 generated an income of 3.6billion, an increase of 5 per cent on the previous year. It is an inter-esting comment on the profitability of the publishing industry, notleast of the textbook market, that such a company should choose tomove into it. As we have seen, textbook publishing is indeed one ofthe most vibrant areas of American publishing.53

Our third example is perhaps more familiar, because its creator ishimself a major international celebrity, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch hasdeveloped his inherited family business in Australian newspapers intoa multinational corporation whose revenue in 2000 was US$14 billion,and whose assets are said to be valued at US$43 billion.54 As NewsCorporation, the company owns 175 newspapers around the world,and prints altogether some 40 million copies of them every week. Thetitles range from the top to the bottom of the market, taking in thetabloid Sun in London and New York Post at one end of the scale to


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the London Times at the other. But this is only one part of thecompany’s activities. Like Vivendi, News Corporation has aHollywood presence; in its case, it is Twentieth-Century Fox, anothername from a golden age. Fox itself had diversified into television, andthrough its many specialist channels for children, news services and soon is a major provider to satellite and cable companies, as well ashaving its own broadcasting operation. And of course among those towhom it provides are other News Corporation giants – BSkyB, themajor British satellite broadcaster, and Star, which dominates the Asiansatellite television market. All of this is in addition to a wide range ofInternet-based activities and various sporting interests, such as controlof Australian Rugby League, which are closely related to the sportschannels on the company’s satellite television stations. Finally, NewsCorporation is the owner of Harper Collins.

Harper Collins is one of the giants of American publishing. In1998/99 it had the second largest sales of any US publisher, at US$100million,55 and it has imprints in Australia and the United Kingdom aswell as the United States. Harper Collins itself was a creation of anearlier round of mergers and takeovers when the long establishedHarper Brothers (one of the oldest of surviving American publishinghouses) joined forces with the British Collins imprint (flounderingafter the death of its flamboyant founder, Billy Collins) to create acompany which thought that it could compete around the world froma base on both sides of the Atlantic. But the lure of the corporation wastoo great, and one of the largest publishing houses in the world is nowmerely one small part of one of several multinational media companies.

For a further example, we will return to Penguin, absorbed intoLongman after the death of its founder. But Longman itself suffered atragedy with the early death of the last member of the family, andbecame a part of the Pearson Group, a British company with extensivenewspaper interests. Pearson’s origin, like Vivendi’s, was far away fromthe metropolitan sophistication which allegedly characterizes thepublishing industry. It began as a small provincial building companyin the middle of the nineteenth century, diversified into oil at the turnof the twentieth century, and gradually turned itself into what wasessentially a holding and investment company. From the 1960s,onwards, however, it began to make systematic acquisitions in the field of publishing and the media.56 Newspapers came first, includingthe Financial Times, Britain’s leading financial newspaper, and the


Westminster Press Group, a dull but profitable group of Englishregional and local newspapers. Longman and Penguin followed, and in due course some American publishing houses were acquired,including Addison Wesley, and Putnam. In the 1990s, PearsonLongman, as it had become, began to focus on the educational market,and recognized the profound changes that were taking place. A majorrestructuring merged the identities of many of its parts; indeed, thehistoric name of Longman was all but lost in the process. But oneLongman tradition – that of educational publishing –was retained,albeit transformed by modern technology. Pearson Education stillpublishes textbooks but has also been a pioneer of the production ofeducational software and computer-based learning packages. Over halfof its revenue (which was nearly £3.2 million in the first nine monthsof 2001) comes from Pearson Education. The rest is roughly equallydivided between the Financial Times (which now includes overseasoperations and Internet based services) and Penguin, the only imprintwhich has truly retained its identity within the group.

Conglomerates and independents

The radical restructuring of the publishing industry has not beenachieved without creating its own problems. For many bought up inthe industry as it was in the 1960s, its soul has been destroyed. Onehas written that ‘most publishing houses have become indistinct in their conglomerate settings’.57 Another comments (although withmany caveats) that ‘corporate management finds itself incapable oftaking the kind of long-term view that literary publishing requires’.58

A distinguished literary agent with many trenchant opinions on theindustry, takes the view that ‘in this growing age of bureaucratizationin the publishing business, as the adventurous entrepreneur publishergives way to cautious editorial committees subservient to corporatebusiness administrators, conservatism and negativism have become theprevailing attitudes.’59 Whether or not any or all of this is true (andthese and other authors adduce much evidence to support their opin-ions), it is certainly the case that it is widely perceived to be true.Authors, booksellers, and many in the publishing industry itself, seethe multinational conglomerates as money-making machines by whichthe true business of publishing has been devoured.


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At one level, there is some truth in this, but there is also a positiveside to it. The conglomerates expect every part of the organization tocontribute to corporate profits; targets are set, and if they are not met,there will, no doubt, be consequences for those who fail to meet them.But the company also provides some of the mechanisms throughwhich efficiencies can be achieved and money can be saved. Stockcontrol, meaningful accounting, the provision and analysis of infor-mation about sales and markets, and systematic tracking of thecreation, production and sale of a book may not have been entirelyunknown in the old publishing houses, but none was a universal prac-tice. Multinational corporations have to operate first and foremost asbusinesses. Indeed, in the 1980s, the returns on capital in publishingwere exceptionally high, and it has been argued that it was preciselythis which attracted the attention of the multinationals in the firstplace.60 They developed their own modus operandi, which was indeeddifferent from that of the old family firms and their immediate succes-sors, but which generated revenues and allowed books to be published.Complaints from authors, agents and editors were common aspublishing houses began to merge in the 1970s. In the 1990s, theybecame more strident. Indeed, there is little doubt that the growth ofthe cross-media corporations, with interests ranging from electronicpublishing to children’s comics, have created a new and harsher busi-ness environment in which publishers have to operate.61

Perhaps the group which felt most offended by the developments in the trade was actually the authors. Traditional publishers had cher-ished their authors and, at least in their own mythology, had nursedunknown writers from the near-failure of first books to literarytriumphs and resplendent royalties 10 years down the road.62 Thelong-established belief in and around the trade that ‘books aredifferent’ was challenged by the very nature of the conglomerates. Asone media product among many, and originating from small divisionsof multinational conglomerates, books are losing the position ofcultural privilege which they have occupied for centuries.63 Even in thetrade itself, a survey in 1995 revealed that some booksellers consideredthat the absorption of publishing houses into the conglomerates had made them less distinctive; authors were even less enamoured of the results of the changes which had taken place.64 This is despitethe attempt to retain historic names and the individuality which they implied. It is argued that standards, not least of editing and


proof-reading, have declined under the pressures of time and money.Books are expected to sell quickly, and to have a short shelf-life.Editors are encouraged to buy the popular rather than the meritorious.

The chorus of dissent cannot be ignored, not least because it has actually spawned a new generation of independent publishers. The historic pattern – publishing houses being founded by individuals assmall businesses and run within the family or by a small group of co-workers – is still to be found. Indeed independent publishing outsidethe conglomerates appears to be flourishing. Perhaps one of the differ-ences is that during the 1980s and 1990s many experienced people lefttheir employers, now part of a conglomerate, and became small inde-pendent publishers in mid- or late career rather than at the beginning.One who did that, having worked for a number of major imprints, haswritten that despite all the problems (largely financial) of an indepen-dent publisher, he ‘wouldn’t swap it for the world’.65 Independentpublishers can operate successfully in niche markets. New technologieshave made this easier than ever before. Desktop publishing systems,which require little more investment (or skill) than a personal com-puter, offer an economically feasible means of production.66 Findingshelf-space in major bookshops may be a problem for the indepen-dents, but the World Wide Web offers a means of marketing and sellingbooks which does not require an expensive marketing infrastructure.67

The independents can continue to nurture new novelists and poets, andprovide an outlet for social and political dissent, as they always have.

Independent publishing houses, outside the conglomerates, seemlikely to remain an important part of the publishing industry inEurope and North America. They represent the continuing culturalimportance of print publishing, and should not be seen as operating onthe fringes. There are also, as we shall see in Chapter Three, somemainstream areas of publishing in which independents have a criticalrole to play. This is perhaps particularly true in the academic sector,where university presses continue, despite all the pressures on them,to publish work which no commercial publisher would seriouslyconsider. Even in literary publishing, quite apart from the fact thatmany imprints in the conglomerates publish literary fiction, there are some sizeable independent houses, perhaps most notably theBritish company Faber and Faber, which continue to publish highquality work through conventional commercial channels. The differ-ence between the large and the small in the publishing industry has


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probably never been greater than it is at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But the conglomerates and the independents are findinga mutual modus vivendi which can bring benefits to both. Theconglomerates may dominate a global industry, but the independentsmake a significant contribution to its overall success. For general tradepublishing, both fiction and non-fiction, both creativity and entrepre-neurship are essential. Both can sometimes be achieved within aconglomerate, but the independents offer a vital outlet for both andwill continue to do so.68

The legal framework of publishing

A global industry, such as publishing has become, can only operateeffectively if it can be reasonably certain that it can do business in astable environment. Publishing is, of course, as exposed to social,economic and political instability as any other international trade, butit is perhaps exceptionally exposed because of the nature of its product,and the political and indeed emotional arguments which can ragearound it. As we have seen, publishing has been an international busi-ness since the very beginning of an organized book trade in westernEurope.69 By the middle of the nineteenth century, the internationaltrade was sufficiently well developed to need some form of inter-national regulation, but this took a long time to develop.

The underlying problem was, and is, easily stated. When a publisherpays an author for a new book, what is actually acquired is the rightto publish it. In a rudimentary way, this was recognized as early as thesixteenth century. The principle was embodied in statute law in Britainin 1709, and in the laws of most European countries by the secondquarter of the nineteenth century. Essentially, these early copyrightlaws, although they differed a little between countries, recognized thefundamental fact that the author owned what he or she had created,and therefore had the right to sell it or lease it. The purchaser, usuallya publishing house, then had the right to treat it as its property.Normally, of course, this right would be exercised by publishing it,and perhaps in due course selling it to another publisher. So far, theprinciple was simple, but a complication was introduced by the factthat in almost all jurisdictions, the rights which were acquired were fora limited period of time only. They then reverted to the author, or


perhaps to his or her legatee or estate, or ceased to exist altogether, so that anyone could exploit them. In modern copyright law, normalpractice is that copyright passes into public domain 50 or (in theEuropean Union) 70 years after the death of the author.70

The real difficulties arose when the book attracted a market outsidethe jurisdiction in which it was published. This could, of course, besatisfied by exporting copies of the book to other countries. Once thathad happened, however, there was nothing to prevent a publisher inthat country from reprinting the book without any acknowledgementor payment to the original publisher or author. Such a reprint mightbe protected by the copyright law in the country in which it wasproduced, but there was no redress for the author or first publisher. It was to address this situation that an international law of copyrightwas developed during the nineteenth century.71 The first stage was thenegotiation of bilateral treaties between European states, the first beingthat between the United Kingdom and Prussia in 1846. The effect ofthese treaties, with minor variations of detail, was to give copyrightowners the same protection in the foreign country as they had in theirown. A Prussian author was protected by British copyright law in theUnited Kingdom, and a British author under Prussian law in thatcountry. The principle of reciprocity established by these mid-nineteenth century copyright treaties remains as the basic principle ofinternational copyright law today.

In 1886, a group of 10 countries, including the United Kingdom,jointly developed the Berne Convention, which was in effect a multi-lateral treaty which embodied the reciprocity principle. Gradually,other countries joined, although it was not until 1891 that foreignauthors were given some protection under the laws of the UnitedStates. Indeed, unauthorized reprinting of foreign (and especiallyBritish) books in the United States was endemic for most of the nine-teenth century, and a major cause of contention. During the twentiethcentury, the Berne Convention, modified from time to time to takeaccount of new developments, was signed by virtually every countryin the world, so that copyright protection became as global as the booktrade itself. Only the United States stood out, and even that countryeventually acceded to a similar UNESCO document, the UniversalCopyright Convention, approved in 1956.72

Full copyright protection in virtually every country in the world hasnow become an essential foundation stone for the publishing industry.


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A publisher in almost any country can acquire the copyright in a bookknowing that the work cannot legally be reproduced in any countrywhich is a signatory to either the Berne Convention or the UCCwithout consent and payment. One difficulty arises from the fact thatthere is still a handful of countries which are not signatories to either.China did not sign them until 1992, and some of the successor statesof the Soviet Union still have not done so. Other countries have onlylimited legislation; Indonesia, for example, has bilateral treaties withthe United Kingdom and the United States, but is not a signatory ofeither convention.73

Dealing in subsidiary rights which derive from the basic principlesof copyright protection has become a significant area of activity in thepublishing industry. Custom and practice have developed in the tradeunder the umbrella of domestic laws, bilateral agreements and theinternational conventions. In broad terms, the trade recognizes:

• territorial rights;• language rights;• format rights;• other rights.

Territorial and language rights are essentially self-explanatory. Apublisher may choose to sell the edition worldwide, or may decide tolicense it to a publisher in another country for sale in that country orelsewhere. It is still, for example, a common practice for a Britishpublisher to license a book to an American publisher to produce anedition for sale in the USA and Canada only, but not in the rest of theworld. Language rights relate to translations; thus the publisher of anEnglish book may license rights to publishers in, say, France, Russiaand Japan, for translations in French, Russian and Japanese respec-tively. Usually, territorial and language rights intersect, so that theFrench translation rights will be for worldwide sales, and so on.74

Format rights is a term used here to denote the right to publish thework in a format other than its original. The most common is a paper-back reprint, for which the rights may be licensed to another publisherby the publisher of the original hardback edition. Again, this mayintersect with territorial rights, although there are various possiblecombinations of packages; thus the hardback and paperback rights inan American book may be sold to different British publishers for the


UK editions. Increasingly, format rights are also being considered inrelation to electronic versions of books also published (either simulta-neously or previously) in printed form. Other format rights includethe right to publish the work in serial form in a magazine or news-paper, or to publish some sort of digest of it, or to include some or allof it in an anthology or collection, or even to quote extensively fromit.75 It is among the other rights that we find some of the least commonbut most lucrative ways in which authors and publishers can exploittheir property. These include the right to make a movie or video of abook, the right to serialize it on television, the right to serialize or readit on the radio, and the right to read it at a public performance or torecord a reading of it for sale and distribution.76

Copyright law, and the dealings in rights which have developedaround it, have become important to both publishers and authors.77

There are now, however, some serious challenges to the stable andwell-established regime which publishers have come to enjoy in thelast 40 years. The first of these is from the development of new tech-nologies. This has always been a problem. Copyright law has alwayslagged behind the development of technology, and it probably alwayswill. Networked computing, however, offers graver challenges thanearlier technologies. They made reproduction easy; the Internet facil-itates ease of transmission and distribution as well. Electronic pirates,unlike their print publishing predecessors, do not need to find whole-salers or bookshops or develop any kind of formal infrastructure. Allthey need is a Website, and it is virtually impossible to control them.Publishers cannot afford to underestimate the potential of thisproblem. There is a lesson to be learned here from the music industry,which came close to meltdown following the development of theNapster software which allowed virtually unlimited copying anddistribution of music on the Internet. The problem was resolved onlywhen the industry reached a compromise agreement with the teenagestudent who had developed the system.78 The publishing industry is inless danger than the music industry only to the extent that its productis attractive to fewer people.

The second great issue, related to the first, is that the copying ofcertain kinds of material for educational purposes is arguably gettingout of hand. Since 1911 in the United Kingdom, and 1976 in the UnitedStates, the law has allowed what it calls ‘fair dealing’ for educationalpurposes.79 In essence, this permits the copying of a limited amount of


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material for purposes of education or private study by an individual.The limit is defined in terms of a percentage of the whole work, or, inthe case of a periodical, the number of articles permitted from any oneissue. The publishers have never been entirely happy with these provi-sions, and have long suspected that they are abused despite the bestefforts of most librarians to enforce them. A number of factors haveexacerbated the situation in recent years. The demand for photocopiesof articles in scholarly journals has soared because the increased priceof the journals themselves has forced many libraries to cancel subscrip-tions.80 This has reduced sales and forced up prices even further,resulting in further loss of sales. Overgenerous interpretations of thelaw, and some abuse of the rules, may create a danger of destabilisingthe fair dealing system for articles from scholarly journals which is byfar its largest application, although some analysts deny this.81 The issueremains unresolved at a time when electronic document deliverysystems, and the development of electronic journals, are creating otherproblems which need to be addressed.82

Copyright law, properly designed, enforceable and – above all –enforced, is an essential foundation stone for the publishing industry.It may be in danger of withering away, and perhaps even of beingdestroyed. There are those who challenge the very concept, as beinginimical to the free exchange of information, the enhancement ofknowledge, and the personal educational development of individuals.The latter point, in particular, has been, and still is a matter of politicalcontention. As long ago as 1971, the Berne Convention and the UCCwere revised, at the request of many developing countries, to allowpublishers in such countries the right to translate or reprint bookswhich were educationally essential, even if they were unable to makecontact with the copyright owners. The revisions are known as the Paris Amendments, taking their name from the city in which thenegotiations were conducted. In effect, the Paris Amendments are a compulsory licensing scheme, for if the copyright owner could betraced, and if the educational necessity of the book could be demon-strated, it was compulsory to grant a licence for reprinting ortranslation.83 The social logic of this was that developing countriescould not afford the high prices necessarily charged by westernpublishers. The economic logic is that a modest income from acompulsory licence is a better deal for the Western publisher than is a handful of sales, or no sales at all, or widespread piracy. It was an


argument which is perhaps not yet fully accepted by all publishers inthe industrialized world, although the scheme is operational.

It was also argued that the Paris Amendments would help to elimi-nate the problem of piracy. In general, pirated editions were notproduced in the world’s poorest countries, because piracy was inhib-ited by exactly the same factors which were inhibiting the developmentof a legitimate publishing industry. There was a lack of skill, lack ofcapital, and so on. Piracy was in fact a well-organized business, largelybased in certain Asian countries, notably Hong Kong, Singapore,Taiwan, India, Thailand and South Korea. Thence the pirated bookswere exported to poorer countries in Asia and, in particular, to Anglo-phone Africa. It is true that this trade has been significantly reduced,although it has not been entirely eradicated. Whether this is reallybecause of the effect of the Paris Amendments, or because of the morerigid enforcement of domestic legislation (which in some countries,notably Singapore, is indeed draconian) is unclear. But the fact remainsthat there is a more orderly regime in place to facilitate the transfer ofWestern textbooks to poor developing countries.84

It is indeed the orderliness of the regime which is a matter of suchgreat concern to the global publishing industry. Whether the threatcomes from Third World pirates, advocates of unfettered freedom ofinformation, underfunded libraries, or students with a taste for devel-oping subversive software, it remains a threat. There will undoubtedlybe further changes – perhaps radical – in the law of copyright and itsinternational applications in the future, and perhaps in the near future.The pace of technological change means that the gap between it andthe law can only increase.

Conclusion

In this Chapter, we have ranged widely across the world of publishing.The trade which emerged from the printing shops of early modernEurope has become a multimillion dollar global industry. It isembedded in some of the richest and most powerful corporate entitieswhich have ever been created. It is a cause of political contention, andthe subject of international treaties. And yet at the other end of thescale, it is still pursued by dedicated individuals who make a modestliving from producing books which they believe to deserve a wider


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audience. The industry has products which appeal to the student, thebusinessman, the scholar and the leisure seeker. It is highly competi-tive, not only with other industries, but within itself as firms seek togive themselves advantageous positions in the market. And in the lastdecade, it has found itself as part of a larger complex of communica-tion and information industries which have converged around the newand revolutionary presence of the Internet.

Despite all this, at its heart, the publishing industry is still aboutproducing books, magazines and newspapers which enough peoplewant to read to make it profitable to produce them. We have tried toquantify what it produces, but this is only a starting point for the realanalysis. In the following chapters we shall turn to the core issues:what books are produced, who is involved, what they do, and howbooks are delivered to their readers.


1 See above, pp. 20–22.2 See below, pp. 133–37.3 Gordon Graham, ‘Multinational and Third World publishing’, in: Philip

G. Altbach, ed. Publishing and Development in the Third World, London:Hans Zell, 1992, pp. 29–42.

4 See above, pp. 20–21.5 This data is most easily accessible at www.uis.unesco.org/en/stats/

stats0.htm6 The latest data underlying this Table is from 1996. All the data is aggre-

gated from the UNESCO Yearbook (see note 5 above), except that forNorth America (USA) which is from John Sumsion, Claire Creaser andCatherine Hanratty, LISU Annual Library Statistics 1996, Loughborough:Library and Information Statistics Unit, 1996, p. 199.

7 The lowest figure is actually Niger, but that is from 1991.8 For this purpose, ‘North Africa’ is taken to be Algeria, Egypt, Libya,

Morocco and Tunisia.9 See below, p. 31 and above, p. 19, for Egyptian and Spanish-language

publishing, respectively.10 See Ian McGowan, ‘Publishing in China’, PRQ, 15:1, 1999, pp. 20–32; and

David Wei Ze, ‘China’, in: Philip G. Altbach and Edith S. Hoshino, (eds.)International Book Publishing: An encyclopaedia, New York: Garland,1995, pp. 447–61.


11 Again, we must remind ourselves to be cautious with the data; this is asuspiciously round figure from a notoriously secretive country.

12 See Nadia A. Rizk and John Rodenbeck, ‘Egypt’, in: Altbach andHoshino, pp. 607–18.

13 See also above, p. 19, and note 33.14 See Jerry Prillaman, ‘Books in Francophone Africa’, in: Altbach, Publishing

and Development, pp. 199–210; and Diana Newton, ‘Francophone Africa’,in: Altbach and Hoshino, pp. 373–84.

15 The company was Springer Verlag. See Heinz Gotze, ‘The Englishlanguage in scientific publishing’, PRQ, 13:1, 1997, pp. 52–72. See alsoabove, p. 18 and n. 30.

16 www.uis.unesco.org/statsen/statistics/yearbook/tables/CultAndCom/17 For historical reasons, the Canadian book trade has imported American

rather than British editions of titles which are published on both sides ofthe Atlantic. See also above, pp. 21–22.

18 All of these figures are the deficit between exports and imports.19 See Andrew Dalby, A Dictionary of Languages, London: Bloomsbury,

1999. Romansch is discussed on pp. 520–1; this alphabetical listing is auseful basic guide to all languages.

20 See Jonathan Self, ‘The success of Indian writers in English raises a ques-tion: what about books in Indian languages?’, Logos, 9:3, 1998, pp. 162–9.

21 See Paula Youngman Skrelset, ‘A newer world information order: reachingfor greater justice in the global flow of information’, Alexandria, 8:2, 1996,pp. 85–95.

22 Per I. Gedin, ‘Cultural pride: the necessity of indigenous publishing’, in:Altbach, Publishing and Development, pp. 43–53.

23 See John Cowley, ‘The flowering of Scottish publishing’, The Bookseller,4673, 14 July 1995, pp. 20–7.

24 See the comments of one of the most acute and sympathetic of Westernobservers of publishing in developing countries: Philip G. Altbach,‘Publishing in national languages: what Africa could learn from othercontinents’, Logos, 10:2, 1999, pp. 75–80.

25 See J. Timms, ‘African books on the shelves’, LAR, 98:10, 1996, pp. 530–1.26 These are the exemplars cited by Altbach (note 24), but the circumstances

are significantly different from those in most African countries. India’sdeficit balance of trade in books in 1996 was US$10 776 000, andIndonesia’s was US$22 952 000.

27 See Rosalind Chin, ‘Growth in Singapore but problems in distribution’,SP, 17:3, 1986, pp. 235–40.

28 Based on Claire Creaser, Sally Maynard, Sonya White and J. Eric Davies,LISU Annual Library Astatistics 2000, Loughborough: Library andInformation Statistics Unit, 2000, p. 188 (Table 6.5).


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29 See Francis Fishwick, Book Trade Yearbook 2000, London: Publishers’Association, 2000, p. 51 (Table E2) .

30 See below, pp. 141–42.31 Fishwick. p. v.32 Ibid., p. 1 (Table A1). It is important to note that the figure of 5 per cent

has been adjusted to take account of retail price inflation; in other words,this is real growth and not merely a consequence of increased prices.

33 Ibid., p. 3 (Table A3).34 Ibid., pp. 1 (Table A1), 4 (Table A4).35 See the Website of the Association of American Publishers at www.

publishers.org/home/stats/2000prelim.htm. It is important to note that theUK and US data are not strictly comparable. The UK figure (which isequivalent to approximately US$4 548 500 000 at October 2001 exchangerates) is of the value of publishers’ sales from their warehouses. The USdata is the value of retail sales, and includes some categories (such as bookclub sales and some audio-visual materials) which are not in the UKfigures. The point being made here is about rates of growth.

36 Fishwick, p. iv.37 For the data, see ibid., pp. 59–64, itself based on data published by the UK

Department of Trade and Industry. In this paragraph, the figures have beenrounded up or down to the nearest million.

38 Although it is, of course, one of the official languages of the EuropeanUnion.

39 Fishwick, p. 64, again based on DTI data.40 See Paul Richardson, ‘A new dawn, or the morning after in Eastern

Europe’, The Bookseller, 4580, 1 October 1993, pp. 26–30.41 For one such prediction, see Philip Attenborough, ‘The rebirth of

European publishing: an Anglo-European perspective of ‘1992’’, BRQ, 6:4,1990–91, pp. 3–11. Things have improved a little since the early 1990s, butthe statistics quoted in this Chapter show that there is still a huge gapbetween the former USSR and its former satellites and the rest of the conti-nent. In 1999, Poland was the UK’s twenty-second most importantcustomer for books, while Russia was forty-fifth.

42 For the source of these data, see note 35, above.43 See below, pp. 60–68.44 See above, pp. 12–14.45 See John Murpurgo, Allen Lane: King Penguin. London: Hutchinson,

1979, pp. 15–40.46 See below, pp. 44–45.47 See also above, pp. 21–22.48 For the early history of the firm, see Morgan. See also the imprint’s

Website at www.macmillan.com


49 See the company’s Website at www.holtzbrinck.com50 On this point, see below, p. 70.51 See www.houghtonmifflin.com; and Tebbel, pp. 117–24.52 See www.vivendiuniversal.com53 See above, p. 38 and Table 2.5.54 Data from the company’s Website at www.newscorp.com55 Creaser et al., p. 194 (Table 6.9b).56 See www.pearson.com57 Epstein p. 18.58 Ian Paten, ‘Literary publishing within a conglomerate’, in Peter Owen, ed.

Publishing Now, London: Peter Owen, revised ed., 1996, pp. 21–2.59 Richard Curtis, This Business of Publishing: An insider’s view of current

trends and tactics, New York: Allworth Press, 1998, p. 12.60 See Giles de la Mare, ‘Publishing: time present and time future’, in Owen,

1996, pp. 14–15.61 See Albert N. Greco, ‘Shaping the future: mergers, acquisitions, and the

US publishing, communications, and mass media industries, 1990–1995’,PRQ, 12:3, 1996, pp. 5–15.

62 For a classic, if typically extreme, expression of the traditional publisher’sperspective on this, see Stanley Unwin, The Truth about Publishing,London: George Allen & Unwin, 8th ed., revised by Philip Unwin, 1976,pp. 15–19.

63 See Ian Willison, ‘’Massmediaisation’ of the trade book: an Americanexport?’, Logos, 11:3, 2000, pp. 139–43.

64 Eric de Bellaigue, ‘The seven sisters: cousins or clones?’, The Bookseller,4652, 17 February 1995, pp. 62–73; and ibid., 4653, 24 February 1995, pp. 29–31.

65 Richard Cohen, ‘Conglomerates versus small independents’, in: Owen,1996, p. 47.

66 See below, pp. 163–64.67 See below, p. 180.68 For a similar line of argument, see Eric de Bellaigue, ‘Conglomerates and

the book business: what next?’, Logos, 8:3, 1997, pp. 127–34.69 Se above, pp. 11–12.70 For a general history, see Feather, Publishing and Lynette Owen, Selling

Rights, London: Blueprint, 2nd ed., 1994, pp. 1–11.71 For a full, and fully documented, account of all of this, see Feather,

Publishing, pp. 149–72.72 American refusal to accede to Berne, and its long-delayed development of

any form of international copyright law, was a consequence of an attemptto protect the domestic printing and publishing industry against importsof foreign books. The details need not detain us here.


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73 Owen, pp. 113, 118–19.74 For detailed accounts, see ibid., pp. 68–90, 137–65.75 Ibid., pp. 102–09, 208–28, 128–34, 166–73.76 Ibid., pp. 175–79.77 For the authors’ perspective, see below, pp. 112–16.78 See Barry Mahon, ‘The intellectual property industries and the new tech

world’, BIR, 17:4, 2000, pp. 185–90.79 Owen, pp. 166–8.80 For this point, see below, pp. 172–73.81 See Harold Orlans, ‘Fair use in US scholarly publishing’, LP, 12:4, 1999,

pp. 235–44; and Colin Day, ‘The economics of publishing: the conse-quences of library and research copying’, JASIS, 50:14, 1999, pp. 1346–9.

82 D. G. Law, R. L. Weedon and M. R. Sheen, ‘Universities and article copy-right’, LP, 13:3, 2000, pp. 141–50.

83 Owen, pp. 7–8, 110–13, 156–7.84 See Philip G. Altbach, ‘Publishing in the Third World: issues and trends

for the 21st century’, in: Altbach, Publishing and Development, pp. 7–8.


CHAPTER THREE

Forms of Publishing

Introduction

The publishing industry is a significant constituent of the globaleconomy. It is part of the ever increasing knowledge-based element ineconomic activity. It handles intellectual property whose value runsinto hundreds of millions of dollars. It also, however, has physicalproducts. Indeed, the real value of an intellectual property lies essen-tially in the fact that it can be transformed into a piece of merchandise,whether that is a medicine, a movie or a magazine. Intellectual prop-erty, and particularly copyright, lies at the heart of the stability andprofitability of the publishing industry. The law protects the commer-cial interests of publishers and creators alike, and provides an inter-national environment in which they can publish books with a degreeof certainty that the markets for any particular title will be protected,while at the same time there is a highly competitive market betweentitles. A publishing house can only continue in business if it continuesto acquire new titles, and invests in their publication.1 Copyright lawprotects that investment, and allows the publishing house to develop a‘backlist’ of titles which sell beyond their first edition, and whichbecome cheaper to produce and sell as their life is extended.2

The output of the industry takes many forms. Books are, of course,one of these, but neither numerically nor commercially are they the most important. Newspapers and magazines far exceed books inthe numbers of copies printed and sold. Moreover, even among books,

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there are many different kinds, aimed at different markets, and oftenproduced and sold in very different ways. Although we can develop aparadigm of the publishing process,3 it is important to do so against abackground of understanding of the diversity of the industry and therange of its products.

In this Chapter, we shall examine three aspects of the diversity ofthe products of the publishing industry:

• the variety of published material;• the sources of published material;• the formats of published material.

The variety of published material

In considering the basic definition of ‘publishing’, we saw that it iscommonly understood to mean the commercial publishing of printedmatter, with books as the exemplary format.4 Taking that as ourstarting point, we shall examine what these books are, and how theyresemble and differ from each other. We can adopt various forms ofdistinction. Such distinctions might include fiction and non-fiction,general and specialist, hardback and paperback, adult and juvenile,consumer and professional, and so on. We might differentiate bylanguage, by country of origin, by size, or by whether or not the bookis illustrated. All of these distinctions are real and meaningful, althoughthey are in some ways rather different from each other. We shall beginby looking at the variety of books in terms of their subject matter andcontents, which is, after all, the main concern of the reader.

The distinction between fiction and non-fiction is one which isrecognized by publishers, librarians, and readers alike, even thoughthere is some blurring of the lines at the outer edges.5 Fiction remainsone of the largest single categories of published material. In the UnitedKingdom in 1999, some 9730 new works of fiction were published, out of a total of 110 115 titles.6 This figure relates only to adult fiction; fiction aimed specifically at children is among the 9043 chil-dren’s books published in the same year.7 Of course, this is not ahomogeneous group of books. Some of these titles were written bywell-established authors with a ready-made market. The size of suchmarkets is itself enormously variable. For a handful of books it went

60 Forms of Publishing

into tens of thousands even in hardback, and hundreds of thousandsin paperback. For others it might be no more than a few hundred. Thedistinction made in the trade is between ‘popular’ and ‘literary’ fiction,but it is important to understand what this really means. It is only inpart a statement of print runs and sales figures; it is also a statementabout the nature of the book itself. Literary fiction is understood tobe more complex and to have a more serious purpose. It may even bea commercial success, but the author and the publisher are also seekingcritical acclaim, through reviews (especially in certain newspapers) and through the enhancement of the author’s reputation. Popularfiction, sometimes called trade fiction,8 on the other hand, is aimed ata mass market, and seeks no such acclaim. It aspires to amuse and toentertain, and to make a profit.

The regularly published lists of bestselling books give us someinsight into this. If we take the week immediately before Christmas2000, which is the annual climax of consumer book buying in Britain,the 15 top-selling fiction authors in the United Kingdom were almostall well-established popular novelists with long histories of previousbestsellers behind them. The books included fantasy (Terry Pratchett,at the top of the list); thrillers (Patricia Cornwell, Dick Francis); espi-onage, war and similar stories (John Le Carré; Andy McNab; TomClancy); romance (Maeve Binchy; Margaret Atwood) and historicalfiction (Catherine Cookson).9 Yet literary fiction in Britain has a recenthistory of commercial success, all the more welcome to the trade forbeing unexpected.10

Fiction, whether for adults or children, is only one part of the bookpublishing industry. A much greater number of non-fiction titles ispublished every year; in 1999, there were some 99 000 in the UnitedKingdom.11 These can be further divided by their subject matter. Howthis is done depends on the purpose and origin of the classificationsystem. Librarians have developed schemes which break down intosmall and very precise categories. Publishers, however, use broader andless specific divisions than the formal classification schemes. Inevitably,these reflect the commercial potential of books, and are themselvesreflected in the organization of bookshops. In analysing non-fictionpublishing, it is also helpful to try to develop an equivalent to thedistinction between ‘popular’ and ‘literary’ which we used whenconsidering fiction. There are some established categorizations whichhelp us in this, although they are not precise definitions.12

Forms of Publishing 61

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Academic books are generally understood to mean those intendedfor use in colleges and universities by both students and teachers.Within this, however, there are subcategories. The longest print runsand the highest profits are for textbooks, that is books which are usedby students as the basis of their learning in a particular subject. In somecases they are required reading, and indeed students may be expectedto buy them. In any case, they are in great demand, and are bought inquantity by institutional libraries. In many subjects, especially inscience and social science, they will need to be regularly updated tokeep up with developments in the subject or with external change.Textbook publishing is inevitably closely linked with the educationsystem. Changes in curricula, or changes in styles of learning andteaching, create the need for new books, and can decimate the marketfor an established favourite. In Britain, the radical changes in educa-tion in the last 15 years have led to the publishing of completely newschool books, closely linked to the prescriptive National Curriculum.In higher education, change has been more recent and less universal,but even here there have been significant developments. One of theseis the growing trend for academics to create their own courseware,using materials licensed from their respective copyright owners.13

Periods of growth in post-compulsory education have traditionallybeen a happy stamping ground for textbook publishers. When tertiaryeducation mushroomed in the United States after World War II,college textbook publishing became a de facto mass market activity.14

By the end of the twentieth century, this vast market for college text-books was effectively in the hands of eight companies.15 In Britain, the1990s saw a similar boom in the textbook market.16

Textbooks stand at the student end of the academic range; at theother, research monographs are the opposite in almost every respect.Such books contain the results of the author’s original research; theyare, essentially, written by academics for each other, and are unlikelyto be read by anyone else. Print runs are small, and prices are corre-spondingly high.17 The market for such books is to be found almostentirely in academic and specialist libraries, although a few copies maybe bought by individual academics.

Between the textbooks on the one hand and the specialized mono-graph on the other, there is a complete spectrum of academic books.Indeed, in some subjects, such as law and medicine, students typicallywork with the books which they will continue to use throughout their


careers. A category which is widely used in the book trade in bothBritain and the United States to describe some of these books is thatof Science Technology and Medicine, or STM. Although it seems self-explanatory, it is commonly understood to mean the books used bythe professionals and trainee professionals in these fields as opposed tointroductory student textbooks or academic research monographs.Such books are regularly updated and carry great authority. Some ofthe standard works are even known by the names of their long deadoriginal authors, few if any of whose words survive into the currentedition. One of the most spectacular examples is the book still knownas Gray’s Anatomy, which has been familiar to medical students andpractitioners for more than a century.18 STM books tend to be theproducts of specialist publishers with close links to the professionswhich the books serve, as well as to the universities in which newentrants are taught. Journals are an important part of STM publishing,since it is through scholarly journals that scientists typically publishtheir research results. As we shall see, scientific journals are in the fore-front of electronic developments, which in turn means that the futuredirection of STM publishing is surrounded by uncertainty.19

More broadly, STM is a part of the growing category of professionalbooks, a term which is increasingly used in the trade, and especially in bookshops. This includes not only the traditional STM subjects, but also such subjects as law, computing and business studies. The firstof these is older than the publishing industry; the second and third are products of the late twentieth century. But the principle is the same; the books are comprehensive, authoritative and, above all,current. They are used by practitioners, teachers and students. Theyare of little or no interest to the general reader, and will only be foundin those bookshops which cater to a specialist audience. Professionalpublishing is a generally successful sector, and despite the growth ofelectronic formats, it continues to flourish.20

Set against all of these we have what are usually called trade booksor general trade non-fiction, known in the United States as consumerbooks. The distinctions are not entirely clear cut. In some subjects,trade books are used for educational purposes, and books written foreducational purposes have a wider market. In Britain, this is mostobviously true in history and biography, where books by academichistorians reach out to a wider audience as well as to the historicalprofession.21 Trade books are very susceptible to fashion, and indeed


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can be manufactured to meet or even to create popular demand. Instantbook making became a common characteristic of British and Americanpublishing in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Much of it isabout external events or to celebrities both real and fictional.22 Someof it is connected to television series or to trends which have beencreated by television.23 It should not be assumed, however, that all television ‘tie-ins’, as they are known in the trade, are trivial or tempo-rary. There is a long tradition in both Britain and the United States of successful books derived from documentary series, and indeed from overtly educational programmes. In Britain, tie-ins first becameimportant in the late 1960s, and their successors continue to be found in the bestseller lists in the twenty-first century.24 Even radioserializations or adaptations of books, both classic and contemporary, can still have an impact on sales.25 In addition to these media relatedtie-ins, a great deal of general trade publishing is built around thepopularity of other activities such as sport or popular music, withghosted autobiographies of stars in both fields often reaching best-seller lists.

Both academic and trade books cover a wide range of subject matter.The distinction between them is fundamentally that of their intendedreadership and hence their market. In practice, this leads to differentmechanisms of authorship, promotion and marketing, and even ofphysical format. These distinctions are reflected in bookshops.Branches of chain bookstores carry a stock which essentially consistsof general trade books, both fiction and non-fiction. STM and profes-sional books are found in some general bookshops in larger towns andcities where there is a market for them. Textbooks and academic books,however, are typically sold in shops which specialize in serving theacademic market, usually to be found on or very near a college oruniversity campus. One way of identifying general trade non-fiction isto look at what is displayed prominently in a general bookshop, or, alittle more systematically, to consider the bestseller lists which arepublished regularly in both the trade press and the newspapers.26

There is, however, some stock which is common to almost all book-shops. This is particularly true of the very important category ofreference books.27 This is, of course, a blanket term. It traditionallyincludes dictionaries, encyclopaedias and atlases, as well as someannuals. There are indeed few bookshops which do not carry a few ofeach of these. While reference books are among the most common


currency of the retail book trade, reference book publishing is highlyspecialized. An authoritative reference book may be many years in the making and involve a team of scores of specialists.28 The rewardscan, however, be very large. Some of the bestselling books of all timeare reference books, although they rarely appear in the published lists of bestsellers. English language dictionaries, especially thoseintended for non-native speakers, are particularly competitive andlucrative, to the benefit of several British publishing houses.29 Therewas a proliferation of reference books in the second half of the twen-tieth century, not merely in terms of the number of titles published,but in the range of subject matter which they covered. There are dictionaries and encyclopaedias of everything from anthropology tozoology. At a more specialized level, there are bibliographies, abstractsand citation indexes. At the opposite end of the spectrum there areannual directories of sports, guides to popular movies and bookswhich list the best hotels and restaurants. Although some of this isprimarily for the library market, much is aimed at the student or thegeneral public, and indeed some of the popular annuals regularlyfeature in the bestseller lists.30

Reference book publishing has been in the forefront of change in theindustry in the last decade. As we shall see, it was in the reference fieldthat the electronic alternatives to print first became established in bookpublishing. It is now widely accepted that in the long term majorworks of reference will be electronic, and that print-on-paper will notbe a viable economic alternative.31 Almost all reference books needrevisions or additions eventually; where these are both substantial and regular, electronic publication is rapidly becoming the norm. Aparticularly forceful example is that of Walford’s Guide to ReferenceMaterials, one of the flagship publications of the [UK] LibraryAssociation. As its title suggests, it is itself a guide to the field of refer-ence books. In future, it will be published electronically, and can thusbe kept more current than was ever possible in the past.32 A moregenerally familiar example is perhaps that of Grove’s Dictionary ofMusic, which began publication in 1877; a much heralded revisededition was published in 1980 but libraries can now access the latestversion online, which seems likely to be the way of the future.33

Children’s books are a distinctive part of the trade. Many of themare produced by publishers who specialize in them, or by imprints inconglomerates which are dedicated to them, such as Penguin’s Puffin


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Books. Books for children differ greatly among themselves, not leastin the age-range at which they are aimed. This varies from simplebooks for those learning to read to complex fiction intended forteenagers. At the younger end, a good children’s book is well-illustrated, colourful, written in simple language and printed in largetype. Beyond that, however, the same rules apply as apply to adultbooks: fiction must have an engaging story and be about interestingpeople; non-fiction must be accurate, well-presented and have someintellectual content. The trade attaches great importance to children’sbooks, since it is after all children who will be their future customers.After a long period when it was regarded as a rather dull area of thetrade, children’s publishing has flourished since the 1980s. In thatdecade, it bucked the general trend of slow or declining sales, and inthe 1990s it has shared to the full in the success of British retail book-selling. In the United States, as we have seen, it was among the fewbright spots in terms of sales.34

Of course, many of these books are not bought by children at all,but by adults buying them for their own or other people’s children,and by school and public libraries. School library purchasing sufferedbadly in the 1980s, although in Britain is has recovered since 1997, andin the United States parental purchasing seems to have been an effec-tive counterbalance to the decline of library spending in the 1990s.35

As in all areas of publishing, there has been a growing emphasis oncorporate issues, not least on the need to make substantial profits, andon tie-ins with other media. To some extent, however, at least in theUnited States, the success of publishing for children seems to be partic-ularly beneficial to smaller and independent publishers. The top 15 percent of American publishers showed a decline of some 8 per cent inchildren’s book sales in 1996 against an growth of 11 per cent in thesector as a whole.36 It seems possible that the larger houses have beenless able to react quickly to rapidly changing tastes, and not least tothe need to make a shift towards multimedia products which areparticularly attractive in this market.37

Encouraging children to make the transition from being given booksto buying them is crucial for the trade. In the last 30 years or so, adistinctive market has developed for what the trade now calls youngadult books, that is titles (especially fiction) designed to appeal to ateenage market. They deal with serious and relevant themes, amongwhich drugs and sex are probably the most prominent, and are written


and illustrated in a style which is consciously contemporary.38 In non-fiction, the move to project-based work and student-centred learningat a comparatively early age has also created a market for well-writtenand appropriate books which fall somewhere between the traditionaltextbook and the book aimed at the school library. Publishers havemade mistakes in trying to develop the young adult genre,39 and thereis continuing evidence of both a decline in reading among teenagersand an emphasis on quantity rather than quality in publishing forthem.40 Even so, the young adult sector continues to attract publishersas a long-term investment in developing an audience for books.

Perhaps the most obvious and visible distinction between books is that between hardbacks and paperbacks. Although paper-coveredbooks have a history of at least 200 years, the modern paperback isgenerally reckoned to date from the foundation of Penguin Books in1936. The truly innovative aspect of Penguins was actually not theirphysical form, nor even their low price, but the fact that they were soldin many outlets other than bookshops.41 The immediate success ofPenguins led to many imitations on both sides of the Atlantic. By themid-1950s, the modern mass market paperback was well established,although it was still essentially used for reprints of books previouslypublished in hardback. The typical sequence of events was that a bookwas published in hardback, then reprinted in paperback some six to 12months later when the hardback had been reviewed and the editionmore or less sold out. This has gradually changed. By the 1980s, manypublishers saw hardback fiction as little more than a trial run for thepaperback; hardbacks were more likely to be reviewed in the presti-gious newspapers, and would therefore draw attention to the title. Butit was assumed that hardback sales would be almost entirely tolibraries, and that sales to the general public would be of the paper-back a few months later. The interval between hardback and paperbackgradually diminished.

Despite a revival in sales of hardback fiction in the UK in the 1990s,the paperback is now the normal medium for fiction publishingthroughout the English-speaking world. Some literary fiction does not reach paperback, but for popular fiction the hardback has all but vanished except in libraries. Even libraries carry large stocks ofpaperback novels, partly because they are cheap (and can therefore be replaced at comparatively short intervals) and partly because theyare seen as less formal and hence more attractive to readers. In the


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United States, the total sales of adult, juvenile and mass market paper-backs in 2000 were worth US$4213 million; adult and juvenilehardbacks stood at US$3888 million.42 Comparable data for the UnitedKingdom is not readily available, but in 1999 sales of the top 100 best-selling paperbacks had a total retail value of £1376 million.43

Books are not the only products of the publishing industry. Themost commercially important of the others are magazines and news-papers. Their common characteristic is that they are published atregular intervals, which may vary from daily to two or three times a year. The periodicity of magazines is at the longer end of this spectrum, with a typical interval being weekly or monthly, while newspapers are normally either daily or, at most, weekly. Systematiccategorization of periodical publications (a phrase which usefullyencompasses all of this output) is not easy, but an empirical approachallows us to offer a pragmatic analysis.44

Consumer magazines are to be found in newsagents shops, onairport and railway station bookstalls, and in some bookshops. Thevariety of subjects and titles is huge, although the categories adoptedby the larger chain newsagents and bookshops give some insight in thetrade’s perception of this aspect of the business. Historically, maga-zines for women have been among the bestsellers; indeed some of themstill are. Magazines are even more closely linked to fashion and topopular taste than are books. The traditional women’s magazines, and their contemporary equivalents aimed at a younger market, fadealmost imperceptibly into ‘lifestyle’ magazines which deal with suchmatters as home improvement, gardening and cookery. Like somebooks in these fields, some magazine titles are associated with partic-ular television programmes or personalities. Contemporary magazinesaimed specifically at men have a more recent origin, which can betraced to the publication of GQ in 1988. They proliferated in the1990s, and are now an important sector of the market. Magazines forboth men and women are not homogenous categories; they varygreatly in style, content and target audience. In seeking their audienceamong one or other gender, however, they typify the magazinemarket’s search for niches and sub-niches. The evidence for this lieseverywhere on the newsagents’ shelves.

Special interest magazines cover almost every conceivable humanactivity. Among the most prominent are those which relate to hobbies,some of which (most obviously computing) fade into professional and


business activities. There are magazines for train spotters, stampcollectors, bird watchers and photographers. There are magazines forteenagers, for old people, for ethnic minorities, for adherents of partic-ular religions and for sexual minorities. There are magazines whichtread along the boundary of the legally acceptable in terms of languageand (especially) images. There are also magazines of the utmost seriousness, such as the great American news magazines, Time andNewsweek, their European equivalents such as Der Speigel, and thedifferent but equally influential and authoritative British weeklies suchas The Economist, The New Statesman and The Spectator. Literarymagazines also abound; some are small and privately circulated, but such journals as The Literary Review or The Times LiterarySupplement are found in most branches of the chain newsagents. Inshort, the magazine industry is at least as diverse as the bookpublishing industry, and is far larger in terms of the number of itemssold and the number of people who buy and read them.

Amongst all of these magazines, however, the most widely purchasedcategory is actually those which provide listings of television pro-grammes. Sky TV Guide, What’s on TV, Radio Times and TV Times areamong the handful of magazines which are read by more than 5 percent of the British population. Sky TV Guide, with a 12 per cent read-ership, heads the list. The others which break the 5 per cent barrierinclude only two typically consumer titles: FHM (8 per cent) andWoman’s Own (6 per cent).45 We must, however, distinguish betweencopies circulated and copies sold; many of the most widely circulatedmagazines are either free of charge or sent automatically to membersof particular organizations. This was true of nine of the top 10 mostwidely circulated British magazines in 2000; the list was headed by theAA Magazine, sent to all 4.4 million members of that organization.46

Seven of the others were free magazines from chain stores (five of themsupermarkets); and two others were for subscribers to a service (SkyTelevision) or an organization (The National Trust). The only pricedmagazine was What’s on TV, a weekly which sold an average of 1.7 million copies. Only four other magazines actually sold more thanone million copies.47 Around 500 000 was typical for the most popularwomen’s magazines. One or two lifestyle magazines were around the400 000 mark, although 300 000 or less was more typical. Special inter-est magazines – even for the most popular interests – rarely exceeded100 000. An exception was the best selling computer magazine (PC


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World, 128 000). The bestselling sports magazine was Horse andHound, followed by Angling Times (67 000 and 60 000 respectively).All of these were substantially exceeded by The Economist (400 000),and New Scientist (136 000), and even Private Eye (175 000).48

Weeklies and monthlies with circulations which range from manymillions to a few thousands are the magazine publishing equivalent ofgeneral trade books, and they share the slightly fuzzy borderlinebetween academic and general which we noted in such fields ashistory.49 The equivalent of STM and professional books are to befound in the academic journals of which there are tens of thousands oftitles, almost all of them unknown to the general public and indeed to most academics outside their particular field. They are the lifebloodof the research community, commercially of great importance, andundergoing revolutionary change. No study of publishing can ignorethem. Some academic journals are published by commercial pub-lishers, as we shall see,50 but many are published by learned societieseither directly or through university presses or other publishinghouses. A very few have a wider circulation than the academic world,and have a place in the public sphere as well as in the scientific commu-nication system. Perhaps the best known of these is the Britishperiodical Nature, a weekly published by Macmillan, as it has beensince its foundation in 1869; it is the traditional place for British scien-tists to put the first notice of their discoveries, and is regularly reportedby the mainstream printed and broadcast media. The American equiv-alent, Scientific American, is even better known, and can sometimes be found on news-stands and in book shops.51

The papers in academic journals are written by academics for eachother. They are typically based on original research, or contain a signif-icant and authoritative reinterpretation of existing knowledge. In duecourse, a small number of these papers will become key works in theirrespective fields. A few contain results which will be incorporated intothe next generation of textbooks. Rather more will be widely readwithin the discipline – including perhaps by undergraduates – for a fewyears before they are superseded. The vast majority will be read onlyby a handful of fellow specialists. Academics set great store by all ofthis. Indeed, their career progression, particularly in the sciences, isalmost wholly dependent on journal publication.52 Many measureshave been developed which attempt to quantify the impact of suchwork, including indexes of the number of times a paper is cited in


subsequent publications, analyses of how papers are selected for publi-cation, and the circulation figures of the journals themselves. All ofthese are interesting, and all are fraught with problems.

As publications, the distinguishing characteristic of almost allcommercially published academic journals is that they have tiny circulations and extremely high prices. In the sciences, medicine andlaw, subscriptions in excess of US$10 000 are not unknown.53 Priceincreases are running at an annual rate of about 10 per cent, and havedone so for a decade or more.54 The trend to higher prices has been exacerbated by the proliferation of journals. As scientists havebecome ever more specialized, new journals have been created for new specialisms, sometimes catering to only a few hundred peoplearound the world. When such journals are published by commercialpublishers, prices are inevitably extremely high. To some extent, theprices of mainstream scientific journals have been held at more reason-able levels because many of them are published by learned societies. Ineffect, this subsidises the publication, since membership is a profes-sional necessity (or even a formal requirement) for people in the field, and their subscriptions help to support the costs of the journal.Such journals are also, of course, available to non-members and – mostimportantly – to libraries, on payment of a subscription. Although itis organizations like the Royal Society of Chemistry or the Instituteof Physics which are normally quoted in this context, there are similar bodies in the humanities of which the largest in the ModernLanguages Association in the United States, whose journal is has longbeen a cornerstone of the academic publication system in literary andlinguistic studies.55 Standing between the commercial publishers and the learned societies, and sharing some characteristics of both, arethe university presses, although they have had their own problems in recent years and their journals are often almost as expensive as thosewhich are purely commercial enterprises.56 Finally, there are a fewexamples of not-for-profit companies and co-operatives where thescientists have become their own publishers.57

Scholars, scientists and librarians all share with publishers part of the blame for the uncontrolled growth of both the numbers and the cost of academic journals. The whole system of academic appointmentand promotion, and in the United Kingdom the use of publications as a means of evaluating and subsequently funding university depart-ments, has forced academics to publish more. This has included the


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development of the infamous practice of ‘salami slicing’ whereby a pieceof research which deserves publication will be presented in two or threepapers rather than one to increase the apparent output of the authors. At the same time, librarians have submitted to pressure from academicsand researchers to subscribe to the journals, and to the indexes andabstracts which give access to them. A vicious circle has been created,from which there is no very obvious escape until the parties involvedcan work together more closely. As we shall see, the development ofelectronic journals may offer precisely this opportunity.58

Newspapers are somewhat more easily categorized than eitherpopular magazines or learned journals. They are almost invariablyeither daily or weekly. In Britain, ‘daily’ newspapers are actuallypublished on Monday to Saturday inclusive; the Sunday papers areweeklies.59 In other countries, practice varies, some following theBritish pattern, and other following the American practice of seven-day-a-week newspapers. There are both national and local or regionalnewspapers; in Britain the distinction is clear, but this is less true in theUnited States. Apart from the comparatively recent USA Today, thereare no national newspapers in the United States in the British sense,although some of the major city newspapers are available in manyother major cities, and carry weight nationally and indeed interna-tionally.60 In Britain, as in most European countries, local or regionalnewspapers are precisely that, being dominated by local news, andcirculating almost entirely in their area of origin. This may be a largecity, a small town, or a region or subregion. British local newspapersare typically published in the afternoon or evening if they are dailies;in many smaller places they are weeklies.

The national newspapers are an important element in the British andinternational publishing industry. The groups which now dominate the British national press are major players in the wider world of bookand magazine publishing. Some of them also have extensive holdingsin regional and local newspaper publishing as well. Traditionally,however, titles have been allowed a large degree of editorial indepen-dence, especially in determining what, if any, political allegiance theywill adopt. There have indeed been examples of newspapers from thesame group supporting different parties in British general elections,although powerful proprietors can and do exercise some influence61.Local newspapers typically do not take a partisan political line, exceptperhaps on some local issues.


Newspapers can be categorized by content as well as by periodicityor market. In Britain in the last 30 years this has also come to be asso-ciated with their physical format. The broadsheets lie at the serious end of the spectrum; papers such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph,or The Observer, print in six or seven columns on each of 20 or more pages, and usually in more than one section. They carry news,comment and features covering a wide range of subjects, and take bothdomestic and foreign politics seriously. Circulations vary from the onemillion or so of The Daily Telegraph, to less than a quarter of that forThe Independent.62 To put these figures in context, only 54 per cent of adult (over 16) Britons regularly read a daily newspaper in 2000. The Sun was read by just over one-fifth of British adults (21 per cent;but 24 per cent of men and only 17 per cent of women). At the otherend of the scale just 1 per cent read The Independent and The FinancialTimes. In the mid-market, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail had13 per cent and 12 per cent readerships respectively.63

The British national newspapers which are not broadsheets aresometimes characterized as tabloids. They have a page size which isapproximately half of that of the broadsheets, make much more use ofphotographs and other graphic material, and have more emphasis onfeatures and sport than on what broadsheet journalists would regardas ‘hard’ news. There are, however, real differences between thetabloids themselves. At least two of them are targeted at a conserva-tive middle-class market, and there is considerable evidence for themsharing some of their readers with some of the broadsheets. These areThe Daily Mail and The Daily Express; the nearest equivalent on thepolitical left is The Daily Mirror. These papers are quite different fromthose which are increasingly referred to as the red tops, typified by The Sun on weekdays, and its Sunday stablemate The News of theWorld.64 They carry comparatively little hard news, and a great deal ofgossip and scandal about celebrities from the media and from theworld of sport. They rely heavily on photographs to fill their largenumbers of pages, and are a major outlet for the photographers(paparazzi) who specialize in unofficial pictures of the rich andfamous. Although they still regard themselves as influential,65 there issome evidence that what influence they had has declined. Certainlyreadership is in long-term decline. In 1981, 76 per cent of men and 68 per cent of women in Britain regularly read a daily newspaper; by1998/99, this had fallen to 60 per cent and 51 per cent respectively.66


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In Table 3.1, the data for the circulation and readership of thenational dailies have been brought together. They suggest a number ofcharacteristics of the British newspaper industry. One of the mostimportant is illustrated by the 21 per cent who read The Sun, but areclearly also readers of other papers. Multiple readership (and perhapspurchase) is a significant factor in the industry. For some papers, circu-lation figures are boosted by mass sales which do not necessarily leadto reading. These include sales to hotel chains, train operatingcompanies and airlines which provide large numbers of complemen-tary newspapers to their customers; The Daily Telegraph, and TheFinancial Times are probably particular beneficiaries of this practice.

The study of the publication, content and influence of newspapersis a major subject in its own right. In the context of publishing, espe-cially in Britain, its significance lies in its integration into the industryas a whole. The conglomerates encompass newspapers as well as maga-zine and book publishing. Although they are usually run as separatebusinesses, all these aspects of publishing sustain each other within thegroup. They contribute to profits, and hence to the commercialstability of the company, especially if its share price is quoted on theStock Exchange. They share some of the same retail outlets, and hencesupport the market penetration of the trade as a whole. They also share


Table 3.1 UK Daily newspapers: circulation and readership 2000–2001

Title Average circulation Readership (no. of copies) (percentage of population)

The Sun 3 498 974 21Daily Mail 2 415 943 12The Mirror 2 179 105 13Daily Telegraph 1 018 088 5Daily Express 974 158 5The Times 718 536 4Financial Times 486 366 1Guardian 399 295 2Independent 224 832 1Star 96 999 3

(Sources: see notes 46, 62)

problems: competition from new media, the declining popularity ofreading among younger people, and an ageing readership. They haveto be taken into account in any study of the British publishingindustry.

The sources of published material

Everything which is published has been written by someone. This istrue of an official report, an anonymous paragraph of parochial newsin a local newspaper, a scientific paper or a book of poems. In commonunderstanding, however, we recognize some writers as ‘authors’, andput them in a rather different category; the interactions betweenauthors and publishers is one of the key relationships in the industry,which we shall consider in more detail in Chapter Four. Other writershave a very different status from that of the single author writing awork of imaginative literature or a general trade book. Some do notdeal directly with publishers, working through editors of journals or of monograph series. Some are actually employed by the publisher,as is the case with many journalists on newspapers and magazines,although some are freelances who submit their work to many differentpublications. Yet others are not writing in a personal capacity, but asemployees of an organization or corporate body. Some items arewritten by committees or less formal groups of people, and cannot beattributed to an individual in any meaningful way. Indeed, it may be undesirable to make such an attribution. All of these models makea contribution to the output of published works. In this section, weshall try to analyse in greater detail the sources of publications, so that in Chapter Four we can study the process by which works areactually put into the public domain by publishers.

The most familiar model is, of course, the single author, although itis rarely the case that he or she does not have some input from others,even in the case of creative writers.67 Moreover, despite the familiarityof the single author model, it is by no means as predominant as might be thought. In Table 3.2, various modes of authorship are setagainst their typical products. The listing of products, however, is byno means exhaustive. To take some obvious examples from the firsttwo lines, there are single-authored textbooks, and some general tradenon-fiction with two authors. There are also some very complicated


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relationships which are disguised by this simplified overview. Forexample, the individual papers in a scientific journal are typicallymulti-authored; to that extent, therefore, they have some commoncharacteristics with multi-authored items published in book form.Newspapers and consumer magazines, presented here as edited prod-ucts of different kinds (as they are) also have some important commonfeatures in terms of authorship. For example, some writers are full-time employees of the publication (like many newspaper reporters),while others are freelances who may submit work unsolicited, or(more often) be commissioned to write particular pieces on an occa-sional or regular basis. In other words, we are now focusing not on theform of the publication, but on the creation of the work itself.

The relationships implicit in Table 3.2 are complex. Between theauthor and the product stands the publisher. The role of the publisher,as we suggested in Chapter One, is to take the work of the former and to convert it into the latter.68 We can now see, however, that thisis far from simple. We shall explore this further from the author’sperspective in Chapter Four.69 Here we shall consider the origins of


Table 3.2 Authors and their products

Mode of authorship Typical product

Single author Fiction, Poetry, General trade non-fiction

Two or more named authors STM book, School or college textbook

Multiple named authors with a Conference proceedings, Collection named editor of essays, Consumer magazine

Multiple named authors with Scientific or scholarly journala named editor and named editorial advisors

Multiple named and anonymous Newspaperauthors with an anonymous editor

Anonymous text with introduction Company report, Government or endorsement by a named person publications

Anonymous text Official documents

publications in terms of the individuals and organizations which areresponsible for them, and of their intended purpose.

Even the book written by a single author is, like almost everythingin publishing, less simple than it may seem. Some books are writtenand then simply submitted to one or more publishers. Some publishersquite explicitly say that they do not consider such material. Others atleast claim to look at it, although the reading is typically cursory andthere is general agreement that only a tiny percentage of unsolicitedmaterial is seriously considered for publication.70 The acceptance, oreven the serious reading, of unsolicited submissions declined rapidlyin the second half of the twentieth century; by the early 1980s a signif-icant percentage of American editors was reported as having acceptedno such material in a particular year.71 Fiction – especially first novels– and poetry are probably the only categories of book which have evena moderate chance of reaching print by this route. Unsolicited materialwhich reaches print is found more often in learned and scientific jour-nals than on the shelves of bookshops. The career structure of theacademic world, especially in the United States and Britain, is criticallydependent on publication, and might even be argued to have encour-aged unnecessary publication.72 Papers are typically written by thoseengaged in a research project and then submitted to an appropriatejournal where they are considered by the editor and by independentreferees.73

More often than not, a book is commissioned; for non-fiction thisis almost universal, and even for fiction is becoming more common.74

There is a fundamental difference between writing a book specula-tively and writing one to commission; in the latter case, there arewell-defined parameters of length, subject matter, level and timescale.In other words, it is an activity in which a professional editor expectsa degree of professionalism from the author. The relationship betweenthem is normally regulated by a formal contract.75 It is also increas-ingly the case that there is an intermediary between the authors andthe publisher in the person of a literary agent who represents theauthor. Although agents have existed since the late nineteenth century,their role has been enhanced by recent changes in the publishingindustry. The great multinational corporations which now dominatetrade publishing in the English-speaking world can seem formidableindeed to the individual author, especially if he or she is a novice, and this can lead to unhealthy tensions arising in part from authors’


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ignorance of how publishing works.76 Agents can help to redress thebalance; a growing number of authors (and not only of fiction) makeuse of them in order to maximize the financial benefits they gain fromtheir writing.77 Publishers have not always been enamoured of agents(William Heinemann refused to have them in his office), and there isstill evidence of strained relationships as they take on more and moreof the advisory role which once rested with the publisher’s editor.78

It is through the commissioning process that complex multi-authored books can be brought into existence. The most simple case islittle more than an extension of the practice of commissioning an indi-vidual author. Two or more authors are contracted to write a book forwhich they have equal responsibility. How that works is largely forthem to determine, often to the point of designating one of theirnumber to deal with the publisher. Commissioning an author to edit or compile a multi-authored book is far more complicated, andeffectively delegates some of the commissioning process. A volumeconsisting of 10 or 12 chapters, each by a different specialist, hasbecome a typical product of academic publishing in the last 20 years.The normal practice is that this is commissioned by the publisher fromthe volume editor, part of whose job is to find the authors of the indi-viduals chapters and effectively to commission them on behalf of thepublishing house. The editor is then the only person who deals withboth the publisher and the authors; he or she has effectively taken onpart of the role of the publisher’s editor. Some works are even morecomplex; encyclopaedias and other reference books, for example, arealmost invariably multi-authored, sometimes anonymously and some-times with signed contributions. In the academic world, this can leadto complications when individual contributors need to claim credit fortheir own contributions.79

Although all printed matter has been written by someone, much ofit is not attributed to an individual. Perhaps the most familiar exampleof this is in newspapers, where many stories are simply attributed topress agencies, to ‘our correspondent’ (although this is less commonnow than 20 or 30 years ago) or simply to no-one (which means thatit was written by someone on the staff, usually a junior or traineereporter). Other items are anonymous in the sense that an organiza-tion rather than a named individual or group of individuals acceptsresponsibility for what is written.80 This does not mean that no-one isnamed. The annual report of a company or a public body may well


have a foreword over the name of the head of the organization. Thisis even true of some government policy documents which have apreface by (or at least signed by) the relevant minister. The bulk of thetext, however, is a genuinely collaborative effort, drafted by manypeople in different parts of the organization, brought together by asmall team or perhaps by a single individual, and approved by theBoard or its equivalent before publication. In this way, it becomes the corporate responsibility of the organization, which then owns thecopyright. It is quite possible that none of the ‘authors’ can identifymore than a few phrases of which he or she was the originator. Thework was, of course, done as an employee rather than as an individual;no payment is received beyond the usual salary, and no rights accrueto the ‘authors’.

There are publications in which no names appear at all. Perhaps thelargest and most important category is that of official publications produced by governments at all levels, by international organizations,and by similar bodies. These are collectively referred to as ‘official pub-lications’, because they represent the views of the organization, not ofany one individual within it.81 Official publications, and publicationsby semi-official bodies,82 are not without significance in the commer-cial world of publishing and bookselling. Some of them sell very wellindeed, and are available through bookshops; a familiar British exampleis The Highway Code, published by HMSO and a consistent best-seller.83 Although most official publications are of interest only to specialized libraries, some are sold through normal channels, and bringin revenue which helps to sustain the trade in general books.

The formats of published material

Published works originate in many different contexts. To understandthe publishing industry, and the process of communication which itfacilitates, it is necessary to take an inclusive view. A large generalbookshop may carry about 20 000 titles at any one time, most of themin a small number of copies. A major bookselling chain may have upto 50 000 in its shops and warehouses. These are large numbers,84 butthey have to be set alongside the book production statistics which weconsidered in Chapter Two. Beyond the general trade books, bothfiction and non-fiction, which we see on the shelves of the bookshops


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are tens of thousands of publications which will reach their marketsand the audiences through entirely different channels. They come fromdifferent places, and travel along different routes.

There are, of course, a few common characteristics between allprinted items. The most important lies in the very medium itself. Thepaper and print industries are large-scale industrial activities. Only asmall percentage of this is accounted for by book printing, which isconcentrated in a few specialized firms. Rather more can be ascribedto the printing of newspapers and magazines, but the bulk of theprinting industry is actually concerned with promotional materials andpackaging. Regardless of the sources of the material, however, andregardless of the channels through which it reaches the end-user, allpublished material does pass through a printing press, and most passesthrough some sort of binding machine. In that way, the hiddenindustry of official publications, report literature and the like helps tosupport the visible industry of commercial publishing.

In the Western world, print on paper has been the normal form ofpublishing for over 500 years, and for all practical purposes its onlyform for over 300. During that time, while there have been changes inthe technologies of typesetting, printing and binding, the fundamentalform of the book has not changed. A book printed in 1501 is recog-nizably the same object as a book printed in 2001, despite thedifferences of typography and design. The visual and physical conven-tions of the book have changed, but the fundamental mechanical andeconomic principles have not. Since about 1980, however, the printedbook has been subjected to a serious challenge on its own ground forthe first time. New media have, of course, been developed over manydecades; the cinema, radio and television each in turn have becomecompetitors to books in the leisure market and, to a lesser extent, inthe educational market as well. None, however, challenged the corefunctions and characteristics of printed books on their own territory:continuous and complex narrative, both instantaneous and long-termaccessibility, ease of use, comparatively low costs of production andpurchase, and so on. In the last two decades of the twentieth century,it was precisely that challenge which emerged. First in the educationalworld, and then more generally, digital media in various formats were brought onto the market. From CD-ROM in the 1980s to openpublication on the World Wide Web in the late 1990s, we can trace arevolution in the storage and communication of information which


does indeed present a real threat at the very heart of the publishingindustry. No survey of the forms of publishing would be completewithout examining both print and the alternatives to print as they areused in the industry at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

We need not concern ourselves with the technologies themselves.Publishing is about products, not production. We do, however, needto examine the economics of the production processes, for these arecentral to the industry.

The economics of print production have been well understoodwithin the publishing industry for centuries. Printed publication is a form of mass production; every title is produced in a number of identical copies. It therefore benefits from one of the fundamentalprinciples of mass production: more equals cheaper. This equationdepends on the fact that certain costs are fixed regardless of the numberof identical products which flow off the production line. Each itemgenerates some additional cost (for materials and storage), but the fixedcosts can be spread across all the items which are produced. Figure 3.1presents a simple analysis of the elements which constitute the costs of production, sales and distribution of a printed publication.


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FIXED COSTSEditorialDesign

TypesettingProof-reading

Marketing

NON-FIXED COSTSPaper

PrintingBindingStorage

DistributionSales

Royalties

Figure 3.1 Costs in Publishing

The difference between fixed and non-fixed costs is one of the basic elements in the economics of publishing. The second is that newbooks do not generate revenue until almost all of these costs, in bothcategories, have been incurred. In this, book publishing differs signif-icantly from most other mass production industries. A comparisonwith the archetypal example – the motor car – will illustrate the point.The car manufacturer’s equivalent of the publishers’ fixed costs inFigure 3.1 are such things as the mechanical and aesthetic design of thevehicle, the retooling of the production line, the launch of a new modeland so on. All of these are incurred before a revenue stream is created.After the launch of the car, however, the production line continues toproduce identical cars, sometimes for many years, and there is a simi-larly continuous stream of sales, generating revenue which supportsthe continued production of the model. The non-fixed costs (such asthe raw materials for manufacturing the car, the salaries of the workerswho make it, distribution costs, and so on) can thus be offset againstsimultaneous revenue from identical cars which had been produced atearlier points in the production run. In the case of publishing, however,this is not true.

A typical book is printed once only, and one of the skills of thepublisher is in accurately estimating the number of copies that can besold. The print run for most general trade books hardbacks is prob-ably about 5000 copies; for some scholarly monographs, it may be aslittle as 500. For a few titles expected to sell exceptionally well, it canrise to more than 10 000. For paperbacks, the figures are of coursemuch larger, with some mass market paperbacks being printed inbatches of 100 000 or more. Whether the print run is 100, 1000, 10 000or 100 000, the fixed costs will be incurred before a single copy is sold,and so will many of the non-fixed costs such as materials (paper andbinding), the direct costs of production, much of the initial distribu-tion costs (to the warehouse), and almost all of the direct costs ofpromotion and sales (such as advertising). The consequences are illus-trated in Table 3.3.

The data in Table 3.3 is for illustrative purposes only, but serves toemphasize the inverse relationship between the cost per copy and thenumber of copies printed. On this basis, the minimum revenue whichthe publisher must generate to cover the fixed costs only of 1000 copiesis more than 60 units of currency; if 10 000 copies are printed and canbe sold, the figure falls to more than 6. In practice, of course, the


calculation is both more complicated and less precise, for a number ofother considerations must be factored in. Among the issues to be takeninto account are such questions as whether the number of copies soldwill increase if the price is kept lower, and therefore whether printing2000 copies will result in, say, 1600 sales at more than 40 units of currency, which would yield a revenue of more than 64 000. The publisher will also consider ways of reducing the fixed costs. A spe-cialized book will need only limited specialized advertising, and themarketing costs will thus be reduced, perhaps to not much more thanthe cost of listing the work in a catalogue and sending out a compara-tively small number of complementary copies for review. Typesettingand proof-reading costs can be reduced by insisting that authors submitcamera-ready copy on disks, and so on. Whatever is done, however, the fundamental equation remains: the more copies that are printed, thesmaller the cost per copy.85

We must bear this principle in mind as we consider the formats inwhich printed matter appears. The most basic, and most familiar, vari-ation is between hardback and paperback. The hardback is the mosttraditional form of the book, and is still regarded as the norm by most publishers, many booksellers and librarians and some readers.There is an assumption that all new books will be published in hardback before a paperback edition appears. Indeed, the conventionalview in the book trade was that no book would be successful if it did not appear first in a hardback edition. This assumption was partlyeconomic and partly a matter of prestige and prejudice. It is certainly


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Table 3.3 Fixed costs and copy costs

Activity Cost Copy cost – Copy cost – (units of 1000 copies 10000 copies

currency) (units of currency) (units of currency)

Editorial 20 000 20 2Design 2500 2.5 0.25Typesetting 15 000 15 1.5Proof-reading 2 500 2.5 0.25Marketing 20 000 20 2TOTAL 60 000 60 6

true that it is possible to make a decent profit from sales of a print runof 2000 hardbacks. It is also true that hardbacks are – or were untilrecently – more likely to be the subject of serious reviews than paper-backs. Gradually, however, from the late 1970s onwards, hardbackscame to be seen by some publishers as a means of market testing a newtitle or author. The paperback rights became a significant element in therevenues of both the hardback publisher and the author.86 In the early1980s, it was still axiomatic that original publication of fiction orgeneral trade non-fiction in paperback was likely to fail.87 By the endof that decade, it was estimated that only between 60 and 70 per centof all new titles were published in hardback, and the proportion of orig-inal publishing in paperback was increasing rapidly.88 At the same time,librarians were increasingly turning to paperbacks, partly for reasonsof cost, but partly because it was felt that they were more attractive toclients. It has recently been argued that full-price hardback publicationof fiction is realistic only for established authors. Although that maybe contestable (not least by observation in bookshops), the argumentillustrates the dramatic change in perceptions over a comparativelyshort period of time.89 Even the social and cultural prejudice in favourof the hardback has largely vanished. Paperbacks are regularly reviewedin the broadsheet newspapers (and not only in ghettoized ‘New paperbacks’ columns), and are often the most striking feature of bothwindow displays and in-store promotions in high street bookshops.

It can be cogently argued that the paperback is now the dominantformat of consumer book publishing in both Britain and the UnitedStates.90 Again, the lists of bestsellers provides valuable data. In atypical week, The Bookseller recorded just seven hardbacks in its top 100 titles.91 Of these, only three were novels.92 The domination ofthe fiction market by paperbacks is a long-established phenomenon.Indeed, it is sufficiently long established to have its own norms andconventions, not least for its physical format. So-called A format – thesmall familiar size which has barely changed since the 1930s93 – is usedfor ‘mass market’ paperbacks, which are expected to sell in excess of10 000 copies from each print run. For more up-market books, thelarger B format is used, because it is believed to be more prestigious.94

It is not only, however, in the fiction market that the paperback hascome to dominate. The most successful general trade non-fiction isalso expected to flourish in paperback, and tertiary level textbooks willprobably only penetrate the student market in paperback form. The


appeal of the paperback to the consumer is, of course, cost. Yet only asmall part of the difference between hardback and paperback pricesderives from the difference in materials used. Indeed for B formatbooks, the paper is typically the same as that of the hardback, and thesheets may even be from the same print run. The real difference is the unit cost, because of the larger numbers printed and sold. In atypical week, the top-selling mass market paperback had sold 21 639copies in three weeks, and the top ‘Original fiction’ had sold 7242 inthe same period.95 This was significantly exceeded by the top non-fiction paperback, which sold 9531 in its first week.96 By contrast, witha single exception, no hardback fiction title had sold more than 2506copies, and the tenth in the list had sold a mere 895 in eight weeks.97

The price differentials are both the cause and the consequence of these stark contrasts. While a typical hardback in these lists costsbetween £12.99 and £20.00, the most expensive non-fiction paperbackwas £11.99 and mass market fiction was typically priced at £6.99. Inother words, paperbacks are about half the price of the hardbackeditions of comparable titles.

The predominance of the paperback in the consumer and studentmarkets has had major consequences for the trade as a whole, not leastfor the booksellers, as we shall see in Chapter Five.98 It is seen as beinguser-friendly and giving value for money, and is the ideal format forbooks to compete with other consumer goods in a unstable andchanging market.99 In the academic market, and in STM and profes-sional publishing, the paperback also has its place. Again, there is aneconomic driver. It is many years since even the wealthiest and mostambitious of libraries could maintain comprehensive collections.100

One of the ways in which they have responded to increasing prices anddecreasing budgets is by buying B format paperbacks. The compara-tive impermanence of paperbacks is less important than it mightsuperficially seem to be. In fields in which textbooks are regularlyupdated, the shelf-life of an edition may be little more than two years.A reasonably robust paperback can survive even student use for two academic sessions. Since most libraries now regularly dispose ofout-of-date books, especially when a new edition appears, the paper-back has found an important niche in a field in which it was almostunknown until the last decade of the twentieth century.

The economics of print-on-paper publishing are seen at their mostdramatic in the pricing of reference books and scholarly journals. The


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principles which were enunciated earlier in this Chapter apply as much to serial publications as they do to books. Only the timescale isdifferent. A newspaper has a shelf-life of a few hours; a weekly and a monthly, a few days and two or three weeks respectively. Scholarlyjournals, published typically at quarterly intervals, theoretically have alonger life, but in practice are usually sold on subscription before theyare even printed. Newspapers, most weeklies, and some monthlies areheavily dependent on advertising revenues as a means of keeping downtheir costs and hence being able to have a low cover price to stimulatesales. Although academic journals attract some advertising (typically ofbooks in the appropriate field), they are much more dependent on generating revenue through sales. Since these sales are measured in hundreds rather than thousands in many cases, it is inevitable thatprices are high. Libraries – which are the principle market for scholarlyjournals – are increasingly reluctant to pay such prices, and indeedoften unable to do so. The pressure for change has become intense.

It is not surprising that it is in the field of academic journals thatprint-on-paper publishing came to be most seriously challenged in the 1990s. No consideration of formats would now be completewithout a consideration of electronic publishing. This takes manyforms, and indeed is sufficiently new for the definition still to be some-what unclear. For our purposes, we shall adopt a very broad definition,which encompasses all the electronic formats and modes of delivery.The most common medium of electronic publishing is the CD-ROM,a device now so familiar that it needs no description. A CD-ROM is,however, merely a carrier. The material which it carries is in the formof digital data (text, graphics, video, sound or a combination of someor all of them), which can also be accessed in other ways. Once a digitalfile has been created, the issues are those of storage and delivery. Thedelivery of published material over the Internet, usually using theWorld Wide Web, is now common, particularly for academic journalliterature. Electronic journals are normally delivered in this way, withthe subscriber receiving the chosen item at a PC-based workstationwhere it can be downloaded for local storage and future use, orprinted, or both. Electronic books have developed more recently, andsuitable reading devices are only now beginning to be marketed.101

Since the mid-1980s there has been much speculation, and not a littlefear, about the potential impact of electronic digital communicationson publishing. Only in the mid-1990s, however, with the advent of the


World Wide Web and the near universal use of electronic communica-tions in the academic world, did some of the ideas begin to becomecommercially as well as technically viable. The use of computers toassist in the editing of books and journals began in the early 1980s.102

By the mid-1990s there were well-developed models for the parallelproduction of printed and electronic version of journals and how they might be delivered to libraries, although there were still problemsin finding library staff with appropriate skills.103 The technical success of such experiments led some to argue that there were nofundamental changes in the publishing process, and that print and electronic publication would continue to be complimentary andparallel, with publishers continuing to play the role to which they hadbeen accustomed.104 Other commentators took the view that electronicpublishing was simply about document delivery, and nothing to dowith publishing at all.105

Practice has been different from both experimentation and predic-tion. Parallel publishing of academic journals survives, and seemslikely to do so for some time; it has been argued to be best suited tothe needs of the academic market.106 Similarly, parallel publishing is becoming common for reference books, and some publishers aredigitising their backlists.107 Some publishers are working on electronictextbooks for student use,108 and there is experimental work inexploiting the interactive potential of electronic books in literaryfiction.109 In other fields, print is already being abandoned; one majorpublisher of business information proposes to move entirely to elec-tronic output, and other will surely follow.110 The common feature ofall of these partial and complete shifts to electronic publishing is thatthe underlying economics are different. Typically, what is sold is notan object (such as a book or journal) but the right of access to a data-base. This may be in the form of a licence to a subscriber for unlimitedaccess, or it may be that charges are made on a pay-per-access basis. Itremains the case that a minimum number of subscriptions is needed tomake publication viable, but it has been argued that by eliminating theproduction and distribution of a printed product, fees can be kept at amodest level far below the inflated prices which now characterizemany printed journals.111

Many important changes in publishing culture have alreadyfollowed from these technology-based shifts in production and distribution. Far more than any other technical developments in the


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last 500 years, the development of electronic publishing has had animpact on the relationship between authors, editors, publishers, librar-ians and readers. The relationships between the key players in thepublishing process is becoming radically different. In the next Chapterwe shall consider these relationships in the contexts of the variousforms of publishing on which we have focused in this Chapter.


1 A handful of publishers and imprints deal largely in titles which are inpublic domain, but they are few and comparatively small.

2 The need for the creation of a backlist, and its function as the basis of thefirm’s long-term economic stability, was one of the fundamental dogmasof traditional publishers. It was, for example, the view of Unwin, p. 169,and is still the view of Jason Epstein, the creator of Anchor Books, thefounder of The New York Review of Books, and one of the most distin-guished American publishers of his generation. See Epstein, pp. 16–18.

3 See below, Chapter 4.4 See above, pp. 2–3.5 Historical fiction from Scott onwards, for example, tells stories against a

factual background. More recently, the concept of ‘faction’ embodied insome of the works of Norman Mailer, for example, has also blended factand fiction. But for our purposes such works are at the margins, whatevertheir literary significance may be, because they are in a small minority.

6 Creaser et al., pp. 188–90 (Tables 6.5, 6.6).7 Ibid., p. 189 (Table 6.6)8 By analogy with trade books in non–fiction, for which see below,

pp. 63–64.9 There is a weekly list of bestsellers in The Bookseller. This list was in The

Bookseller, 4956, 5 January 2001, p. 20.10 See Victoria Barnsley, ‘Small is beautiful’, in Owen, 1996, pp. 37–8.11 Creaser et al., pp. 189–90 (Table 6.6).12 LISU (i.e. Creaser et al.), following trade practice, uses the following cate-

gories: Fiction; School textbooks; Children’s books; Science/Technology/Medicine; Academic and professional; Non-fiction. These are sufficientlyprecise to enable classification for statistical purposes. I have adopted aslightly different approach here, but its relationship to the LISU (and booktrade) model will be obvious.

13 On this point, see Martin Stoll and Mark Bide, Customised Publishing inUK Higher Education, London: Book Industry Communications (BNBResearch Fund Report, 83), 1996. See also below, pp. 176–78.


14 See Jacinto E. Suarez, ‘College textbook publishing: patterns of corporatediversification and the rationalisation of the publishing process’, SciComm, 16:1, 1994, pp. 58–89.

15 According to Patricia H. Thornton, in a paper entitled ‘Concentratedmarkets in the cultural industries: are economies of scale an entry barrierto new firms in the higher education market?’, delivered to the annualconference of the American Sociological Association in 1999, 92 per centof US higher education publishing is in the hands of these firms.

16 David Croom, ‘Academic and textbook publishing’, in: Owen, 1996, pp. 97–100.

17 For issues relating to the price of books see below, pp. 81–84, 139–44.18 The first edition was published in 1859; the 38th appeared in 1995.19 See Anthony Watkinson, ‘The STM information system: an analysis’, LP,

12:1, 1999, pp. 11–24. This is a valuable general study of the then–currentsituation.

20 Keith Nettle, ‘Professional publishing defined and reviewed’, CAPP Brief,5/2001, p. 9.

21 A trend apparently exacerbated by the decrease in library budgets and ashift from academic to general trade history publishing; see Peter Clifford.A sign of the times. The Bookseller, 4927, 9 June 2000, pp. 24–7.

22 Consider, for example the number of books published on the Princess ofWales both before and after her death.

23 The obvious British example is that of cookery books whose publicationand sales hugely increased in the late 1990s as TV channels competed topromote their respective celebrity chefs.

24 See K. Ragust, ‘Educational TV tie–ins on the rise’, PW, 244:39, 1997, pp. 30–1. The British history of such books begins with such titles asKenneth Clark, Civilisation (London: BBC and John Murray, 1969); JacobBronowski, The Ascent of Man (London: BBC, 1973); and Alistair Cooke,Alistair Cooke’s America (London: BBC, 1973). Recent British examplesinclude books by Simon Schama and David Starkey, deriving from theirrespective television series.

25 Caroline Sylge, ‘The listening game’, The Bookseller, 4909, 4 February2000, pp. 28–30.

26 In the UK, such lists are found in The Bookseller and (among other news-papers) The Sunday Times. The American equivalents will be found inPublishers’ Weekly and most of the major newspapers, including The NewYork Times whose bestseller list is very influential in the trade. For aformal analysis, albeit now some years out of date in its examples, see JohnFeather and Martin Reid, ‘Bestsellers and the book industry’, PRQ, 11:1,1995, pp. 57–72.

27 See David Attwooll, ‘Reference publishing’, in: Altbach and Hoshino, pp. 295–303.


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28 For an example, see below, pp. 102–03.29 Sarah Knibbs, ‘The tough get tougher in the dictionary war’, The

Bookseller, 4616, 10 June 1994, pp. 44, 53.30 Guinness World Records is one example; it was third in the hardback

non–fiction list in December 2001, having sold 25,000 copies in threemonths (www.thebookseller.com on 3 December 2001).

31 For some informed reflections on this theme, see David Stoker, ‘The newDNB and the future of the printed reference work’ JOLIS, 32:1, 2000, pp. 1–3.

32 See Moira Duncan, ‘To infinity and beyond’, LAR, 102:3, 2000, pp. 148–9.Walford was originally published in 1959, with a one-volume supplementin 1963. A second edition (3 vols.) was published 1966–70, and a third (also3 vols.) 1973–77. Thereafter, its bibliographical history becomes increas-ingly complicated. By the time that the decision was taken that the futurewas electronic, there had been three further revisions of volumes 1 and 3,and four of volume 2. The intolerable complexity and cost of keepingreference books current in print is well illustrated by this example.

33 The publisher was (and is) Macmillan. See www.macmillan.com. Theonline version is at www.grovemusic.com

34 See Piet Snyman, ‘Children’s publishing: the next decade’, in: Owen, 1996,pp. 84–92; and Kimberley Reynolds, ‘Publishing practices and the practi-calities of publishing’, in: Kimberley Reynolds and Nicholas Tucker, eds.Children’s Book Publishing in Britain since 1945, Aldershot: Scolar Press,1998, pp. 20–41. For the data on the USA, see above, p. 38 (Table 2.5).

35 On the later point, see Charles E. Gates, ‘Children’s books: 500 million ayear. Where to go from here?’, Logos, 7:1, 1996, pp. 12–17. The 500 millionare dollars, not books!

36 J. Milliot and D. Roback, ‘1996 a difficult year for children’s publishers’,PW, 244:45, 1998, pp. 121–9.

37 See Audrey Anthoney, Josephine M. Royle and Ian M. Johnson, ‘The UKchildren’s publishing house: adapting to change for the multimediamarket’, Elec Lib, 18:4, 2000, pp. 269–78; and Hans–Heino Ewers,‘Changing functions of children’s literature: new book genres and literaryfunctions’, Bookbird, 38:1, 2000, pp. 6–11.

38 Marc Aronson, ‘The YA phenomenon in America: books that matchteenage experience and inspire discovery’, Logos, 10:2, 1999, pp. 111–17.

39 See the comments of Mary Hoffmann, ‘Don’t patronise me, I’m a person–reaching the real teenagers’, The Bookseller, 4477, 11 October 1991, pp. 1046–7.

40 See Leslie Henry, ‘How much or how little? The state of the market’,Taking Stock, 4:2, 1995, pp. 29–37; and E. Sullivan, ‘More is not alwaysbetter’, SLJ, 46:4, 2000, pp. 42–3.


41 Most famously at Woolworth’s, for which see Morpurgo, pp. 92–3.42 See above, p. 38 (Table 2.5).43 Fishwick, p. 29 (Table C3).44 Librarians have developed complicated definitions of what is and is not a

periodical publication, largely for purposes of cataloguing. These defini-tions are not unimportant, but do not concern us here. I shall follow thetrade practice of regarding annuals as a distinct category from other peri-odicals. Hence, I am confining this section to periodicals published at lessthan annual intervals.

45 See Social Trends, 30, 2000, p. 214 (Table 13.9).46 This and other data used below on magazine and newspaper circulation,

is from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and can be found on its Websiteat www.abc.org.uk/cgi–bin/cookie/abc.pl

47 These were Radio Times and Cable Guide (both TV listing magazines,weekly and monthly respectively); Take a Break (women’s); SagaMagazine (retired people); and Reader’s Digest.

48 This is not the place for a more extended study based on these statisticalseries (which go back for more than 50 years). But such a study is highlydesirable.

49 See above, pp. 63–64.50 See below, pp. 171–76.51 For a general study, out of date in detail but still useful for general princi-

ples, see Gillian Page, Robert Campbell and Jack Meadows, JournalPublishing: Principles and practice. London: Butterwortrhs, 1987, pp. 1–12.

52 There is a vast literature on the scientific communication system. Theclassic account is Fritz Machlup and Kenneth Leeson, InformationThrough the Printed Word: The dissemination of scholarly, scientific andintellectual knowledge, New York: Praeger, 4 vols., 1978–80.

53 Perhaps the most notorious is Chemical Abstracts. The 2001 subscriptionto the printed version was US$25 000.

54 Creaser et al., p. 182 (Table 6.1b, summary).55 PMLA has a circulation of 36 000, and 2001 subscription price of US$118.56 See Naomi B. Pascal, ‘Between academe and the marketplace: university

presses for the twenty-first century’, Logos, 7:1, 1996, pp. 113–19. 57 See, for example, Sklaer.58 See below, pp. 171–76.59 There is, of course, much common ownership of dailies and weeklies, and

some common titles. The most obvious are such pairings as The DailyExpress and The Sunday Express, The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday,and The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. The Times and TheSunday Times, although they are both part of News Corporation, are


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operated independently of each other, although, like The Guardian (daily)and The Observer (Sunday) which also belong to the same company, theyprint on the same presses.

60 The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Timesare obvious examples. For a wide-ranging study of the American press, seeRobert G. Picard and Jeffrey H. Brody, The Newspaper PublishingIndustry, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1997.

61 Brian McNair, News and Journalism in the UK, London: Routledge, 2nd

ed., 1996, pp. 45–7.62 Again, the data is from ABC; see above, note 46.63 Social Trends, 31, 2001, p. 227 (Table 13.7). The data in this Table does not

(and was not designed to) show the overlap between newspapers. Acontext is provided by the fact that 59 per cent of men read a daily news-paper, but the total of the percentage reading each named title is 80 percent. Detailed conclusions cannot be drawn from this; in broad terms,however, we can say that that up to about 20 per cent of the adult malepopulation reads more than one newspaper. The equivalent for women isabout 10 per cent. Female readership of all titles is less than male reader-ship. The difference in the case of The Sun (cited above) is the mostmarked. The only others with more than a 1 per cent difference are TheDaily Telegraph (6 per cent and 4 per cent), The Times (5 per cent and 3 per cent), and The Star (5 per cent and 2 per cent).

64 Both of which are part of News Corporation, owner of The Times.65 Exemplified in the notorious headline ‘It was the Sun wot won it’ after

The Sun had supported the victorious Conservatives in the 1992 Britishgeneral election campaign which Labour had been widely expected to win.

66 Social Trends, 30, 2000, p. 213 (Table 13.8)67 For a recent example, see below, p. 100.68 See above, pp. 2–3.69 See below, pp. 99–116.70 See, for example, John P. Dessauer, Book Publishing: What it is, what it

does, New York and London: R. R. Bowker, 1974, p. 31. As a young man,Jason Epstein was given the job of reading unsolicited manuscripts and‘soon learned [they] could be disposed of on the evidence of a paragraphor two’ (Epstein, p. 43). For a more sympathetic view, see Rebecca Swift,‘Out of the slush pile’, Independent on Sunday, 15 July 2001, ArtsEtc., p. 15.

71 Lewis A. Coser, Charles Kadushin and Walter W. Powell, Books: Theculture and commerce of publishing, Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress, 1982, p. 131.

72 See, for example, Dennis P. Carrigan, ‘Publish or perish: the troubled stateof scholarly publishing’, JSP, 22:3, 1991, pp. 131–42. See also above, pp. 71–72.


73 For refereeing, see Jane Smith, ‘Refereeing’, LP, 3:1, 1990, pp. 19–25. Seealso below, pp. 105–06.

74 Giles N. Clark, Inside Book Publishing, London: Blueprint, 1988, pp. 37–8.

75 Se also below, pp. 112–16.76 Lewis A. Coser, ‘Professional authors and publishing houses’, BRQ, 3:2,

1987, pp. 11–14.77 Charles L. Clark, ‘Great expectations: or what authors want from

publishers’, JSP, 30:3, 1999, pp. 131–7. 78 For a recent comment, see Michael Sissons, ‘The agents of change’, The

Bookseller, 4746, 6 December 1996, pp. 26–8. On Heinemann, see JamesHepburn, The Author’s Empty Purse and the Rise of the Literary Agent,London: Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 80–1. See also below, p. 110.

79 For the example of The Historical Atlas of Canada, see Anne B. Piternick,‘Author problems in a collaborative research project’, SP, 25:1, 1993, pp. 21–37. For editors, see below, pp. 106–12.

80 The concept of ‘responsibility’ in this sense has been most fully exploredby librarians in developing rules for attributing works to ‘corporate’authors in library catalogues. The literature is somewhat impenetrable tothe outsider, but the principles are reasonably accessible in MichaelGorman, ‘The Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules’, 2nd edition, LRTS,22:3, 1978, pp. 209–26.

81 Again, this is a category of material of much concern to librarians. For anintroduction, see Eve Johansson, ‘The definition of official publications’,IFLA J, 8:4, 1982, pp. 393–5. For an international example, see PatricePiguet, ‘Fifty years of United Nations publishing activities’, IFLA J, 22:2,1996, pp. 91–7.

82 In the UK, the famous QUANGOs (QUasi–Autonomous Non–Govern-mental Organizations), familiar internationally as NGOs (Non–Govern-mental Organizations).

83 The most recent edition was fifth in the paperback bestseller list inNovember 2001 (www.thebookseller.com).

84 See below, pp. 133–37, for more detailed comments on bookshops.85 For marketing, see below, pp. 120–22.86 See Clark, 1988, pp. 16–17.87 Curwen, pp. 33–4.88 See Paul Scherer, Paperbacks, in Peter Owen, ed., Publishing – The Future,

London: Peter Owen, 1988, p. 64.89 This assertion is by Nick Webb, ‘The mystery that is format’, The

Bookseller, 4915, 17 March 2000, pp. 30–2. See also Peter Straus, ‘Format’,in: Owen, 1996, pp. 68–74.


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90 As it has long been in France and some other European countries. For ageneral view, see Ian Chapman, ‘Paperback publishing’, in: Owen, 1996,pp. 48–57.

91 Data from Whitaker Book Track, The Book Track Hot 100 [for w/e 14July 2001] at www.booktrack.co.uk/booktrac.htm

92 Two by fashionable ‘new lad’ writers (Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby)and one by the hugely popular fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett.

93 There have been minor changes to accommodate the shift to metric papersizes.

94 See Webb.95 Meaning B format, with aspirations to being literary fiction.96 Data from Book Track for w/e 7 July 2001; see note 91, above.97 The exception was new book by the television cook, Nigella Lawson,

which sold 9271 copies in its first week.98 See below, pp. 133–37.99 For one view of this, see J. Marmaduke, ‘Why publishers are losing

market share’, PW, 244:46, 1998, pp. 24–5.100 There is a vast professional library literature on this; for a publishing

perspective, see Charles A. Schwartz, ‘Modeling scholarly book litera-ture’, PRQ, 10:2, 1994, pp. 29–35.

101 In a rapidly developing field, any general text will age with comparablerapidity. But there is a useful general introduction in Harry Collier, The Electronic Publishing Maze: Strategies in the electronic publishingindustry, Tetbury: Infonortics, 1998. See also below, pp. 164–78, for afuller discussion of electronic publishing.

102 Jane Lago, ‘A decade of electronic editing’, SP, 24:2, 1993, p. 101–12.103 See Fytton Rowland, Cliff McKnight, Jack Meadows and Peter Such,

‘ELVYN: the delivery of an electronic version of a journal from thepublisher to libraries’, JASIS, 47:9, 1996, pp. 690–700.

104 See, for example, John E. Cox, ‘Publishers, publishing and the Internet:how journal publishing will survive and prosper in an electronic age’, ElecLibr, 15:2, 1997, pp. 125–31.

105 For an extreme version of this, see Irving Louis Horowitz, ‘The assuredfuture of specialized publishers in the electronic world’, Logos, 6:3, 1995,pp. 158–61.

106 Sely Gomes and Jack Meadows, ‘Perceptions of electronic journals inBritish universities’, JSP, 29:3, 1998, pp. 29–33.

107 See above, p. 65; for conversion, see, among many examples, ‘ABC–Cliolaunches e–books’, ATL, 30:3, 2001, pp. 7–8.

108 See, for example, netLibrary, ‘Houghton Mifflin launch textbook initia-tive’, ATL, 30:1, 2001, pp. 9–10.

109 A. Stern, ‘Interactive fiction: the story is just beginning’, IEEE IntelligentSystems, 13:6, 1998, pp. 16–18.


110 Paul Gosling, ‘TF [Thomson Financial] tones up and aims for the top’,Information World Review, 159, June 2000, pp. 20–1.

111 See Leah Halliday and Charles Oppenheim, ‘Comparison and evaluationof some economic models of digital only journals’, J Doc, 56:6, 2000, pp. 660–73.


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CHAPTER FOUR

The Publishing Process

Introduction

The size and diversity of the publishing industry should not beallowed to disguise the fact that everything which is published, inwhatever format or medium, is the product of one or more humanminds. Copyright, and the broader domain of intellectual property,developed in recognition of this simple proposition.1 Even the mostmundane of writings has an intellectual origin, and without writing orother forms of creation there can be no published work. It seems to follow therefore that the process of publishing begins with theauthor. Certainly, there is an originator of the material, and a processthrough which it is disseminated to its intended recipients. The essenceof publishing, however, is that the material is put into public domain;2

the chain of communication from originator to recipient must there-fore include the means by which the work leaves the private sphere of the author. The classical model of communication, developed in the late 1940s by Shannon and Weaver,3 is predicated on the existenceof a system which links the source and the receiver. Shannon andWeaver envisaged a telephone network; their model is equally applic-able to the Internet, or to private systems of communication within an organization. It can also be conveniently applied to publishing.Indeed its general applicability helps us to take a broad overview ofthe media and formats in which information is put into the publicdomain.

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In its simplest form, the Shannon and Weaver model can be repre-sented as is shown in Figure 4.1.

An essential element of the model, however, is the postulated exist-ence of ‘noise’ during the process of transmission. This might betechnical such as interference with telecommunications systems orbroadcast signals, or it might be human intervention which leads toerror or misunderstanding.

In this Chapter, we shall focus on the process of publishing. TheShannon and Weaver model is a conceptually useful starting point forthe analysis. The ‘source’ becomes the author; the ‘transmitter’ is thepublisher; and the ‘recipient’ is the reader. This can then be expressedin a very simple diagrammatic form (Figure 4.2).

This diagram is not inaccurate, in the sense that the published materialbegins with an author and that some form of publishing process takes place before it can reach the reader. The process, however, hasbeen simplified here to the point at which the representation ismisleading except as a very crude basic model. Three key issues arisein looking at the publishing process, each of which can generate‘noise’. They are:

• authorship and the responsibility for creating published material,to which we have already referred in Chapter Three;4

• the relationship between the author and publisher in all its mani-festations from creative to financial;

98 The Publishing Process

SOURCE → TRANSMITTER → RECIPIENT

Figure 4.1 Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication

AUTHOR → PUBLISHER → READER

Figure 4.2 From author to reader: the simplified version

• the process of getting the material to the recipient, a process whichin the book trade involves marketing, sales, retailing and all theactivities which facilitate that process.

We shall consider each in turn.

What is an author?

An author, according to one dictionary, is ‘a writer, esp. of books’5;another agrees: ‘a person who composes a book, article, or otherwritten work’.6 But who, we might ask, is the author of these dictio-naries? One of them is unquestionably a book, and the other exists inbook form as well as the in the form of the CD-ROM which was actu-ally consulted on this occasion. Certainly they are written works, andyet no names appear on their title pages, and even if we have a list ofthose involved in their compilation there is no indication of who wasresponsible for writing any particular definition. It was not always so.When Samuel Johnson compiled his dictionary in the mid-eighteenthcentury, it was indubitably his work. Or was it? He had a team of whatwe would now call research assistants. They read books for him, and marked words of interest. They apparently drafted definitions.Johnson took responsibility for what appeared in the published work,and was its intellectual progenitor, but he was not the only personinvolved in its compilation or composition.7 The classic dictionarydefinition of ‘author’ seems inadequate even to describe one of the keybooks in which it began to take shape.

If the dictionary definition is not a very adequate definition of howa dictionary is written, let us consider an apparently more straightfor-ward case. A novelist surely conforms to the paradigm of the ‘personwho composes a book’. Certainly, the novelist devises the plot and thecharacters and composes the words through which they are expressedand described. Before the work reaches print, however, it will havepassed through a number of hands and minds and may well have beensubstantially modified. With few exceptions, novelists employ agentsto represent them to publishers. The agent has many roles. He or sheis an advisor, a friend, a negotiator, a public relations guru and theprovider of a shoulder to cry on. In their advisory capacity, agents dofar more than merely direct a new work to an appropriate publisher.

The Publishing Process 99

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They work with the author, offering suggestions which even in creativefiction may include modifications to the book.8 Even before it reachesthe publisher’s desk, therefore, a novel is more often than not theproduct of more than one mind. And when it reaches that desk, it is likely to undergo further transformations at the hands of the editor, and perhaps even the marketing department. The increasinglycommon practice of acknowledging help with his or her work is apublic statement that few novelists are solely responsible for whatappears in their names. A good example is the highly acclaimedGhostwritten, the first published novel by David Mitchell.9 TheAcknowledgements list a number of copyright works that have beenquoted, but the author then thanks 11 named individuals. It is not clearwhat their roles were, but they presumably advised him on variouspoints or read some or all of the work in draft. The fact that Mitchelldiscussed his work with others, and perhaps picked their brains onsome of the esoteric matters which characterize the book, does not inany way diminish his role as creator. But it does challenge the classicalconcept of the ‘author’.

That challenge is not new. Indeed, post-modern literary criticism iscentrally concerned with what one of its founding fathers called ‘thedeath of the author’.10 In terms of intellectual history, the post-moderncritics deny the romantic concept of the author as a sole creator. Theyargue that the creative act is incomplete until the work has been read,and that the reader then becomes a co-creator with the writer, becauseeach reader will interpret the writer’s work in his or her own way. Ineffect, the argument is that writing has no meaning until it is read. Thisis a fascinating proposition in more than purely intellectual terms. It islogically powerful, and comes closer to the reality of the world ofpublishing than some of its supporters (and indeed some publishers)might have imagined or perhaps even desired. If even a novel is nolonger the product of one man’s imagination and knowledge, howmuch more is that true of the non-fiction which dominates the outputof the world’s publishers?

We can consider this in the context of some of the forms ofpublished output which we discussed in Chapter Three. We havealready seen that a book by a single named author – even a work ofimaginative fiction of the highest order – is not necessarily the productof that author alone. It is subject to the influences of family, friends,an agent, or an editor. Specific suggestions may be accepted or rejected,


but they have had an impact on the creation of the work. When thebook is a work of non-fiction, the role of the author becomes evenmore ambiguous. A work of non-fiction, however much original dataor interpretation it may contain, rests on earlier work. The author mayaccept or reject that work, challenge it, reinterpret it, or absorb it insome way; but it cannot be ignored. Even the most specialized of acad-emic monographs, based perhaps on scientific experiments or onarchival research, builds on a long tradition of scholarship under-standing and interpretation, and a common body of knowledge in its field. Indeed, the more specialized the work which is the subject ofthe monograph, the more the author becomes dependent on a priorknowledge of the context of the subject which is assumed to be sharedby the reader.

Many books are overtly the work of more than one person. This isnot so far from the model of the single author as might appear to bethe case. Most collaborating authors in fact divide the work of compo-sition between them, and then read and revise each other’s work. Thedifference between this and the book whose single author accepted theadvice and ideas of others is that there is a shared responsibility for the final form of the text.11 Indeed, it is around the issue of responsi-bility that we can begin to understand the most practical definition of‘author’ in the context of publishing. It is neatly exemplified by a verycommon form of academic publication: the volume in which eachchapter is written by a different contributor (or contributors), but the work is edited by a one or more named persons. The roles of theeditor(s) and the contributors are fairly clearly defined. The editor12

determines the content of the book, identifies contributors and invitesthem to contribute. When their contributions are submitted, the editorreads them, probably assesses their quality in some way and does some preliminary work on preparing them for the press. The lattermight include, for example, ensuring that they conform to the style ofpresentation and referencing which has been agreed for the wholevolume. The editor will also determine the order in which they contri-butions appear in the book, and will perhaps have oversight of suchmatters as the compilation of the index and a common bibliography.It is then the editor’s name which appears on the title page, and he orshe is assumed to bear responsibility for the book as a whole. Thecontributors, however, are individually responsible for what they havewritten, in terms of accuracy, the interpretation put on facts, theories


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which might be propounded, and so on. The contributor will alsousually carry any legal responsibility which might arise (from libel, orbreach of copyright, for example) in his or her chapter.

A more elaborate example of the same phenomenon, but essentiallyidentical in principle, is the reference book to which many authorscontribute, but each under his or her own name. Unlike the dictio-naries with which we started, some encyclopaedias, for example,attribute specific entries to named individuals. Editorial control willnormally be strict, especially in limiting the length of the contribution,in ensuring its accuracy, and in moulding it into the style of the workas a whole; but overall responsibility for content remains with thenamed authors. The same principle applies to contributions to period-icals whether they are learned journals or tabloid newspapers; namedauthors can be assumed to carry the responsibility for what appears intheir name, although the editor controls what is actually selected forpublication. We shall return to the role of the editor in this processlater in this Chapter.13

So far, none of the models we have explored really deals with theproblem of the dictionary, in which no specific definition is attributedto a named individual. Let us take the example of the third (1991)edition of Collins Softback English Dictionary, from which we took the second of our two definitions of ‘author’.14 No editor or author isnamed on the title page. Opposite the title page, however, appears thename of the ‘General Consultant’ and 16 ‘Special Consultants’, all ofwhom are academic specialists in different varieties of world English(Indian, Scottish, and so on). On a subsequent page, there is a list of theEditorial Staff, headed by the Managing Editor, some of whom clearlyhave purely technical roles (Computer Staff) or are involved in activi-ties other than compilation and authorship (Market House Editors).There are nine ‘Content Editors’, nine ‘Science Contributors’, variouscontributors on etymology and pronunciation, and 14 ‘GeneralContributors’. At the head of the latter list is the ‘Chief DefiningEditor’, who presumably had the ultimately responsibility for the definitions compiled by his team. But this is not the end of the story.There is also a list of 53 ‘Specialist Contributors’, on subjects fromaeronautics to tools, and 25 ‘Other Contributors’, some associated with subjects which also have ‘Specialist Contributors’ and some not.

A number of issues are raised by a consideration of this group ofmore than a hundred people who share the responsibility for the


Collins Softback English Dictionary. ‘Author’, at least in the sense inwhich the Dictionary itself defines it, has become a meaningless term.There is no way of taking any sentence or phrase in the book andsaying ‘this was written by X’. Nor is there any point in doing so. Thevalue of the work lies in the very fact that so many contributorsworked together, each bringing his or her own knowledge and skillsto the task in hand. It is their joint effort, and that of the publisher whoorganized and financed the whole enterprise, which makes the bookwhat it is. We might say that the team collectively confers on thisbooks its ‘authority’, a word which, not coincidentally, comes from thesame Latin root as the word ‘author’ itself.

This is a complex, but far from unique, example of a work compiledby a team, and is therefore the product of their collective abilities.Despite the complexity, however, we can at least identify who has beeninvolved; indeed, the publishers have gone to some trouble to name all of them in recognition of their contributions.15 In other cases,however, we find works which must have had a similar collectiveorigin in which no names will be found. In some cases we would notexpect to find them. Who edits the telephone directory? Who writes acompany’s annual report? Who is the author of the weather forecastin a newspaper? Some might dismiss these questions as being mean-ingless or of no interest. But we should not be too dismissive. Someonedoes this work; texts do not write themselves, even if the text consistsof names, abbreviated addresses and telephone numbers, and theordering is done by a computer. Someone decides on the page layout,the design and size of the type, the use of abbreviations, and so on. The‘someone’ who does the work will be paid. That is why such questionsare of interest to those who publish these works. For a publisher, wemight argue that an author is the person who undertakes to write orcompile, or organize and manage the writing and compilation, of thework which will be published, and receives an appropriate payment.

In analysing the process of publishing, it is convenient therefore todistinguish between a ‘writer’ and ‘author’. The definition of ‘writer’is more generic than that of ‘author’; it is simply ‘a person who writesor has written something’, or ‘the person who has written somethingspecified’.16 This is not wordplay; it is genuinely helpful in trying tounderstand this critical first phase of the publishing process in whichthe work to be published is created. We now have a slightly differentmodel (Figure 4.3).


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In many cases, the writer and the author will be the same person; thisis true in any publication with a single author. What Figure 4.3 illus-trates, however, is the responsibility of the ‘author’ for the work whichis sent to the publisher. What it does not express is that fact that eventhe single author is normally subject to significant influences.

We should not try to push this sort of modelling further than it willgo, but Figure 4.4 does usefully illustrate some of the possible rela-tionship between those engaged in writing a book. Indeed, this versionof the model can be applied to almost any form of composition inwhich a single named individual eventually takes public responsibilityfor what is written. It applies, for example, to each signed contributionto an encyclopaedia, or each chapter of a collection of signed chapters.It also applies in both cases to the work of the editor who brings thewhole book together before it goes to the publisher. The model isapplicable to any medium, and to any form of output whether writtenor graphic. It continues to be valid if ‘author’ means two or morepeople who share joint and equal responsibility. Above all, Figure 4.4illustrates the complexities which underlie the creation of the materialwhich publishers publish.


WRITER(S) → AUTHOR → PUBLISHER

Figure 4.3 Composing for publication

WRITERS → AUTHOR →

AUTHOR’S FRIENDS/COLLEAGUES/ASSISTANTS →

AGENT →

PUBLISHER

Figure 4.4 The author and others

Authors and publishers

Composing material for publication is a complex process. It is alwayscreative to some degree, and can be intellectually challenging. It callsfor the exercise of skills some of which are common to all publishedmaterial; these include the ability to write clearly and appropriately,and an understanding of how to present material to attract theintended audience. There are some formal skills which authors have tomaster, such as the proper use of grammar, syntax and vocabulary, andsome purely technical skills such as the use of a word processor ortypewriter. Creative, intellectual, formal and technical skills are neededin different proportions for different kinds of writing, but they are allalways needed.

Again we can illustrate this from various forms of publishing. Thenovelist is a creative writer, inventing plots and characters, althoughnot immune to outside influences, or indeed to the realities of theexternal world. Biographies, memoirs and letters of writers of pastgenerations suggest that they work in very different ways – a fixednumber of words per day, a particular period of each day, to deadlines,working towards two or three (or more) books a year, and so on. Somewrite as an outlet for their artistic creativity; some to convey orpromote a particular view of society, politics or religion; some simplyfor money. For most writers, motives are probably mixed, and weshould not assume that commercial motivation precludes artisticachievement; that would be to dismiss the work of novelists fromDaniel Defoe to Martin Amis.

At the other end of the spectrum, let us consider a paper written fora scientific journal to report the results of research. It will typically haveseveral authors, one of whom, by convention, will be the ‘lead author’who was primarily responsible for the design and implementation ofthe research whose outcome is being reported. Collaborators mayinclude colleagues from the lead author’s own laboratory or university,some of whom may have been specially employed using money fromthe resources which funded the research. When the paper is written,there is need for great technical skill. It must be clear and unambigu-ous in presentation. It may need tables, graphs, charts and illustrations,and include such specialized forms of ‘writing’ as mathematical for-mulae; there may be quotations in foreign languages, or esoteric specialized vocabulary, and so on. In writing the paper, it is likely that


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one member of the team (often the most junior rather than lead author)will draft it, and it will then be developed by the other members. Atthis stage, there is little or no scope for ‘creativity’. The report is factual,and the conclusions have already been agreed as part of the scientificwork which underlies the paper. There is, however, a creative element;that came at a much earlier stage when the research topic was identi-fied, the project designed, the work conducted and the conclusionsdrawn from the data which was assembled. The motive for publicationis not commercial, or at least not directly so. Despite the fact that thejournal publisher will make a profit (and sometimes a handsome one),the authors are unlikely to be rewarded with anything more than ahandful of reprints. That does not mean, however, that there are nointangible rewards; scientific and academic careers are built on publi-cations, and the material rewards are then real enough even though theydo not take the form of royalty cheques for particular papers.17

The mixture of motives for writing for publication is an importantelement in understanding the relationship between author andpublisher. Both parties – author and publisher – have an interest in the outcome. They are, however, very different creatures. Authors,even those working in teams, are individuals. Publishers are usuallylarge corporations. Moreover, some of then largest corporations areinvolved in some of the most esoteric forms of publishing. Manyscholarly and scientific journals, for example, are published by houseswhich are part of multinational conglomerates. Therefore, while theauthors and writers can always be identified, the publisher tends to be impersonal. In practice, authors deal with individuals within thepublishing company, or individuals who represent it. This individualis – under a variety of titles and guises – an editor.

Creative relationships: authors and editors

The word ‘editor’ has already been used many times in this book, butso far we have not offered a definition. We can no longer avoid this.There are three principal contexts in which the word is used inpublishing:

• the editor of a newspaper or magazine, who has ultimate responsi-bility for what is published there;


• the publisher’s editor, who commissions and selects material forpublication and is responsible for managing the publishing process;

• the editor whose task it is to prepare the author’s work for printingor electronic replication.

There are many variations on this basic theme, but this tripartite modelis a good starting point.18

We have already touched on the role of the newspaper or magazineeditor in Chapter Three.19 He or she has overall control of the contentsand presentation. In some cases, the editor is also responsible fordeveloping the publication’s own views on particular topics. This ismost familiar, perhaps, in the Editorial which is found in almost allnewspapers. It is anonymous, and is taken to be the voice of the news-paper itself. In practice, it may be the view of a strong-minded editor,an equally strong-minded proprietor, or a team of senior reportersworking with the editor. Particularly in the case of major newspapers,which seek to exert political influence, the development of the edito-rial ‘line’ is a key activity. There is, however, much more to the editor’sjob. He or she will typically determine which stories are printed andhow prominent they are; the choice of a front-page lead (and the head-line used for it) can be as influential as the editorial itself in shapingpublic opinion and indeed in selling papers. The editor will normallybe involved in the appointment (and dismissal) of reporters and otherstaff. He or she may select photographs, commission feature articles,and so on. The editor may be directly involved in selecting readers’letters for publication, or in making any response which is thought tobe appropriate. Some of this may be delegated to others (and on majordailies usually is), but it is the editor who carries the ultimate profes-sional responsibility and legal liability for what appears in print.

To a lesser extent, all of this is also true of the magazine editor.20 Thecontext, however, is less frenetic especially in the case of a monthly.Articles are normally commissioned from freelances or written by staffwriters at the editor’s request. The editor and his or her seniorcolleagues determine what is to be commissioned and published, andhow it is to be presented in terms of layout, graphics and photographs,for example. This is as true of the most esoteric of learned journals asit is of a consumer magazine. In either case, the editor normally workswith help and advice; in learned journals, this has been formalized intoan important part of the publishing system. The editor of a learned


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journal typically has an Editorial Board of experts in the field asretained advisors, and will normally call on other academics to act as referees. Their role is to read each paper as it is submitted and toform a judgement on whether or not it is worthy of publication.21

The publisher’s editor is very different from the editor of a newspaperor magazine. In contemporary publishing houses, the editor has a keyrole which might be described in other industries as product develop-ment.22 At the heart of the task is the planning of the list, that is the titleswhich the firm publishes. In this, there are, of course, many constraintson what the editor can do. Most firms have established policies on what sort of books they publish, the markets at which they are aiming,and so on. In general, editors work within business plans and policieswhich are established and agreed at the highest levels in the company,but the senior editors are typically involved in that decision-makingprocess.23 Despite all the changes which have characterized the industry,editors are still the key to the development of a publishing house, forwithout its editors the house would have no books to publish.24

Ideas for books, as we have suggested, come from many sources. A handful comes directly from authors; some come from agents; somearise within the publishing house itself. But from the perspective of theauthor and the agent, the editor is the publisher. Indeed, much of whatis described as ‘publishing’ in the classic accounts of the industry bymid-twentieth century writers is actually the work which is done byeditors.25 In small publishing houses, the selection process is typicallyin the hands of the owner (who is more often than not the founder).But in the large companies which characterize the internationalpublishing industry, the activity is devolved to employees who – what-ever their job titles – are the managers of the list, or of some part of it.

The specific tasks assigned to editors reflect the priorities and structure of the company. The typical arrangement in a large house is that senior editors are the list managers; they take responsibility forcommissioning titles, recruiting authors and so on. Their responsibil-ities may be divided by genre (fiction, reference, and so on), by subject(history, science) or by market (consumer books, professional books,school textbooks). It is they who typically deal with agents, and tosome extent with authors. Contractual arrangements with authors aretheir responsibility, and so is the decision about whether or not toproceed with a particular publication. Their freedom of action variesbetween companies, but they typically have considerable authority to


act on its behalf. In many companies, the final decision to commissiona title or to accept one proposed for publication resides with the senioreditors, often working with the marketing department. Publisherswhich have a major presence in more than one market (in Britain andthe United States, for example) may consult colleagues overseas aboutthe suitability of a particular title. For British publishers seeking to sellin the vast American market this is particularly important, and canhave a significant influence on decisions. Nevertheless, it is the senioreditors who are the key players in this process, as the essential linksbetween the company, the authors, the books and the marketplace.26

The staff who work to the senior editors have a more routine role.Although they may be involved from the beginning of the develop-ment of a book, it is probably more usual for them to be brought in at a later stage, perhaps when the project has been proposed to thedecision-making body, or even after final acceptance. It is then the assistant editor (under a variety of job titles) who deals with theauthor on routine matters until the book is delivered. After delivery,it is the assistant editor who takes responsibility for managing theprocess of publication up to the point at which the printed copies areready for delivery to the warehouse.27

The third editorial function is that of the copy-editor who preparesthe author’s submission for the press. This task may seem moremundane than that of others who are designated ‘editor’, but it is no less essential. The copy-editor checks for consistency of style andpresentation, corrects the author’s grammar and spelling (both ofwhich are necessary more often than might be supposed!), imposes‘house’ style on such matters as bibliographic references, use of uppercase, the title-page, page layouts and so on.28 The results of this areinvisible to the reader if the task is done properly, but good copy-editing is essential to well-presented professional products.29 Thecopy-editor may also be responsible for preparing the index. He or sheworks to the instructions of the editor, although in small houses theremay be direct dealings with the author when there are queries to beresolved during the editing process.

There are many variations on the basic functions described in thissection, and there have been many important changes in recent years.These changes are sometimes presented as if they were only a conse-quence of the growth of the conglomerates, but there has also been animportant technological dimension. Certainly, it has often been


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argued that one of the immediate consequences of the growth of theconglomerates is that publishing houses have become less distinctive.30

It is a view that can be challenged. The conglomerates are preciselythat: the results of joining together many smaller companies. Withinthem, however, distinctive imprints with their own editorial policieshave often been retained. Acquisitions are sometimes made preciselybecause the conglomerate is seeking to enter a particular market.Indeed, there is some evidence that there are strong public perceptionsof the ‘brand’ of individual imprints, and that publishers are now moresystematically exploiting this.31 It is the task of the editors to ensurethat this distinctiveness is maintained. It remains as true as it alwayshas been that the internal culture of a publishing house will ultimatelydetermine the nature and quality of its product, and that ownership isonly one element in this culture.32

The business environment of publishing undoubtedly becameharsher, or as some might say more realistic, during the last twodecades of the twentieth century. Many of those raised in the moreexpansive traditions of the mid-twentieth century found this disagree-able, and expressed themselves forcefully.33 Others responded incontemporary management-speak which found little sympathy amongmany of their employees and authors.34 Yet even within the conglom-erates, traditional high-quality literary publishing can survive.35 Inpractice, the financial pressures on editors are reflected in pressures onauthors to deliver more promptly, and on some cutting of corners inquality control at the editing and proof reading stages. Technology has both helped and hindered the process. It has helped because themanagement of a business has become easier with the availability ofmore and better information to managers. More specifically, it hasenabled some publishers to shift onto their authors some of their owntraditional responsibilities. A simple example, to which we shall return,is that when an author is asked to submit word-processed text on disk– as is now almost invariably the case – the costs of type setting areeffectively eliminated, and at least some of the editorial functions aresubtly shifted from editor to author. Partly as a counterbalance, agentshave taken on more of the role traditionally associated with editors,not only in helping the author in a literary sense, but also in negoti-ating some of the business deals for subsidiary rights.36 Another wayof expressing this is to say that the editors have lost a part of their keyrole as project managers.37


In practice, the relationship between authors and editors can never consist entirely of impersonal business dealings. The author isalways in contact with an individual within the publishing house, andboth sides accept that there are necessary constraints in what theywould ideally like to do. For the author for whom such constraints are unacceptable, there are other routes to publication. Nearly 20 percent of book sales in the United States do not originate in the conglom-erates.38 Small publishers (and that may mean houses producinganything up to 50 titles a year, or one a week) help to maintain diver-sity as they always have.39 Of course, the small publishers are alsounder pressure, none more so that the university presses with theircommitment to the highest standards of scholarship. They are oper-ating in the very difficult academic library market, and, to the distasteof at least some of their authors and audience, have had to changeaccordingly.40

Financial pressures on publishers are reflected in a multitude ofways. Some titles which might once have been accepted are perhapsbeing rejected, or titles which might once have appealed to mainstreamcommercial houses are now being published only by small niche-market publishers or university presses. Even in the specialist academicand STM publishing houses, authors and editors are expected to bemore businesslike, to adhere to scheduled delivery times, word limitsand so on. Technical and typographical standards have sometimes beenallowed to slip even among traditional academic publishers.41 Yetdespite all this, there was something of a boom in general publishingat the turn of the new century. While there is more than one point ofview on the impact of the chain bookstores in both Britain and theUnited States, there is certainly evidence that some bookshops haveflourished since the mid-1990s. It seems that the trade is buoyant, evenif the style of bookselling and the products available have changed.42

In the early 1990s, a sociologist suggested that publishing seemed veryunresponsive to the marketplace;43 if that were true then, it wouldsurely not be the case a decade later.

All of these changes have had an impact on the relationships betweenauthors and their publishers. Yet it remains the case that they are mutu-ally dependent. Without authors, there are no books to publish; butwithout publishers, authors write in vain. It is precisely because theauthor-editor-publisher relationship is so personal that it is difficult tomake valid generalizations about it. It can be confrontational, because


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although they have mutual interests, the author and the editor do havedifferent motives, and there are inevitable conflicts in both literary andbusiness matters.44

Business relationships: contracts and rights

The business relationship between an author and a publisher is regu-lated by a contract. The basic premise of the contract is that the authoris offering intellectual property which he or she has created.45 Theprecise terms of the contract vary, but there are some standard featuresin almost all such contracts.46 The contract invariably specifies thefollowing:

• author, title, subject and length of the book;• date of delivery;• format in which the book is to be delivered;• format in which the book is to be published;• territories in which the book is to be distributed;• terms on which the author will be paid.

This is minimal. Contracts normally also include:

• the requirement that the work which is delivered is acceptable tothe publisher;

• the obligation of the publisher to publish the work, if the authormeets his or her contractual obligations;

• a guarantee by the author that the work does not infringe the lawrelating to copyright, libel or obscenity;

• details about responsibly for illustrations, proof-reading andsimilar matters.

This, of course, is a model for a single-authored book, and assumesthat the work is not yet finished; indeed, such a contract is normallyissued when the book is commissioned. In practice, however, withappropriate modifications a similar contract would be issued in therare event of an unsolicited work being accepted after completion.

For more complex publications, there are inevitably more compli-cated contracts. In the case of a multi-authored work, each author has


his or her own contract, which would normally specify the division ofthe payments. For edited works with contributors, the editor and eachcontributor has his or her own contract. The editor’s is the most elab-orate, specifying exactly what is expected, while the contributors havea contract which covers the same ground as that for a single authoredbook, perhaps in a simplified form. Some contracts are almost alwaysexceedingly simple; a contributor to a scholarly journal, for example,is normally asked to do little more than a sign a guarantee about copy-right and libel, and grant the journal the right to publish the article.

In book publishing, for both author and publisher, the implicationsof the contract are critical. The main requirement of the author is todeliver on time, and to do so in a form which has been agreed. Thismeans the right book at the right level and length, and in the physicalform (disk, typescript, etc.) required by the publisher. In return, thepublisher undertakes to produce the work in a specified or minimumnumber of copies, and to advertise and market it in the usual way.Payments to the author are typically in the form of royalties, that is apercentage of the publisher’s income from the sales of the book.47

There are other parts of the arrangement which vary more betweendifferent contracts. There are three in particular in which the role ofthe author’s agent is as negotiator is often critical. These are:

• advances against royalties;• issues relating to formats and territories;• subsidiary rights.

Advances against royalties, that is a payment made on signature ofcontract and on delivery of the work, are set against the subsequentearnings of the book. For a handful of popular novelists, theseadvances are notoriously high; for most authors they are little morethan a gesture. Even so, the publisher is taking a risk; advances are notreturnable if the book does not earn as much as has been paid. Theroyalty itself can also be a subject of discussion. Traditionally, 10 percent of the publisher’s gross income has been the norm, but there aremany variations on the basic theme. Some authors attract a higherroyalty; some have a royalty calculated on the recommended retailprice rather than the trade price and so on. The principle, however,remains the same: the author’s income increases in direct proportionto the number of copies sold. The royalty system developed in the late


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nineteenth century under pressure from authors precisely because itwas seen as a fair system of reward. It still is.48

The second aspect of the contract in which an agent or an authorshould normally take a special interest is that of formats and territo-ries. 49 The copyright in a work can be divided in any way in whichthe contracting parties choose. They may agree that the publisher isacquiring worldwide rights to the book in all formats. For many STM,professional, academic and reference books this is normal. For generaltrade books, both fiction and non-fiction, there are more variations.For the writer of fiction, the key issue is probably that of the paper-back rights, since it is in paperback that the largest number of copiesof a successful title will be sold. These rights can of course be sold tothe publisher of the hardback edition; the royalty will typically be lessthan the hardback royalty, but the assumption is that far greaternumbers will be sold. In some cases, the hardback publisher willconduct an auction of the paperback rights among potential publishers,and accept the largest of the bids.50 Other contracts reserve the paper-back rights to the author, which in practice means that his or her agentwill conduct the auction rather than the hardback publisher. This isone of the areas in which it is said that agents are becoming more activeplayers, and certainly authors’ expectation of what their agents canachieve, and their publishers concede, is becoming greater.51

Territorial rights are a particularly important issue for the Britishand American authors and publishers who jointly dominate the globalmarket for English-language books. The most important aspect is actu-ally that of rights in each other’s countries. The development of themultinational conglomerates has had a significant impact here. Thirtyyears ago, it was not unusual for a British book to be subsequentlypublished in the United States and vice versa, with contractual oblig-ations to limit the sales of the American edition to the USA andCanada, and the British edition to the British Commonwealth, withsome provision for other territories. This system broke down in the1970s, partly because of legal pressures, but also because the increas-ingly close links between British and American publishing weremaking it unsustainable.52 The American rights to British books arestill sometimes dealt with separately, and so, less frequently, are theBritish rights to American titles. But the market has become both morefragmented and more global. Indeed, British and American editions ofthe same title may compete with each other in some markets, especially


in Asia. At the same time, authors and agents may occasionally seek tosell territorial rights other than those in the United States or Britain.For some books, notably in ELT, the issue of territorial rights is even more complex, and absolutely critical. In this field, what was oncea British-dominated global market is fragmenting as indigenouspublishers move in, sometimes with pirated editions of British orAmerican publications, but more often with legitimate locally createdtitles.53 Of course not all foreign editions are in the original language;translation rights are also a marketable commodity, although negoti-ating their use on the ground may be highly complex.54

For a handful of books and authors, subsidiary rights are a majorsource of income. These include the rights to make movie, video andtelevision versions of the book (usually, of course, a novel), and therights in marketing consumer goods related to such outputs. At leastone author, the thriller writer Tom Clancy, has franchized his ownname for use in computer games!55 The sums of money which can begenerated by the sales of subsidiary rights are huge. In December 2000,the British children’s author J. K. Rowling was alleged to be receiving£40 000 a week from her Harry Potter books. This included incomenot only from the hardback, paperback and translation rights in thebooks themselves, but also from her share of the rights sales for the movie, for computer and video games and for toys. In mid-2001,another source was added when the television rights were sold forUS$70 million (£49 million).56 These are, of course, exceptional cases,but the income which they generate for the publishing industry hassome trickle-down benefits for everyone involved. Not the leastimpressive of the young wizard’s tricks has been that Bloomsbury,Rowling’s British publisher, doubled its net income in 2000.57

For most authors, the rewards are far more modest. Royalties andrights payments are not usually, of course, matters of public record;they are private financial transactions between authors and their agentsand publishers. It is not, however, difficult to make a few informedguesses. If we take the average print run of most general trade booksto be 5000 copies, and the retail price about £15.00, with a trade priceof £8.00, the author’s income from the hardback edition can be nomore than £4000.58 For many books, this is the end of the story. A paperback edition of 20 000, retailing at £6.99 with a trade price of £3.50, could yield a further £7000. In other words, an author whoproduces one book a year can, at most, hope to earn a sum which is


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below the UK national average household income.59 Some authors canexpect no payments; this is the normal practice with articles in acad-emic journals, for example. A few are even foolish enough to pay tosee their works in print, but this is not a serious part of the trade.60

Rights and royalties from their books are not the only source ofincome for some authors. Given the calculations in the last paragraph,it is hardly surprising that many have other occupations. These aretypically in journalism, broadcasting or the academic world. Moreover,in some circumstances, authors can earn more from their books thanis suggested by sales figures alone. Rowling’s case is exceptional butnot unique. For many authors, Public Lending Right has becomeanother element in their income. PLR was introduced in the UnitedKingdom in 1981, after a long campaign by the Society of Authors,and much opposition, not least from librarians.61 The basis of thecalculation is that for each loan of a book from a public library, anauthor receives a small payment. The money comes from a fund of £9million renewed annually by the government, and there is a maximumindividual payment of £6000. In 2000, nearly 18 000 authors wererewarded in this way; but of those, over 12 000 received less than £100,and only 159 qualified for the highest band of £5000 to £6000. It is nomyth that the great majority of writers of books are not well rewardedfor their efforts.

From author to bookseller

In this Chapter, we have considered an aspect of the theory of com-munication, and some of the issues which arise out of authorship and the relations between authors, agent, editors and publishingcompanies. We are now in a position to bring these matters together,as we consider the processes involved in putting the author’s creationonto the shelves of a bookshop, newsagent or library, and thence into the hands of a reader. The transactions which take place betweenthe various parties are in effect the first stage in a process which canbe described by using a version of the Shannon and Weaver model(Figure 4.5).

In Figure 4.5, we have taken the process beyond the publisher, andlinked it with the reader, Shannon and Weaver’s recipient. As we haveseen, however, the first stage of this process is complex and involves a


great deal of what Shannon and Weaver called ‘noise’.62 We shall nowexplore further aspects of this process:

• editorial, design and production;• promotion, marketing and sales;• distribution.

We have already discussed some aspects of the editing stage, largely inthe context of the relationships between authors and publishers. Wemust now re-examine some of this from a slightly different angle, as aprocess of managing the creation and marketing of a book. For thispurpose, we will first use as a model the case of a book with a singleauthor commissioned by the publisher. We shall assume that the authoris required to submit the work on disk. This will probably be about12 to 18 months after the signature of the contract. Publishers like to solidify the plans for their lists about 18 months to two years inadvance, for reasons which will become clear when we turn to issuesof marketing and promotion.

When the disk arrives on the editor’s desk, the first task is to readthe text, or to have it read by someone else. A book commissionedfrom an established author is likely to be subjected to comparativelylight scrutiny at this stage. Fiction will normally have passed throughthe hands of an agent, and non-fiction will have been commissionedfrom an author who is known to have expertise and competence. Even an agent may give only a cursory reading to a book by a well-established client.63 Any reading inside the publishing house is likelyto be done by the editor or the assistant editor. A closer reading islikely for a first-time author, or for a more technical book, even onewhich has been commissioned. The contract always specifies that thework must be acceptable to the publisher, and this stage offers the lastchance to reject it or to ask for significant changes. Academic and STMpublishers, and especially the university presses, often send works out


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AUTHOR → PUBLISHER → DISTRIBUTOR → READER

Figure 4.5 From Author to Reader: a less simplified version

to specialist readers on a freelance basis. The process is comparable tothat of refereeing for scholarly journals, and has the same purpose ofestablishing the merits of the work and shares conventions such asprotecting the anonymity of the referees.

Following this reading there may be matters which need to bediscussed with the author. If a book has been formally refereed byindependent readers, any serious issues which they have raised willcertainly be referred back at this stage. Minor issues, however, will beheld back for the time being, while the work goes to the copy-editor.Publishers traditionally employed their own copy-editors, but a shifttowards the use of freelances has been noticeable since the 1980s.64 Onthe whole, this has been a welcome development, and seems to haveworked well.65 Whoever does the work, the copy-editing process islikely to generate queries, some of which may have to be sent back tothe author if they involve issues of accuracy, consistency or clarity ofstyle. Some discussion may follow, but a sensible author will followthe advice of a competent copy-editor.

At the same time, the book will be designed. Book design is a majorcraft in its own right, with its own traditions and skills.66 Design, likecopy-editing, is increasingly a freelance activity. Indeed, there wereindependent designers throughout the twentieth century, many ofwhom were distinguished illustrators or typographers with establishedartistic reputations. As with freelance copy-editing, the system workswell provided that the people involved feel themselves to be part of theteam.67 The designer selects a format, develops the page layout andchooses an appropriate type. He or she is also responsible for suchmatters as the relationship between the illustrations and text, thedesign of the binding and the dust jacket of a hardback or the cover ofa paperback, the form and presentation of the title-page, and so on. Inmany cases, these matters are determined by convention. In generalterms, books are about the same size (which is in turn determined bythe standard dimensions of printing paper), according to their subjectmatter, genre and binding.68 There are norms for type sizes, margins,and so on. The designer’s work is subject to approval by the publisher;again this means in practice that the editor will take the decisions. The designer’s work is therefore constrained by the wishes of thepublisher, who is, of course, the paymaster. Books in a series, forexample, will need hardly any individual design work, since they willsimply conform to an established style. Even a one-off title, such as a


straightforward novel, will often follow the publisher’s own conven-tions for the genre. It is only for complex or unique books that thereis normally a full design process.

Once the text has been edited and designed, it is ready to go intoproduction. It is at this stage that both time and money are saved byhaving the work submitted on disk. The files which were submittedare amended to take account of the copy-editor’s work, suggestions byreaders and other changes agreed by the author or required by thepublisher. They are then reformatted to meet the design specification,and are ready for what is still called ‘typesetting’ although no type isinvolved.69 At this stage, a few proof copies are made. Proof-readingis not eliminated by the submission of electronic copy, but it is far lessonerous than it used to be. Best practice is that the proofs are read bothon behalf of the publisher (again often freelance work) and by theauthor. At this stage the editor or the author can complete any contentslists, cross references, indexes and other features of the book whichneed to refer to page numbers. It is also a last opportunity (alwayssought by authors, and usually forbidden by publishers!) to make finalminor alterations to the text. Once the proofs have been passed andcorrections made, the edited and formatted text is, in effect, printedout onto photographic negatives from which printing plates are made.It is from these plates that the book is printed. In due course the sheetsare bound, and the dust jacket, if there is one, is added. The edition isthen ready for the warehouse and the bookshops. The representationof this process in Figure 4.6 quite clearly illustrates the central role ofthe editor as project manager.


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COPY-EDITOR

AUTHOR → EDITOR → � AUTHOR � → EDITOR

DESIGNER

→ TYPESETTER → PRINTER → BINDER → WAREHOUSE

Figure 4.6 From Editor to Warehouse

While this has been in progress, other work has been going on toensure that the books spend as little time as possible in the warehouse.The reason for this is simple: so far the publisher has incurred substan-tial costs, but has received no income.70 To maximize the profits, thebook must move into the bookshops as quickly as possible onceproduction is completed. The editorial team, and indeed the author, areall involved in this work, but there are also specialists whose jobs focuson promotion, marketing and sales.

In a large publishing house, the marketing department is involvedwith every title from its inception. Indeed, the senior marketing peoplewill work with the editors in deciding what titles to commission orwhich to accept. Their judgement is a commercial one. The key ques-tion for them to answer is whether they can sell the book in a waywhich will make it profitable. This answer cannot be derived from asimple formula. There is a complex mix of factors, including some ofthe most fundamental policy issues of the company. It is possible topublish a scholarly monograph in 750 copies and make a profit; but itis not possible to do this in the context of a company which normallypublishes fiction in print-runs of 10 000 and expects to sell paperbackand subsidiary rights. This is one reason why distinctive imprints havebeen retained within many of the conglomerates. It is only partly amatter of image; there is also a valid business case for recognising thedifferences between different sorts of profitable publishing, and organ-ising the work accordingly.

Whatever the title, however, and whatever the print run, one fundamental principle of the economics of publishing is changeless:publishers incur very heavy ‘front-end costs’ before any revenue canbe generated. Therefore it is essential to sell large numbers quickly.This can only be achieved by beginning the marketing and promo-tional activities at a very early stage in the book’s production cycle.Moreover, the promotion of the book must be properly targeted. Thepromotion of trade books which will be bought by the general publicin bookshops is a very different matter from promoting academic orSTM books, or indeed mass market paperbacks. For the general tradebooks, they key players are the retail booksellers, and it is they whoare the target of the publishers’ marketing machine. This does not, ofcourse, mean that the general public is neglected, but public advertisingand promotion takes place at a much later stage. A typical issue of theBritish trade journal, The Bookseller, will illustrate the point.


On 27 October 2000,71 one feature was headed ‘Book trade beginsbuild-up to Christmas’. It is, however, the advertisements rather thanthe editorial matter in this feature which is of interest for our presentpurpose. Perhaps the most remarkable is from Random House. A six-page colour insert begins ‘Who’s going to be pulling at you heart-strings . . .’, a phrase which occupies the whole of the first page. Theanswer is what are described (not unreasonably, it might be thought)as ‘strange bedfellows’, although they are also claimed as ‘perfectpromotional partners’. The books are Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, thesequel to his notorious (and hugely successful) Silence of the Lambs,and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a reprint of Louis de Bernière’salready bestselling novel. What is the link? Films of both were due tobe released! The publisher offers promotional material for use in book-shops (special racks, posters, dump bins and the like), and for deBernières a printed version of the film script, as well as the booksthemselves. Both films were actually due for release in February 2001,some four months after this advertisement appeared. Random Houseneeded to grab the attention of the trade. In doing so, they were alsoshowing their own commitment to promoting the books in conjunc-tion with the ‘free’ publicity which would be generated by the film.The intention was to make sure that the booksellers then committedthemselves well in advance both to providing shop space and to takingcopies. The lead time is typical, and the planning of the publicitycampaign probably preceded the appearance of the advertisement byat least six months.

Set beside all this, the Christmas market is all but neglected. Thepromotion of the 2000 Christmas books had taken place in thesummer. There is a handful of advertisements which refer toChristmas. Chambers were offering ‘gift ideas’, but these were notspecifically seasonal, and the titles (mainly dictionaries) would havebeen suitable gifts for any time of any year. A four-page AdvertisementFeature offered some two dozen ‘Books for Christmas’, largely itwould seem for the benefit of booksellers who had not stocked up ingood time. For the trade, last-minute shopping is done in late October,not mid-December! The books advertised varied in subject matterfrom pop music to natural history, including the inevitable cookerybooks or rather books by famous cooks. Like the Random Housefeature, all of this was aimed at the trade. The style is actually ratherdull and sober, but it conspicuously includes the vital information


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about trade prices, ordering and distribution arrangements, and reas-surance about rapid delivery times.

More specialized books are marketed very differently. Althoughthey are promoted to bookshops, the process is more selective; thepromotion targets shops which have an appropriate clientele or are inappropriate location. There is more direct advertising to potential end-users. New textbooks, for example, are promoted directly to teachersin schools, colleges and universities; if the title appears on a readinglist, local bookshops (which typically work closely with institutions)will then order copies. STM books and research monographs are oftenpromoted through advertising in professional and scholarly journals,and through direct mailings aimed at librarians. The same is true ofnew journals. Sending out copies slightly in advance of publication,especially for review or to key people in the media, is anotherimportant element in promoting many titles. For general books, thismay mean sending review copies to some of the national newspapers,or even, in a few cases, to appropriate television or radio programmes.Advance copies of academic and STM books are sent to relevant journals. Copies of new academic journal titles are often sent to keyindividuals in the field who may influence their institutional librariesand their colleagues.

The key objective of the marketing campaign for a book is to sell as many copies as possible before or immediately after publication. For a general trade book, it is essential that it is in the shops when thereviews appear, and that stocks can be replenished quickly if it sellswell. Most titles, even bestsellers, have a comparatively short shelf life.Few live for more than about six months in hardback or a month orso in paperback. Indeed, the publishers themselves want a rapidturnover, so that there is room in shops for the next batch of titles. Atypical week illustrates the point. Of 100 bestselling titles 57 had beenin the list for four months (20 weeks) or less, and only 13 for a yearor more. There were two new titles, nine were in the same positionsas the previous week; of the remaining 89, 44 had improved their posi-tions and 45 were falling. The overall picture is of a short shelf-life andrapid turnover.72

The question of distribution has always been a difficult one in theBritish book trade, but its efficiency is essential if both publishers andbooksellers are to benefit from successful general trade titles. Largepublishers have their own warehousing facilities and distribution


arrangements; smaller houses tend to outsource this potentially expen-sive operation to get some economies of scale.73 The specialist bookdistributors are themselves operating in a difficult and competitivemarket, with a recent history of instability.74 Electronic systems forordering the management of distribution of books have been in use for20 years or so. Even in the late 1990s, there were still those in the tradewho were not using them, unconvinced by their effectiveness or reluc-tant or unable to invest in the hardware and software.75

The essential elements in the distribution process are ordering and delivery, represented in their simplest form in Figure 4.7. Themodel, of course, disguises the complexities of the process. The partiesinvolved include companies engaged in warehousing and transporta-tion, as well as the bookshop. An Internet Service Provider, the headoffice of a bookselling chain and other players may also be part of theprocess, depending on the ordering methods used. A good deal ofpaperwork is generated in the form of orders, delivery notes andinvoices, even when parts of the transaction are electronic. From thebookseller’s point of view, perhaps the most important element is thatthe average delay between despatch of order and receipt of books isbetween four and seven days. Distribution is a key element in themanagement of bookshops, to which we shall return.76

Conclusion

In this Chapter, we have described and analysed how a book is trans-formed from the author’s creation into the publisher’s product. Thepublishing process is the essential link in the chain of communicationfrom author to reader. The model which we have suggested can bereplicated in all its essentials for any published object, whether it isprinted or electronic, book or journal, intended for the mass market


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BOOKSELLER → order → DISTRIBUTOR → books →BOOKSELLER

Figure 4.7 A simple model of distribution


EDITORIAL

CommissioningAcceptanceCopy editing

DesignProduction

MARKETING

PromotionAdvertising

Sales

DISTRIBUTIONWarehousing

Orders

Figure 4.8 The publishing process

or the most esoteric of specialist monographs. No published documentcan reach its reader without going through these processes, even if they are abbreviated or some stages are omitted. The business contextmay be that of a multimillion pound international publishing house ora small community of scholars communicating papers to each otheracross the Internet. Profit may be the driving force, or it may be irrel-evant. But no text can reach an audience unless it is composed, edited,put into a retrievable form and distributed.

The three core elements – editorial, marketing, distribution – arerepresented in Figure 4.8. Within each, there is a series of other activ-ities, which are here shown as they are understood in general tradepublishing. But they are much more widely applicable as a model ofthe process which we have been describing. In due course, we shall adda business model to this process model, but before we can do that, wemust examine the next stage of the transmission of the author’s workto the reader. Sir Stanley Unwin quoted a translation of a poem by theGerman author Felix Dahn which nicely captures a publisher’s view ofthis final, and crucial, stage: ‘To write books is easy . . . To print booksis a little more difficult . . . To read books is more difficult still . . . Butthe most difficult task of all that a mortal man can embark upon is tosell a book’.77 It is that task which we shall examine in Chapter Five.


1 See above, pp. 48–53.2 See above, pp 2–3.3 Published as Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical

Theory of Communication, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1949.4 See above, pp. 75–79.5 COD.6 Collins Softback.7 For the composition of Johnson’s Dictionary, see above, p. 15, note 23.8 See Giles Gordon, ‘Literary agents’, in: Owen, 1996, pp. 125–32.9 London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999; paperback edition, London:

Sceptre, 1999.10 See Michel Foucault, ‘What is an author?’ in: Paul Rabinow, ed. The

Foucault Reader, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 101–20.11 Post-modern critics would dislike this phrase. I mean simply the form of

words (or other matter) which is actually published, and imply nothingabout ‘text’ in the sense in which a critic would understand the word.


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12 For convenience, I shall assume that there is a single editor.13 See below, pp. 106–12.14 See above, p. 99 and n. 6.15 There are also some acknowledgements to named individuals in the Preface.16 COD and Collins Softback respectively.17 Terttu Luukkonen, ‘Is scientists’ publishing behaviour reward-seeking?’,

Scientometrics, 24:2, 1992, pp. 297–319.18 See Beth Luey, ‘Editors’, in: Altbach and Hoshino, pp. 89–96.19 See above, pp. 76–79.20 See John Morrish, Magazine Editing, London: Routledge, 1996.21 Smith, ‘Refereeing’.22 For an editor’s view of editing, see Dan Franklin, ‘The role of the editor’,

in: Owen, 1996, pp. 133–40.23 For a pessimistic view of the ‘disenfranchisement’ of editors in this

process, see Curtis, pp. 53–9.24 See Richard Abel ‘The publisher, the editor and the role of critical ratio-

nalism’, Logos, 10:1, 1999, pp. 35–40. Abel takes a rather traditional viewof the editor, and of the cultural role of the publishing house; but theessence of his argument applies to editors in any successful house, whethersuccess is defined culturally or commercially.

25 Unwin is perhaps the most obvious example. For a more formal analysis,see Coser, Kadushin and Powell, pp. 89–91.

26 See below, p. 119 for an attempt at a more formal model of this relationship.

27 See below, pp. 117–20.28 For a detailed account, see Judith Butcher, Copy-editing: The Cambridge

handbook for editors, authors and publishers, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 3rd ed., 1992.

29 When it is not well done, it is only too obvious. In one recently publishedand highly acclaimed biography from a major publisher, there are ‘ex-patriots’ [people living abroad], one of whom had lived in an ‘appartment’in Paris. The French title of a book by a friend of the subject is translatedinto English as if it were one of his other books. All of this is within about10 pages, and is not untypical of the book as a whole!

30 See, for example, de Bellaigue, ‘Seven sisters’.31 Jo Royle, Louise Cooper and Rosemary Stockdale, ‘The use of branding

by trade publishers: an investigation into marketing the book as brandname product’, PRQ, 15:4, 1999–2000, pp. 3–13; Jo Royle, Louise Cooperand Rosemary Stockdale, ‘Do brands sell books? British researchers findsome positive evidence’, Logos, 10:4, 1999, pp. 220–2.

32 An argument put forward as long ago as the mid-1980s; see Paul M.Hirsch, ‘U. S. cultural productions: the impact of ownership’, J Comm,35:3, 1985, pp. 110–21.


33 Epstein seems likely to become a classic statement of this position. For anagent’s perspective on the same issues, see the very entertaining (andenlightening) essays in Curtis. See above, p. 45.

34 See, for example, M. Willies, ‘New beginning’, PRQ, 12:1, 1996, pp. 64–71.The author was CEO of the Los Angeles Times-Mirror Group, which hadbeen heavily criticized. His argument – that a publishing company mustset high standards, have strong leadership, let professional staff get on withtheir jobs and create employee loyalty – is wholly logical. But the slightlymodified business school jargon in which it was expressed is likely to havedeterred many of those to whom it was addressed.

35 This is the view of Paten.36 See Sissons. For rights, see below, pp. 114–16. For a similar view from an

American publisher, see Gerald Howard, ‘The American scene: we’re stillhere’, in: Owen, 1996, p. 112.

37 Cohen.38 1994 data, quoted in Martin P. Levin, ‘The positive role of large corpora-

tions in US book publishing’, Logos, 7:1, 1996, pp. 127–37.39 Walter W. Powell, ‘Competition versus concentration in the book trade’,

J Comm, 30:2, 1980, pp. 89–97. Twenty years later, the argument is stillvalid. See also Curtis, pp. 48–50.

40 See B.G. Jones, ‘Changing author relationships and competitive strategiesof university publishers’, JSP, 31:1, 2000, pp. 3–19; and Pascal. Generally,see Tim Rix, ‘The university presses’, in: Owen, 1996, pp. 101–7.

41 See the example in note 29 above, which is a book published by a respectedacademic house.

42 See Tim Waterstone, ‘In response to the doom merchants’, The Bookseller,4649, 31 March 1995, pp. 16–19. For the views of the doom merchant see,Ian Norrie, ‘A bookseller chiaroscuro’, The Bookseller, 4650, 3 February1995, pp. 24–6, 33. For a view from the end of the decade, see JohnMitchinson, ‘Bestseller genes’, The Bookseller, 4866, 2 April 1999, pp.24–6. See also below, pp. 141–42.

43 Rowland Lorimer, ‘The socioeconomy of scholarly and cultural bookpublishing’, MCS, 15:2, 1993, pp. 203–16.

44 E. Dimendberg, ‘Five movie scenes from the author/acquisitions editorrelationships’, JSP, 28:1, 1996, pp. 23–9.

45 For this concept, see above, pp. 9–12.46 For examples, see Charles Clark, Lynette Owen and Roger Palmer, eds.,

Publishing Agreements: A book of precedents, London: Butterworths, 5th

ed., 1997.47 Some authors sell their copyrights outright to their publishers. The Society

of Authors strongly opposes this practice; a recent example is their oppo-sition to the sale of rights in radio talks to the BBC, reported on the


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Society’s Website at www.writers.org.uk/society/Pages/warnfrm.html(consulted on 27 July 2001). See also Feather, History, pp. 178–9.

48 This is why the Society of Authors supports it. 49 See also above, pp. 50–51.50 This ‘auction’ is normally conducted by telephone, and is not a simulta-

neous competitive bidding process. In fact, it amounts to a series of parallelnegotiations with two or more potential buyers, which the trade has cometo call by this typically dramatic name.

51 On the former point, see Sissons; on the latter, see Clark, ‘Great expecta-tions’.

52 Curwen, pp. 75–6; see also above, pp. 21–22.53 Yvonne de Hensler, ‘The art of being global on a local basis’, The

Bookseller, 4650, 3 February 1995, pp. 36–9. David Haines, ‘Survival of thefittest’, The Bookseller, 4702, 2 February 1996, pp. 26–7. See also above, p. 19.

54 See, for example, S. Taylor and T. V. Cassidy, ‘China: the once and futuremarket’, PW, 245:30, 1998, supplement, which deals with perhaps the mostdifficult case of all. A large number of British and American academic andSTM books are legitimately translated into Japanese, but there appears tobe little published commentary on this.

55 J. Zealski, D. Maryles and K. Jones, ‘Tom Clancy: exploring the worlds ofa mega-selling author’, PW, 245:28, 1998, pp. 41–51.

56 For Rowling’s income in 2000, see www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archives (2 December 2000). For the games and toys, see search.nytimes.com/ (11 February 2000; 11 August 2000); and for the TV rights, seedailynews.yahoo.com/ (9 July 2001) and Times.co.uk (10 July 2001).

57 See search.nytimes.com/ (29 March 2001).58 Calculated as 10 per cent of £8.00 multiplied by 5000. 59 Average gross weekly earnings in the UK in Spring 2000 were £320, or

£16 640 per annum. For university graduates, they were £520, or £27 040. 60 The aptly named ‘vanity’ publishers put books into print at the expense of

the author, but make little or no effort to sell them.61 For PLR, see www.plr.uk.com. The data quoted in this paragraph is to be

found on the same Website. For the history of PLR in Britain, see BrigidBrophy, A Guide to Public Lending Right, Aldershot: Gower, 1983, pp. 105–30.

62 See above, pp. 103–04, and Figures 4.3 and 4.4.63 Curtis, p. 70.64 See, for example, Clark, 1988, pp. 45–6, where it is assumed that at least

some of the work will be outsourced to freelances. Earlier writers assumethat it was an in-house function; see for example Dessauer, p. 26.


65 See Szbolcs Kemény, ‘Subcontracting in the publishing industry’, Logos,7:4, 1996, pp. 289–92; and Meryl Lanning, ‘Working with freelances – andenjoying it’, SP, 24:1, 1992, pp. 52–6.

66 For the classic account of traditional techniques, see Hugh Williamson,Methods of Book Design: Practice of an industrial craft, New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 3rd ed., 1983.

67 See R. Shipton, ‘Value added: professional editors and publishers’, JSP,27:4, 1996, pp. 222–9.

68 See Webb.69 For an up-to-date and exhaustive, but comprehensible, account, see John

Peacock, Book Production, London: Blueprint, 2nd ed., 1995. See alsobelow, pp. 161–64.

70 See above, pp. 81–83 and Table 3.3.71 The Bookseller, 4947, 27 October 2000.72 This is a week from December 2001, using the online version at

www.booktrack.com73 Jean Heffernan, ‘Off the peg distribution’, The Bookseller, 4874, 28 May

1999, pp. 28–30; Curtis, pp. 47–8.74 For an example, see Andrew Stone, ‘Publishers leave Bailey over service

problems’, The Bookseller, 4871, 7 May 1999, p. 7. Generally, see AndrewStone, ‘Book distribution profits disappear’, The Bookseller, 4913, 3 March2000, p. 5.

75 See Sydney Davies, ‘Looking into the mirror’, The Bookseller, 4817, 17April 1998, pp. 20–2; this is a commentary on a KPMG study whichemphasized the importance of developing electronic networks for salesand distribution, reported in The Bookseller, 4811, 6 March 1998, pp.14–15.

76 See below, pp. 144–46.77 Unwin, p. 113.


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CHAPTER FIVE

Selling Books

Introduction

All publishers need to make a profit in order to stay in business; thisis true even of the small number for whom profit is not the primarymotive for being in the trade. Similarly, if an author wants his or herwork to be read, it has to pass through a series of commercial transac-tions which will put it into the hands of the reader. There are manychannels and outlets for the sales of books, journals, newspapers andother published products, and many routes through which they reachtheir readers. They all, however, have one common characteristic: there is an exchange of money. In this Chapter, we shall examine someaspects of the selling of books.

In general, publishers do not sell books directly to their end-users.Certainly so far as general trade, or consumer, hardbacks areconcerned, publishers assume that sales to the general public will bethrough bookshops. As we have seen, their own marketing is there-fore aimed at the retail side of the trade, the bookshops.1 Paperbacksare far more widely available than hardbacks, for they are to be foundin many outlets which cannot really be called bookshops at all. Muchof this trade is handled by wholesalers, so that influencing their buyersis critical to the success of a title. Similarly, consumer magazines aresold in a wide range of outlets from small newsagents to the branchesof national chain stores to be found in almost every high street andshopping mall.

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Many STM, academic and professional books follow the same routeas consumer hardbacks, although there is some advertising and promo-tion which is directed towards individuals. Sales through bookshops,and direct sales to individuals, are however only one part of the book-selling trade. Libraries of all kinds, but especially public libraries andlibraries in schools, colleges and universities, command a major share ofthe market, and their vagaries of funding can have a significant impacton the trade, as we shall see.2 There is, of course, some overlap betweenbooks bought by individuals and books bought by libraries, although atthe more specialized end of the market libraries are the major customers.

This is particularly true of the market for academic journals. Thosewhich are published by societies are of course distributed to members,but library subscriptions are of great importance even to them. Forcommercial learned journals library subscriptions typically representvirtually the whole of their income. Complex networks of agencies andactivities exist to facilitate this side of the trade. Promotion is aimed atgenerating library subscriptions, although this may mean promotingthe product to those who will influence the decision to subscriberather than those who will actually commit the funds, that is, acade-mics rather than librarians. The importance of institutional sales is evenmore marked with electronic journals, even though the delivery systemto the end-user may bypass the library in the traditional institutionalsense.3 The development of the Internet is already beginning to have asignificant impact on retail bookselling. Quite apart from its use as apromotional medium, there are Internet booksellers which sell directto the general public, and are therefore competing with the retail book-shops. We shall examine this in due course, along with other aspectsof more traditional direct sales to readers such as book clubs.4

To make sense of this complex set of activities, we shall approachthe bookselling side of the industry from various directions. The keyissues to be considered are:

• retail bookselling and bookshops;• wholesaling in the book trade;• the impact of e-commerce on the trade;• the institutional market.

In considering these in turn, we are tracing the last stage of the com-mercial context of the communication process from author to reader.

132 Selling Books

Selling consumer books

In both Britain and the United States, consumer books are sold inmany different kinds of outlet, not all of which would be primarilydescribed as bookshops. There is no standard classification of theseoutlets in the British book trade, but something along these lines iscommonly accepted:

• chain bookshops;• independent bookshops;• confectioners, tobacconists, newsagents (CTN);• supermarkets;• other shops;• book clubs/mail order.

The chain bookshops have become increasingly dominant in the retailbook trade in Britain since the mid-1980s, and are indeed argued tohave led a revolution in bookselling. Their large and well-stockedshops in prominent locations in high streets and shopping malls,usually staffed by competent and well-educated people, have been asignificant factor in increasing the sales of consumer books. This newstyle of bookselling was pioneered by Waterstone’s, and was followed– with various degrees of enthusiasm and reluctance – by Dillons,Blackwells and others.5 These chains now command about 25 per centof the British book market, measured by value of sales.6 Similar chainsin the United States had about the same market share for hardbackbooks in the early 1990s.7 Because the purchasing power of the chainsis so great, they can command excellent terms from the publishers atthe upper end of the normal range of 35 to 40 per cent discount on therecommended retail price.8 The chain bookshops have obvious advan-tages over their rivals. On the other hand, while they have a strongcorporate image, they do not lack individuality. Although the processof buying is typically centralized, shop managers are encouraged toorder titles for stock using their knowledge of the local market, and todevelop that market as they see fit. Individual branches of the chainsthus combine the advantages of size with those of local knowledge.This has made them into very powerful players in the trade.

No-one would deny the importance and influence of the chains, butnot everyone takes a favourable view of that influence. They were

Selling Books 133

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blamed by some for the alleged collapse of the consumer book marketin Britain in the mid-1990s,9 although in retrospect it is far from clearthat there was anything worse than a blip in sales. There was a viewthat the chains were opening new shops at a time when the problemwas not the lack of bookshops but the lack of customers, and that thenew shops were therefore damaging the already perilous condition ofthose that already existed.10 The response from the chains was onlypartly by refuting the views of the traditionalists;11 even more effectivewas their continuing expansion and manifest success.

The traditional outlets of the book trade are usually called indepen-dent bookshops. The assumption is that they are owned and run by anindividual or a family, have a single site and, at least by implication,that they offer a high standard of service to their customers. This isindeed true of some of them, but such an operation has obvious prob-lems in the face of competition from large national chains. The marketshare of the independents is unclear. One study suggests that in Britainit was around 16 per cent of sales by value in 1999.12 It is not clear towhat extent this can be compared with a figure of 28 per cent of valuein 1994 from an earlier study.13 If they are truly comparable, then the‘doom merchants’14 would seem to be right, and there has been adecline in the independent sector. The definition of the independentsector, however, includes the so-called bargain bookshops whichsell cheap editions and publishers’ remainders. Some of these are nottruly independent at all, but are part of small chains which operate in a number of towns, often with close relationships to wholesaleremainder merchants.15 There are no data to enable us to determinewhether it is the quality end or the cheap end of the independentmarket which has suffered a decline. There can be little doubt,however, that the chain bookshops are now the predominant playersin consumer book retailing. In the United States, in the late 1990s, thechains controlled 54 per cent of all retail bookshops.16 In Britain, in1998, four chains were responsible for 42 per cent of retail book sales.17

The chains and the quality independents carry very similar stocks;the difference lies in quantity rather than coverage. A typical indepen-dent probably carries about 20 000 titles; a branch of a chain bookshopwould normally have twice that number. Both, of course, carry hard-backs as well as paperbacks. Mass market paperbacks, however,achieve their circulation through many outlets other than bookshops.One group which has always been treated as a separate category in the

134 Selling Books

British book trade is the so-called CTN sector, shops which areprimarily outlets for confectionery, tobacco and newspapers. Shops ofthis kind exist in almost every part of every town in Britain, and manycarry a small stock of mass market paperbacks, often with only onecopy of each of 50 or so titles. Commentators have always consideredthat CTNs were important to the mass market paperback trade.18 It isnot clear to what extent this is still true in the mid-1990s, when it seemsto have represented only about 4 per cent of the total value of retailbook sales.19 One thing is certain: for the CTNs, books are a small partof their trade, and the CTN trade is a small part of retail bookselling.Yet there are benefits to both sides, for costs are low and there areprofits to be made.

It is certainly true that the depth of market penetration achieved by paperback publishers depends on sales through many outlets whichare not recognizable as bookshops. Twenty years ago, this was largelythrough the CTNs. Now, we have to look beyond them with theirsmall shops serving a limited locality and with a small customer base.First we should consider the supermarkets. Supermarkets, often in out-of-town locations, have been among the leaders of the British retailingrevolution since the mid-1980s. They now dominate the retail foodindustry, and have made significant inroads, both directly and throughsubsidiaries, into lucrative sectors such as gardening, do-it-yourself,household goods, clothing and furniture. They began selling books in1985, when a specialist children’s book publisher, Sebastian Walker,signed a deal with Sainsbury’s.20 The traditionalists in the book tradewere shocked, but could do nothing to prevent it. Indeed, it was ashrewd move, for most children’s books are bought by adults not chil-dren, but children accompany adults on supermarket shopping expedi-tions. This, of course, includes many families who do not normally gointo bookshops; because of this, the supermarkets were able to bringchildren’s books to the attention of many who might otherwise nothave considered buying them. Moreover, this happened in a shop whichfamilies visited regularly. Within a decade it was estimated that 10 percent of all children’s book sales were through the supermarkets.21 By1999, 5 per cent by value of all book sales were going through the samechannel. The latter was a growth from virtually nothing in 1990, and ameagre 1 per cent in 1994.22 The larger supermarkets began to carry a small stock of mass market paperbacks, as well as books on cookery,home improvement and other obvious product-related topics.

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The other shops which sell some books cover a great variety of outletsand trades. By far the most important are the chain newsagents, whichare not bookshops like Waterstones or Books Etc., but are certainly notCTNs. The market leader is W. H. Smith, which is itself virtually aBritish institution. From its modest late eighteenth-century origins asa London newsagent, Smith’s expanded with the railway network in the1840s and 1850s until it came to dominate a large part of the Britishbook trade. By the middle of the twentieth century, it held sway innewspaper and magazine wholesaling, retail bookselling (especially atrailway stations, but also in what the company called its ‘town’ shops),and magazines sales. After World War II there was further expansioninto book clubs, paperback wholesaling and other activities.23 All thistook place in the context of shops which also sold stationery, fancygoods and gifts, and, increasingly, records and later tapes and compactdiscs. After difficulties and major reorganizations, Smiths emerged inthe early 1990s as a strong omnipresent high street and mall-basedchain, selling fast-moving hardbacks and paperbacks. There is nothingelse quite like it, not least because it is familiar, safe and – above all – inprime sites. These sites still include most major railway stations, andnow, of course airports and some bus stations as well.24

W. H. Smith is unique, but it is by no means the only unclassifiableshop selling books in most towns. Books can be found in petrolstations, food shops, florists, hobby shops of all kinds, and indeedalmost any shop which sells goods to affluent people with identifiableinterests. How much is all this worth? One estimate is that it mayconstitute some 10 per cent of the value of the retail book trade, acalculation which excludes W. H. Smith.25

At the heart of the retail trade in consumer books in Britain are thebookshops, both the chains and the independents. Between them, theyprobably account for just over half of the total value of the trade, if weinclude the bookselling activities of W. H. Smith. But the other shops– whether traditional outlets like the CTNs, or relatively new entrantslike the supermarkets – provide an invaluable route into parts of themarket which the bookshops do not reach. The revolution in Britishbookselling, paralleled in the United States and indeed elsewhere,26 hasmany aspects. The chain bookshops have provided new and stylishoutlets for good books in almost every town in the country. Thebargain bookshops have provided cheap books which perhaps developthe habit of bookbuying. Supermarkets and other psychologically safe

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environments offer books to people who may find ‘real’ bookshopsintimidating, and have the advantage of attracting many customerswho expect to spend large sums of money on each visit. The result isgrowth. But these developments also explain why the same phenom-enon can be seen so differently by different people. What Waterstonesees as success, Norrie sees as the last nail in the coffin of the qualityindependent bookshop; both are right, and yet both are also wrong,for more people are buying books and there are more and sometimesbetter places to buy them.27 For both publishers and bookbuyers, thatis what really matters, and is the real benefit of the retail revolution.

Book clubs and direct selling

One aspect of book retailing deserves separate treatment, for it is, bydefinition, not manifested in shops of any kind: bookselling by directmail, and in particular through book clubs.

Book clubs have existed for over 50 years in many countries, but have been particularly prominent in Britain and United States. The basic principles on which they operate are simple. Members arecommitted to buying a minimum number of books each year from amonthly selection. Most clubs have a ‘book of the month’, which issupplied unless the member rejects it. There are also supplementarytitles (many of which are previous books of the month) which can bebought at any time. There are variations on these rules between clubs;some, for example, insist on a larger minimum number of purchasesduring the first six or 12 months of membership. The clubs recruitmembers through newspaper advertisements, usually in glossy week-end supplements. Most have an introductory offer of a number ofbooks (four to six is typical) at ludicrously low prices. These are lossleaders intended to stimulate business.

The traditional independent booksellers always regarded the clubswith suspicion. For many years, the British clubs had to operate withinalmost impossibly restrictive rules imposed by the BooksellersAssociation and the Publishers’ Association. The rules were designedto protect the retail bookshops by not exposing them to price compe-tition.28 The clubs gradually increased their market share in the 1980sand 1990s, reaching perhaps something close to 15 per cent by 2000,when the largest British book club operation, BCA, had 20 clubs with

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about two million members.29 The clubs are successful because of theconvenience which they offer to their members. By reducing the rangeof choice, they overcome one of the deterrents to using a bookshop.They are able to offer books at significantly lower prices than the sametitles cost in the shops; hardbacks are typically offered at about thenormal price of the equivalent paperback, and trade paperbacks atabout half of their normal price. But they also bring benefits to thetrade in general. The clubs buy books from publishers in large quan-tities. They can command high discounts, perhaps up to 70 per cent,30

but they actually allow publishers to increase the number of copiesprinted and hence to reduce the unit cost. Some of the savings inherentin this are reflected in the retail price of the trade edition in bookshops.Moreover, in general terms, it seems likely that the clubs have the effectof stimulating the ownership of hardback books among those whomight not otherwise buy them, and thus generally promoting bookbuying and perhaps reading to the benefit of the trade as a whole.Certainly there is little evidence that retail sales of hardbacks weredamaged by the clubs; indeed, their growth coincided with a period ofincrease in book sales across the board.

The titles offered by the book clubs are typical mid-market con-sumer books, both fiction and non-fiction. Some of the more special-ized clubs (such as the History Book Club, for example) venture intothe more popular end of academic publishing, and most of the clubsoffer some major reference books, often as their loss leaders at greatlyreduced prices.31 In a sense, book clubs are a particular manifesta-tion of a generic phenomenon of direct selling from producer (in thiscase the publisher) to end-user. Direct mail marketing was not highlyregarded in the British book trade until comparatively recently. It tended to be dismissed as being an expensive activity with lowreturns.32 At best it was seen as a marginal method of selling luxurybooks and perhaps a few highly specialized titles.33 During the 1990s,direct selling became more common in Britain, at least for certain kinds of books.

The development of direct mail selling of books in Britain is, in part, an indirect consequence of the almost universal use of computersto maintain mailing lists. Such lists have become a highly valuable com-modity in their own right, especially when they are lists of influentialor prosperous people, or people with a common interest. Membershiplists of organizations, or a database derived from a reference book like

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Who’s Who, are obvious examples. These lists are offered for sale bytheir owners,34 with publishers among the customers. A list of membersof a learned society, for example, can be used to promote a new title inits specialist field. So can lists of members of hobby groups or peoplewith a shared interest in anything from a particular football club tobirdwatching. For specialist publishers of hobby-related and leisureinterest books, direct mail through relevant organizations’ mailing listsis an invaluable marketing tool. Academic, STM and professional publishers also set a good deal of store by direct mailings. They hopeto stimulate both actual sales and recommendations to institutionallibraries, and there is some evidence of success. The very low figure of0.8 per cent response to direct mail advertising almost certainly under-estimates its real impact.35 It has been calculated that in 1999 about 9 per cent by value of British book sales were through mail order.36 Oneeffect of the growth of direct mail bookselling has been that the book-shops have found themselves competing directly with the publishersfor retail customers.

Competition has always been a thorny subject in the British booktrade. Bookshops compete with each other, with other outlets and with book clubs and indeed with direct sales by publishers. But untilrecently they could do so only by offering better or different servicesto their customers. Unlike almost every other retailer in Britain, book-sellers could not compete on prices. We must consider the wholequestion of book pricing and price competition before we can considersome other aspects of bookselling, and in particular the wholesale tradeand the supply of books to libraries.

Book prices and the demise of the Net Book Agreement

For almost the whole of the last century, from 1900 to 1995, the Britishbook trade operated within the self-imposed constraint of the NetBook Agreement (NBA).37 The details of the NBA need not detain us, but it is necessary to understand in outline how it operated becausethe aftermath of its demise still seems to be a powerful factor in the minds of some in the book trade in Britain. Under the terms of theAgreement, the minimum retail price of a book could be set by the publisher. The bookseller agreed to abide by this, and in return wasoffered a discount on the retail (or ‘net’) price which allowed him or

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her a margin of profit. The discounted (or ‘trade’) price was typicallyabout 30 per cent, although the discounts crept upwards from the mid-1960s onwards. Publishers were not obliged to set a net price, althoughin practice virtually all British publishers did so, the only significantexceptions being for school textbooks which were normally sold inbulk to schools and education authorities. The sanction against book-sellers who infringed the NBA was that publishers would no longersupply on trade terms, that is, with a significant discount.

The legality of the NBA was first challenged in the mid-1960s underthe terms of the Resale Price Maintenance Act of 1964. The case againstit was heard in the Restrictive Practices Court, which famously foundin its favour. The judge accepted the book trade’s arguments almostwithout question, most notably the central proposition that ‘books aredifferent.’38 The gist of the trade’s case was that without the protectionof the Agreement, retail bookshops would be financially insecure, andwould be unwilling to hold a range of stock. In turn, the publisherswould be less willing to publish books likely to have a limited, albeitviable, number of sales. Cultural, literary and scholarly publishingwould suffer a serious decline, and there would be a disbenefit to thepublic. The arguments revolved almost entirely around these points;even the Registrar of Restrictive Practices, who had brought the case,did not choose to question whether or not the trade might be able tochange in order to accommodate itself to changed circumstances.

For a further 20 years, the NBA continued almost without ques-tion. In the 1980s, as free market economics came to dominate Britishpolitical and business life, new challenges arose. At the theoreticallevel, economists questioned the last remaining examples of pricecontrols, of which the NBA was probably the most insidious.39 TheMonopolies and Mergers Commission re-examined the NBA, and theCommission of the European Communities began to take an interestin it as an inhibition to the free trade which was the foundation stone of the Community’s policies. It seemed likely by the mid-1990sthat the NBA would crumble under the next set of legal challenges,especially those from Europe. Eventually, however, the end came from within the trade. Terry Maher, Managing Director of the PentosGroup of bookshops, which included Dillons and others, simplyannounced that his company intended to offer books at a discount. Fora while the outcome was in the balance, but when W. H. Smithannounced that they too were withdrawing from the Net Book

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Agreement, it was effectively dead. By the end of 1995, for the firsttime in almost a century, British retail bookshops were competing onthe price of their products.40

The consequence was immediately visible in the bookshops. Thechain bookshops, in particular, developed a number of promotionalploys which were to become familiar to their customers over the nextfew years. Publishers continued to recommend a retail price (RRP) (asall producers are allowed to do), but shops were regularly offeringbooks at reduced prices, typically £2.00 less that the recommendedprice. Another form of offer was that of three books (usually mid-market paperbacks) for the price of two. There was some directcompetition between shops. The bestselling title of the first Christmasseason after the end of the NBA was a book by the television cook,Delia Smith, which was heavily and competitively discounted, to thepoint at which copies were allegedly being sold at a loss.41 In 1996/97,discounting on RRPs was running at an average of between 20 and 25 per cent in the chains, and rather more than that at W. H. Smiths.The supermarkets were discounting up to 35 per cent.42

The dire prophecies of the supporters of the NBA were not realized,but there were significant shifts of emphasis within the trade. Thenumber of independent bookshops in membership of the Booksellers’Association declined by about 200 (from just under 1900) betweenOctober 1995 and August 2001.43 From the mid-1990s, however, thechains have grown impressively. Since 1998, the three major chainbookshops in Britain have significantly increased their retail sellingspace, and W. H. Smiths have more than doubled theirs (Table 5.1).44

The creation of the first book ‘superstores’ in Britain in the late 1990swas another indicator of underlying strength.45 This is reflected in theannual increases of 3 per cent (in real terms) of the sales of consumerbooks in the UK between 1995 and 1999.46 The relative decline of the

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Table 5.1 Retail space for bookselling 1998–99

Category Space in ft2 1998 Space in ft2 1999

Chain bookshops 1 559,000 1 898 000W. H. Smith 1 300,000 2 900 000


independent bookshops is, no doubt, a professional and personalmisfortune for their owners and employees, but the general public hasfar better and easier access to bookshops than was the case as recentlyas the mid-1990s. The trade as a whole is clearly flourishing withoutthe comfort blanket of the Net Book Agreement.

The truth is that the British retail book trade has had to learn newtricks. Successful booksellers (both chains and independents) havedeveloped new promotional methods, and adopted many of the tech-niques of marketing which have long been familiar other retailers. Inthe mid-1990s, some of the more far-sighted observers saw that thiswould be the only way to survive. The retail music trade was seen asone model.47 Others recommended both specific techniques (many ofwhich have been adopted, such as the 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 offers), as wellas more traditional generic promotions of books as products.48

Price competition, however, has changed the financial relationshipbetween publishers and booksellers. When the Net Book Agreementwas in force, there was a comparatively simple method of calculatingdiscounts and effectively sharing the profits between producer andretailer. Typically, the retailer paid 70 per cent of the net price whenbuying books from the publisher, a discount of 30 per cent; it was esti-mated that this yielded a typical profit margin for the retailer of 5 percent on each book sold. In turn, the publisher’s costs and overheadswere typically just over 60 per cent of the net price, yielding a profitmargin to the publisher of slightly less than 10 per cent on each copysold at the trade price.49 The net price was determined by the publisherby taking the costs of publication and production, and then calculatingthe net price that would be necessary to yield these profit margins.Without a system of producer-determined retail prices, however, therehas been fundamental change. Discounts on recommended prices havecrept upwards to 35 to 40 per cent, but they are negotiable. The chainssometimes get as little as 25 per cent for books which they intend tosell at less than the recommended price, in order to generate largernumbers of sales and hence a larger gross income for everyone in thesupply chain. The essence of the matter is that the publisher mustdetermine how much revenue a title needs to produce in order themake a profit, and to recommend a retail price and agree discounts onit in a way which facilitates that. It is a more complicated world.

A hypothetical example will illustrate the pricing dilemmas whichnow face the book trade. If it costs £3.00 per copy to produce 10 000

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copies of a book, and the recommended retail price (RRP) is £10.00,the publisher’s maximum profit on sales at a 40 per cent discount (i.e.a trade price of £6.00) is £30 000. At a discount of 25 per cent (a tradeprice of £7.50), it is £45 000. Why then should the publisher offer themore favourable discount? The answer lies in trying to increase thetotal number of copies sold. If 50 000 are printed the copy cost willfall to about £1.00, but if the £10.00 RRP is retained, sales at a 25 percent discount will yield a profit to the publisher of £375 000. At a 20 per cent discount on the RRP of £10.00 (i.e. £8.00), the booksellerwill make a profit of £0.50 per copy. Provided that the bookseller sellsmore than three times as many at £8.00 as would have been sold at£10.00, the profits will be greater (Table 5.2). In practice, of course, the50 000 will be sold to many different kinds of bookshops, some ofwhich will sell at RRP and some of which will sell at a reduced price.But the principle embodied in this example illustrates how the chainscan afford to buy books at less favourable discounts when they selllarge numbers of copies which would not otherwise be sold at all. Thechains generate significant cash flow, still make a profit on every copy

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Table 5.2 The impact of discounts on profit margins

10 000 Copies (£) 50 000 Copies (£)

Copy cost 3 1RRP 10 10RRP minus 20% 8 8Publisher’s costs 30 000 50 000

Publishers income40% discount on RRP(Trade price = £6.00) 60 000 300 00025% discount on RRP(Trade price = £7.50) 75 000 375 000

Publisher’s profit40% discount on RRP 30 000 250 00025% discount on RRP 45 000 325 000

Bookseller’s margin RRP @ 40% discount 4 4RRP minus 20% @ 20% discount 0.5 0.5

sold and attract additional customers into their shops. Thus bothpublishers and chain bookshops benefit; it is the smaller retailer whocannot sell large numbers of copies, and therefore has to sell at fullprice in order to generate adequate cash flow, who suffers. This is theeconomics which underlies the comparative decline of the independentbooksellers.

From the publisher’s perspective, the key issue lies is getting theright relationship between costs, RRP and trade discounts. For manymid-market books, publishers will take the risk of assuming that alower trade price, and hence a smaller income per copy sold, willincreases total sales sufficiently to reduce the cost per copy produced.It is this which is ultimately critical, because in one key respect Table 5.2 can be misunderstood. The bookseller apparently sacrificespotential profits by buying at £8.00 (i.e. a 20% discount on RRP)rather than £6.00 (a 40% discount). But this line of argument does nottake full account for the impact of the cost per copy to the publisher.In practice, the income from 10 000 copies, even at a 25% discount,will be inadequate to sustain their business despite the paper profitfrom the title, so that the RRP will have to be increased and this willhave an impact on retail sales, especially in the chain bookshops. As inany business, the setting of prices at a level which both generates profitand does not inhibit sales is critical to success.

Wholesaling and the distribution of books

So far, we have assumed that the only parties involved in the transac-tions which put a book into a bookshop are the publisher and thebookseller. This is never entirely true, since even in the most straight-forward publisher-to-bookseller sale there is a third party in the formof a provider of the transportation which physically coveys the bookfrom the one to the other. There is also, however, a number of otherpossible parties involved in the chain of supply. The most common ofthese are wholesalers. For much of the second half of the twentiethcentury, wholesalers were notable by their absence in much of theBritish book trade. This was partly a matter of historical accident.Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the wholesale book trade had been largely dominated by a single firm, Simpkin Marshall,whose premises and stock were destroyed in the Blitz. Attempts to

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re-establish the firm after World War II failed, because the capital costswere too great.50 As a result, the British book trade from the mid-1940sonwards developed a distribution system which assumed a direct chainof supply from publisher to bookseller.

To describe what emerged as a ‘system’ might however have seemedrather optimistic to many of those who participated in it. In practicethe supply chain was, at best, of variable quality. By the late 1970s,there were about 35 000 shops selling books, of which rather less than3000 were ‘real’ bookshops with a reasonable stock of books andreasonably competent staff. The elite of the book trade were the 500or so members of the Charter Group of the Booksellers’ Association,who undertook to maintain certain standards of stock, display andservice.51 At the same time there were some 2000 British publishers,although even then there was concentration of trade publishing inabout 20 houses. The result of this was often chaotic. Publishersreceived orders from hundreds of booksellers every day. Booksellerswere sending orders to scores of publishers. Some orders were for asingle copy of a title from the backlist. Others were for dozens ofcopies of a newly published book. There was a certain complacencyabout this in the trade,52 and the few external analysts sometimesseemed so amazed by what they found that they glossed over theconsequences.53 There were a few exceptions, notably Philip Unwin,who admitted that there was sometimes up to a month’s delay bypublishers in filling booksellers’ orders.54 Yet the whole issue was socontentious that The Bookseller conducted regular surveys, high-lighted offenders and continually campaigned for greater efficiency.The truth was that inefficiency of supply was intrinsic to the verystructure of the post-war British book trade. Once again, the protec-tive shield of the NBA worked against the interests of customers andthe more adventurous booksellers.

By the 1970s, there were a few wholesalers, but they dealt almostentirely in paperbacks and were generally no more efficient than thetrade publishers in meeting orders.55 Gradually, there was an improve-ment, as technology developed which allowed faster communicationsand better documentation of orders. The development of the StandardBook Number system from 1967 onwards (the now familiar ISBN)provided a unique identifier for each book which could facilitate the use of computers to generate, record and transmit orders and toproduce invoices. A system called Teleordering, which now seems

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crude but which was advanced for its time, was launched in 1979, andthere was a period of improvement in the 1980s. Bar codes began toappear on book jackets and paperback covers, so that Electronic Pointof Sale (EPOS) equipment could be used to monitor sales and stocklevels. With the greater efficiency facilitated by technology, the whole-salers began to develop a new role for themselves in the trade.56

This new role is primarily in relation to the smaller, typically inde-pendent, bookshops, for which well-managed wholesalers can actuallyprovide a very efficient source of supply. They have the capital toinvest in systems as well as stock, and can offer very efficient serviceswith a turnaround time of one working day for any order over amodest minimum (typically £100).57 For smaller bookshops, the use ofwholesalers has now become not only an economic option, but also ameans of ensuring that they can compete with the chains on serviceeven if they cannot always do so on price.58 At the same time, smallpublishers (who have to deal with the chains as well as with indepen-dents) can also save on costs by buying in their warehousing anddistribution services from wholesalers and others.59 Specialist academicpublishers have tended the follow the same pattern on both sides ofthe Atlantic.60 Some of the large trade publishers still have their ownwarehousing and distribution arrangements, but many of them arenow either using wholesalers or distributors, or indeed offering whole-saling and distribution services to others.61 Many different pressureshave forced the trade in this direction. They include the need forinvestment in complex and expensive information systems; the desireof the major publishers to sell in bulk to recoup their costs as quicklyas possible and hence to be able to offer more competitive prices; theneed for the chain bookshops to keep down their costs for the samereason; and the particular dilemma of the independent bookshops andsmall and specialist publishers in competing against the chains and theconglomerates. Whatever the reasons, the distribution of books inBritain at the beginning of the twenty-first century is probably bothmore efficient and more economical than it has ever been. In theory, a 24-hour turnaround time is possible, and a working week is normal.Nevertheless, there is still some resistance to radical change. Recom-mendations made by external consultants as long ago as 1998 have stillnot been implemented.62 Wholesaling and distribution have beentransformed by the end of the Net Book Agreement just as much asretail bookselling, but they are yet to reap the full benefits.

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E-commerce and the book trade

The demise of the Net Book Agreement is not, of course, the onlyfactor which has driven the changes in the British book trade at thebeginning of the twenty-first century. Indeed, the NBA was essentiallya parochial matter of concern to trade publishers and retail booksellersin Britain. At the global level at which the British book industry is a major player, the impact of information technology was far moreimportant. We have touched on aspects of this at various pointsthroughout this and previous chapters. For example, the use of wordprocessing by authors has made fundamental changes in the relation-ship between them and their editors in publishing houses.63 Someaspects of reference book publishing and scholarly journal publishinghave been changed radically by publication in digital formats ratherthan on paper.64 Printing – the most basic technical process of bookproduction – has been similarly transformed.65

In some respects, information technology has simply made thingseasier or more efficient rather than fundamentally different. Theauthor, for example, still keyboards his or her work; life is easierbecause corrections and revisions are easier with a word processor thanthey were with a mechanical typewriter, and more efficient becausetime is saved in typesetting and (from the author’s point of view)proof-reading. Similarly, books are, as objects, what they were 10 yearsago or indeed 500 years ago; it is merely the production processes andsome of the materials which have been altered, not the product. But insome respects the changes have been more fundamental. In ChapterSix, we shall pursue in more detail such matters as the development ofelectronic books and journals and the economic and cultural implica-tions for authors, publishers and readers. In retail bookselling, theimpact of information technology, and in particular the developmentof e-commerce, has been at several levels: it has facilitated existingactivities and created new activities, and much which lies in between.

We have already seen that information technology has helped tomake book distribution more efficient. We now need to examine moreclosely whether the nature of the retail trade has been changed in more fundamental ways. Perhaps the most visible manifestation of e-commerce in the book trade has been the development of onlinebookselling companies, of which the first and most prominent wasAmazon.com. This is an American company which started in July

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1995, and claims to have had some 29 million customers in 160 coun-tries since then. It sells a wide range of products, including music CDs,DVDs, and computer software as well as books, and has even begunto move into household goods and other things far removed from the book trade.66 Separate operations have been established under theAmazon umbrella in the United Kingdom, France, Germany andJapan. The British arm began as an independent company, Bookpages,in 1996, but was taken over by Amazon in 1998. By March 2001, it hadattracted three million customers, and was able to offer 1.2 millionBritish titles and 250 000 from the United States. The company had itsown distribution depot in central England, and claimed to be the thirdlargest bookseller in the UK, a claim which was almost certainly fullyjustified.67 A German subsidiary was established in 1998, and by mid-2001 was offering one million titles, 650 000 of them in English, ofwhich 500 000 were US publications.68 The French site was a laterdevelopment, but in its first year of operation (2000–2001) it was ableto offer 200 000 books in French and 700 000 in English.69

Amazon exemplifies the globalization and diversification of thebook trade, and re-enforces the conclusions reached in our discussionof English as an international publishing language.70 It is, of course,not the only online bookseller. Some well-established bookshops havealso developed online selling as an alternative to traditional in-store or mail order trading. These include the British Blackwells group, long established as a major player in academic bookselling, and theAmerican chain Barnes and Noble.71 Even the book clubs are begin-ning to develop an Internet presence to protect their market share.72

Booksellers and publishers, like most other companies, have estab-lished a presence on the World Wide Web. In a survey conducted in1998, it was found that 36 per cent of publishers with Websites provided online ordering facilities, often at quite a high level of sophis-tication, and that 80 per cent of booksellers did so.73 It is argued thatsome publishers have held back from developing online orderingsystems for individual customers because they do not want to alienatethe bookshops. This may be so. On the other hand, it seems at least aslikely that this is actually an extension of their traditional reluctance todeal with individuals because their systems are geared to dealing withretail and wholesale booksellers. Whatever the reason, it is clear that aWeb presence has now become essential to achieving direct sales ofbooks to consumers, and it seems likely that such sales are increasing.74

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Whether the development of online bookselling will damage thetraditional retail methods and outlets is still a question for the future.Already, however, evidence is emerging that it may already be doingso in some places. In Australia, for example, where mail order book-selling has always been important and there are few good bookshopsoutside three or four major cities, the global online bookshops arehaving a deleterious impact on such stockholding bookshops as doexist.75 As we have suggested, direct selling has traditionally been seenas a fringe activity in the British domestic book trade, but against thecompetition of the online booksellers this attitude is no longer a viableoption even in the UK.76 Certainly no bookshop can offer the rangeof stock offered by Amazon, which effectively is able to supply, withina matter of days, any British or American title in print, and manybooks from other countries as well. Conventional booksellers whodevelop an online outlet can only compete with this if they establish asimilar scale of operations. At least for the time being, it seems thatAmazon as first in field is the dominant player, and that the conven-tional booksellers can only regard their Internet operations as asupplement to their shop-based and traditional mail-order sales. InMay 2000, a speaker at the Booksellers’ Association conference esti-mated that between 3 and 5 per cent of sales at that time were throughthe Internet, but suggested that this could rise to 12 to 14 per cent by2004.77 There were those who disagreed with the forecast, and indeedits very precision makes it suspect! All past experience suggests thatthe use of the Internet increases very quickly in any field once itbecomes established. The electronic transformation of the global retailbook trade is only just beginning, and it is unlikely to be favourableto small independent bookshops.

Selling to libraries

Retail sales to consumers represent only one aspect of bookselling. Tothe general trade publisher it is crucial. For the publisher of massmarket paperbacks, it is the consumer market which is predominant.For some other publishers, however, and for the publishers of certainkinds of books and journals, the institutional market is in the forefrontof their thinking. There is not, of course, a clear distinction betweenconsumer books on the one hand and institutional books on the other,

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as we have already suggested.78 Indeed, the already blurred dividinglines are arguably becoming even less distinct. In both Britain and theUnited States, for example, there is some evidence of a shift fromlibrary buying to individual buying of children’s books both for leisureand for learning.79 At the same time, academic library purchasing isshifting from books and other printed materials to electronic products.Even among printed products there is evidence of a shift from booksto journals, perhaps because the continuing above-inflation increasesin journal prices continue to outstrip the inflation-related growth inlibrary budgets.80

Selling books and journals to libraries has always been important tothe book trade. It is estimated that about 7 per cent of UK publishers’domestic sales are to public libraries, but for some categories of booksthis can rise to almost 100 per cent.81 In 1998/99 the total value ofpublic library book purchasing in the UK was £91.9 million. Highereducation libraries spent a further £47.4 million.82 There are some cate-gories of books for which libraries are the only significant market; thisis true of the public library market for popular fiction in hardback, andthe academic library market for monographs and many STM titles. Formost scholarly journals, libraries are the only significant customer.One analyst claimed that this market was worth US$40 million in theUK alone in 1998/99, representing some 80 per cent of academiclibrary budgets.83 Other data suggests an even higher figure of some£63 million spent on periodicals by all higher education libraries.84

In a sense, librarians are a part of the same professional world aspublishers and booksellers; recent developments, and especially thedevelopment of electronic journals, has made this more explicit andmore widely recognized than ever before.85

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, a new branch of the British book trade developed specifically to satisfy the needs of libraries, and especially public libraries. These firms bought in bulkfrom publishers, and offered special facilities to help public librariansto buy books. This was possible because there was partial exemptionfrom the terms of the Net Book Agreement for participants in ascheme called the Library Licence, developed jointly by the Publishers’Association and the Library Association in 1929.86 This allowed abookseller to give a discount of 10 per cent on the net price of bookssold to libraries. Although such licences were held by many book-shops, it was increasingly the case from about 1960 onwards that the

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trade was dominated by a handful of specialist companies, the librarysuppliers. The suppliers offered much more than books at discountedprices. They also provided a wide range of other services which some-times included binding to the library’s specification, the insertion inthe book of labels, marks of ownership and the other paraphernalia of library books, and so on. They offered approval and inspectionservices for new books, either at their own premises or in the libraryitself. Although the library supply branch of the trade in Britain devel-oped because of the Net Book Agreement, it seems to have outlastedit. Indeed, the library suppliers seem to be as dominant now as theywere a decade ago, and possibly to have expanded their businessesgiven their new ability to compete with each other on price. Theservices which they can offer continue to be attractive to librarians;they are a cost-effective way of undertaking essential routine tasks87

The Library Licence scheme was for public libraries (defined aslibraries which gave access to the public free of charge),88 but manyother libraries actually made use of the service of the library supplycompanies. In effect they used them as agents; for the universitylibraries, with their comparatively high level of demand for foreign,and sometimes obscure, titles this was an important element in theirability to meet the needs of their users. Despite this, however, thespecialist library suppliers never entirely dominated the institutionallibrary market even at the height of their activities in the last quarterof the twentieth century. Some public libraries made it a point of prin-ciple to support local bookshops by buying some of their stock fromthem. This apparent altruism of this had the added advantage of givingrelatively easy access to locally published material which the supplierstypically would not carry. Most independent bookshops had somelibrary business, and some of the leading academic booksellers inLondon, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh dealt with university andcollege libraries all over the country, and indeed internationally.

As in so many other aspects of bookselling, the development of thechains has had an impact on all of this. The decline of the medium-sized independent bookshop has, in effect, driven the libraries furtherinto the hands of the suppliers. At the same time, the chains them-selves, especially those which include academic bookshops, havedeveloped slick and efficient library supply operations which can caterto the special needs of the libraries. Even comparatively esoteric titlescan be carried if there is a UK market for a few dozen copies as

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opposed to the one or two which an independent might supply to itslocal university. Nevertheless, there is a problem. The decline in thereal value of library budgets at a time of rising book prices has had adirect and negative impact on this branch of the trade.89

The supply of journals to libraries is another specialized business.Of course, when libraries subscribe to consumer magazines or tonewspapers (as most do to some extent) they use normal commercialchannels. A contract with a local newsagents (or more likely a branchof a chain) or postal subscriptions for weeklies or monthlies is by farthe most efficient supply mechanism. So far as public libraries areconcerned, this actually meets most of their needs because of thegeneral nature of the serials which they provide for their users. Foracademic libraries, this is far from being the case. Scholarly journals,as we have seen, are typically published in small editions and are eitherdistributed to members of the publishing society or sold only onsubscription, or some combination of the two.90 Each issue effectivelygoes out of print as soon as it is published. To ensure that their needsare met in an efficient and timely way, most libraries use specialistserial subscription agents as their source of supply.

The agents, some of which are actually specialized departments ofmajor bookselling companies, buy serials from their publisher and sellthem to libraries. Like library suppliers, they will, on request and at aprice, service the parts as they are published, although this is probablyless common than it is with books. They will also chase missing issues(always a bugbear for the serials librarian), ensure that annual indexesare supplied, and so on. Their profit comes from a combination of feescharged to libraries and discounts obtained from publishers. For thelibraries, the advantage of the system is that it saves time and effort.All the library’s subscriptions (which may run into thousands in largelibraries) can be channelled through one or two agents, and theinvoicing and payment of subscriptions is thus consolidated into ahandful of transactions. That in itself represents an immense savingagainst dealing with thousands of titles or hundreds of publishers,some of whom might be supplying only a single low-value title. Theagent also spares the librarian the complex dealings which can arisewhen something goes wrong. It is the agent’s job to ensure that thelibrary receives its entitlement, and the agency deals with publisher toensure that this happens. This system has operated well for manyyears; it is now highly automated and generally very efficient.91

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The problem of selling books and journals to libraries is not the effi-ciency of the supply system but the cost of the materials themselves.We have already noted the ever-rising cost of academic journals.Perhaps even more damaging to the trade has been the impact onpublic library book buying of the combination of the decreasing valueof budgets and the increasing price of books. In 1988/89, British publiclibraries spent £135.5 million on books; a decade later, it was calculatedthat the equivalent expenditure in 1988/89 pounds was £91.1 millions.Moreover book prices were not the only pressure on budgets, and asa result the percentage of total spend which went on book buying fellfrom 15.8 per cent in 1988/89 to 11.2 per cent in 1998/99.92 As we havealready noted, in academic libraries there has been a shift of purchasingfunds from journals to books; in the pre-1992 British universities in1998/99, there was a total expenditure of £44.3 million on periodicals,compared with £25.9 million on books.93

It is, however, in libraries that the Internet had its first, and still itsgreatest, impact on the publishing world. Libraries began to converttheir catalogues into machine readable form in the 1960s. By the late 1970s, many were using electronic ordering systems, and by the mid-1980s it was common for the acquisitions and cataloguingsystems to be fully integrated with each other. As librarians and libraryusers became increasingly familiar with IT, libraries, especially in the universities, grew closer to IT service providers. Seamless services were envisaged, in which the end user would seek information whichwould be provided in whatever form was appropriate; it might be abook from the library shelves, a photocopy of a journal article from a document supply service, or an electronic document supplied to the user’s own computer. The vision came closer to reality with thenetworked PCs of the early 1990s (of which universities were earlyadopters), and the subsequent development of the World Wide Web as the almost universal interface in the middle of that decade. Thefamiliarity, simplicity and above all the almost universal availability of networked information brought to fruition the long-cherisheddream of electronic publishing, and in particular the electronicpublishing of the increasingly numerous and prohibitively expensivescholarly journals.

In Chapter Six, we shall investigate this phenomenon in greaterdepth in the broader context of the impact of IT on the book trade ingeneral and particularly on the publishing industry.

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1 See above, pp. 120–22.2 See below, pp. 149–53.3 See below, pp. 171–76.4 See below, pp. 137–39.5 For an insider’s account, see Tim Waterstone, ‘The other side: bookselling

in Britain and United States’, in: Owen, 1996, pp. 114–24. The best recentsurvey of British retail bookselling is Kirsten Schlesinger, Book Retailingin Britain, London: Whitaker, 1999.

6 Giles Clark, Inside Book Publishing, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 69; andAlison Baverstock, How to Market Books, London: Kogan Page, 2nd ed.,1997, p. 10. They use different sources, but their data are broadly in line,from which I conclude that they are reasonably robust.

7 See Albert N. Greco, The Book Publishing Industry, Boston, MA: Allynand Bacon, 1997, p. 220, where a figure of 23 per cent is given in Table 8.1.

8 Clark, 2001, p. 77. On the whole subject of discounts, see below, pp. 142–44.9 Christopher Gasson, ‘Where did it all go wrong?’, The Bookseller, 4737, 4

October 1996, pp. 20–4.10 See, for example, Norrie.11 Waterstone, ‘In response’, is a reply to Norrie.12 A study by BML, quoted by Clark, 2001, p. 69.13 The 1994 data is quoted by Baverstock, p. 11.14 For the phrase, see Waterstone (note 11, above).15 For this aspect of the trade, which is not well reported in the literature, see

Clark, 2001, pp. 74–5; Schlesinger, pp. 92–4.16 J. Bekken, ‘Feeding the dinosaurs: economic concentration in the retail

book industry’, PRQ, 13:3, 1997–98, pp. 3–26.17 Clark, 2001, p. 10.18 Peter H. Mann, Book Publishing, Book Selling and Book Reading,

London: Book Marketing Council, 1979, pp. 3–5.19 Baverstock, p. 11.20 Baverstock, p. 285.21 Snyman, in Owen, 1996, p. 86.22 Clark, 2001, p. 69, for the 1999 data. Baverstock, p. 11, gives a figure of

1 per cent in 1994, and has no data for 1990. This is a measure of the rapidand significant growth of the supermarkets.

23 For an analysis, see Price Commission, Prices, Costs and Margins inPublishing, Printing and Binding, and Distribution of Books, London:HMSO (HC 527), 1979, pars. 6.38–6.42

24 See Charles Wilson, First with the News: The history of W. H. Smith1792–1972, London: Jonathan Cape, 1985, pp. 391–427.

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25 Clark, 2001, p. 69.26 For the USA, see Greco, Book Publishing, pp. 215–25. For the example of

Germany, where there is a similar pattern, see ‘The rise of the Germanmegastore: a Borsenblatt report on structural changes in the German booktrade’, The Bookseller, 7 June 1991, pp. 1644–6.

27 See above, pp. 133–34.28 The rules which used to operate will be in Booksellers’ Association,

Trade Reference Book, London: Booksellers’ Association, 4th ed., 1979, pp. 89–97.

29 Clark, 2001, pp. 69, 78. According to Schlesinger (p. 94), BCA’s marketshare in the book club sector is about 65 per cent.

30 Baverstock, p. 27.31 BCA, for example, have used the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and

even the microprint version of the Dictionary of National Biography, inthis way. Oxford University Press, which publishes both of these titles, isnot the most obvious source for book club titles in general!

32 See, for example, Clive Bingley, The Business of Book Publishing, Oxford:Pergamon, 1972, pp. 139–40, where the author (a publisher who wasregarded as something of a radical in his time) is almost contemptuous ofthe practice.

33 This seems to have been view of Unwin, p. 166.34 There are various restrictions on this under the Data Protection Act and

similar legislation in other countries and at European level, but in practicemost people whose names appear on lists do not withhold their permis-sion for the list’s owner to permit its use by others. See Baverstock, pp. 120-3 for the whole subject of mailing lists.

35 The figure is quoted by Baverstock, p. 159.36 Clark, 2001, p. 69.37 There is a vast literature, much of it polemical. For the origins and devel-

opment of the NBA, see Barnes, pp. 141–67; and Russi Jal Taraporevala,Competition and its Control in the British Book Trade 1850–1939,Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala, 1969, pp. 52–65.

38 The phrase was subsequently used as the title of the trade’s own accountof the proceedings, which remains essential reading for those who seek adetailed insight in the psychology of the British book trade in the middledecades of the twentieth century. R. E. Barker and G. R. Davies, eds.,Books are Different, London: Macmillan, 1966.

39 Walter Allan and Peter J. Curwen, Competition and Choice in thePublishing Industry, London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1991.

40 I have drawn heavily on the expertise of my colleague James Dearnley formatters relating to the NBA. I am grateful for his permission to make useof his PhD thesis, The Decline and Fall of the Net Book Agreement

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1962–1997: A study of cause and effect (Loughborough University PhD,1997). See also James Dearnley and John Feather, ‘The UK booksellingtrade without retail price maintenance: An overview of change 1995–2001’,PRQ, 17:4, 2001, pp. 16–31.

41 Dearnley, pp. 145, 190–3.42 Schlesinger, p. 38.43 Data supplied by the Booksellers’ Association to Dr Dearnley, which he

has kindly allowed me to use.44 Ibid. The data is derived from statistics collected by Publishing News and

The Bookseller.45 Schlesinger, pp. 24–7.46 Bertoli Mitchell, Book Publishing in Britain 1999, London: Bookseller

Publications, 1999, p. 34.47 See Bob Shingleton, ‘Just selling books?’, The Bookseller, 4687, 20 October

1995, pp. 43–4.48 Robert Snuggs, ‘The value of price’, The Bookseller, 4670, 23 June 1995,

pp. 16–18; and ibid., 4671, 30 June 1995, pp. 41–3.49 This was the accepted wisdom of the trade over many decades. A classic

analysis will be found in Price Commission, par. 7.4 and Table 7.1.50 Feather, History, pp. 217–18.51 See Price Commission, par. 2.9; and Booksellers’ Association, p. 48.52 See, for example, Thomas Joy, The Bookselling Business, London: Pitman,

1974, who describes the ordering and receipt of books in some detail (pp. 29–44, 48–54), but says nothing about how long it actually takes fromorder to receipt. The same is true of Irene Babbidge, Beginning inBookselling, London: André Deutsch, rev. ed., 1972, pp. 51–4. To put thisin context, it should be noted that Joy was for many years the ManagingDirector of Hatchards, then a leading London bookshop; and Babbidgewas one of the most respected independent booksellers of her generation.

53 Curwen, p. 73, criticizes the system but, unusually for him, gives no statis-tical data. Writing as a sociologist, Peter Mann, From Author to Reader: A social study of books, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, p. 99,noted the complexities of the system, but did not dwell on its conse-quences.

54 In his Epilogue to Unwin, p. 232.55 Price Commission, par. 2.10; Curwen, p. 73.56 For a survey of these developments, see Clark, 2001, pp. 155–6.57 Baverstock, p. 15.58 See Michael Robb, ‘My wholesaler, my stockroom’, The Bookseller, 4682,

15 September 1995, pp. 33–4.59 Heffernan; for an American example of the same phenomenon, see Curtis,

pp. 47–8.

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60 B. Holder, ‘Services to publishers’, LP, 10:4, 1997, pp. 355–7.61 Clark, 2001, p. 157.62 Schlesinger, pp. 34–5. The Report was by KPMG.63 See above, p. 110.64 See above, pp. 169–76.65 See above, p. 119; see also below, pp. 161–66.66 See its Website at www.amazon.com67 Data from www.amazon.co.uk68 www.amazon.de69 www.amazon.fr70 See above, pp. 16–19.71 At www.blackwell.co.uk, and www.barnesandnoble.com. For Internet

bookselling in general, see Baverstock, pp. 168–73; and Clark, 2001, pp. 79–81.

72 Book Club Associates is at www.bca.co.uk. This is only one of the clubsowned by the Bertelsmann conglomerate; see www.bertelsmann.com/divi-sions/directgroup

73 Paul Kipling and T. D. Wilson, ‘Publishing, bookselling and the WorldWide Web’, JOLIS, 32:3, 2000, pp. 147–53. The full report on which thispaper was based can be found at www.shef.ac.uk/~is/publications/infres/paper63.html

74 Piers Spence, ‘Adult consumer publishing: leisure and illustrated’, in:Bertoli Mitchell, p. 47. The growth in sales in implicit in Spence’s comments, although no specific data is offered. See also Schlesinger, pp. 109–11.

75 See Claudia Loebeckke, Philip Powell and Carl Gallagher, ‘Buy the book:electronic commerce in the book trade’, JIT, 14:3, 1999, pp. 295–301.

76 See Christopher Gasson, ‘The direct approach’, The Bookseller, 4790, 10October 1997, pp. 28–30.

77 Nicholas Clee, ‘Prospecting at Brighton’, The Bookseller, 4911, 26 May2000, pp. 32–4.

78 See above, pp. 62–64.79 See Gates; and Marlene Johnson, ‘Children’s non-fiction publishing’, in:

Bertoli Mitchell, pp. 66–7.80 For the data, see Simon Wratten, ‘Academic monographs’, in: Bertoli

Mitchell, pp. 113–14.81 Baverstock, p. 226.82 Creaser et al, pp. 16 (Table 2a [public libraries]), 111 (Table 3a [pre-1992

universities]), 113 (Table 3b [post-1992 universities]), 115 (Tables 3c[colleges of higher education]).

83 See Anthony Watkinson, ‘Academic journal publishing’, in: BertoliMitchell, p. 117.

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84 As always, comparisons are problematic! These data are taken fromCreaser et al (note 82, above), but the definition of ‘periodical’ is difficult(see above, p. 68 and note 44), and in these statistics certainly includesnewspapers, consumer magazines and perhaps annuals, as well as academicjournals strictu sensu.

85 See below, pp. 173–75, for a further development of this point.86 Feather, History, pp. 186–7.87 For the most recent study, see National Acquisitions Group, The Value to

Libraries of the Special Services Provided by Library Suppliers, London:National Acquisitions Group (BNB Research Fund Report, 77), 1996, pp. 5–11.

88 The text is in Booksellers’ Association, pp. 82–3. A few college and university libraries managed to get themselves into the scheme in the 1960sand early 1970s, but in the last two decades of its operation it was lessliberally interpreted.

89 Schlesinger, pp. 118–20.90 See above, p. 70. 91 See N. Bernard Basch and Judy McQueen, Buying Serials, New York:

Neal-Schuman, 1990.92 Creaser et al, p. 16 (Table 2a).93 See above, p. 150. The data is from Creaser et al, p. 111 (Table 3a). See also

Rollo Turner, ‘The view from the middle: subscription agents, intermedi-aries and the ASA’, in: Fredricksson, pp. 57–67.

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CHAPTER SIX

Information Technology and Publishing

Introduction

The significance of the computer-based technology to the publishingindustry has been implicit, and sometimes explicit, throughout much of this book. The reader will not have been surprised by this. It is not simply because it is impossible to write a sensible book about any aspect of contemporary society without examining the role of computing. There are special reasons why information andcommunication technologies are particularly relevant to a study of the publishing industry. Indeed, once we use the terminology of infor-mation and communication technology (ICT) rather than simply‘computing’, that reason becomes immediately apparent. Computerscan be used to assist in the management of organizations, and tomonitor their financial performance. Computers can store and processstatistical data about products, markets and customers. This is true forall businesses. But ICT offers tools specifically designed to be used for many of the activities associated with publishing and the booktrade. Computers facilitate the composition of documents, and theirstorage and transmission. Networks of computers can provide accessto these documents. ICT has thus come to occupy a central place inthe publishing industry. In this Chapter, we shall examine this moresystematically.

At the outset, however, we need to distinguish between variousfunctions of computing in more general terms. The most familiar piece

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of hardware is, of course, the ubiquitous PC, or Personal Computer,a desktop machine with a suite of software which gives the user accessto such functions as word processing and spreadsheets. Since the late1980s, this has become a standardized piece of equipment in almostuniversal use throughout the world. Files created on one machine canbe read without difficulty on another, because personal computing isdominated by one operating system and, very largely, by one wordprocessing system. Microsoft, the company which owns the rights inthese systems, has become one of the largest and wealthiest corpora-tions in the history of the world. The stand-alone computer on thedesk, however, is no longer the most common or the most function-ally sophisticated of machines, despite its familiarity. Throughout theworld, millions of PCs and other computers are linked to telecommu-nications networks and hence to each other through the Internet. Inthe 1990s, the ‘network of networks’ became a familiar feature of lifethroughout the developed world and indeed beyond it. It facilitatesvirtually instantaneous communication through electronic mail andother messaging systems, and also gives access to the World Wide Web– a development of the mid-1990s – which contains millions of ‘sites’which are full of information (good, bad and indifferent) and opinion,and can also be used as a system for commercial transactions.1 Almostevery aspect of this has had or will have a direct impact on howpublishing works, because the Internet in general, and the Web inparticular, is essentially a tool for the dissemination of information.And the dissemination of information – in the broadest sense – is thecore business of publishing.

The impact of the changes which have followed from the develop-ment of ICT and of the Internet are to be found in many differentaspects of the publishing industry. Some are very specific, such as thosewhich are changing the relationships between authors, publishers andreaders. Some are creating new forms of publishing and perhapspushing traditional formats into the background or even off the stage.There are also more generic changes which are having an impact onmany businesses, as the Internet is increasingly used as a medium fortrade. In this Chapter, we shall examine five key sets of issues as theframework for more systematic account of the complex and rapiddeveloping relationship between publishing of all kinds and ICTsystems. These are the:

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• impact of ICT on the print publishing industry;• development of electronic publishing;• impact of electronic publishing on particular aspects of publishing,

such as reference books;• economic and business issues which are confronting publishers;• cultural, intellectual and social implications for both writers and

readers.

ICT and print publishing

The whole process of print publishing has been transformed by ICTin a sequence of changes which began more than 20 years ago. We have already noted some of these in previous chapters,2 but we shallnow examine them more systematically. Chronologically, the earliestchanges were in the printing industry. Computer-driven typesettingcame into experimental use in the 1960s, and by the late 1970s wasbecoming commonplace. The increase in its use was only partly adirect result of the development of typesetting systems. Almost asimportant – and inextricably linked to the change – was the growingpreference for lithographic printing rather than printing from tradi-tional metal type. The technical details need not detain us,3 but theconsequences were important. Modern lithography requires first the creation of photographic negatives and then of plates from whichthe matter is printed; it follows therefore that anything which can bephotographed can be printed. This is a grossly oversimplified account,but it emphasizes the essential truth. From the 1970s onwards, in allcountries with a developed printing industry, traditional printing techniques have been displaced by lithography based on the use ofphotographically generated plates. Computers can clearly generateoutput which can be photographed. Once this principle was estab-lished, many other things followed.4

It is, of course, the essence of computing that once a file has beencreated it can be amended, revised and copied. In principle, therefore,no material should ever have to be re-keyboarded. The issue whichthen arises is at what stage the keyboarding takes place and who carriesthe responsibility for it. Again, there has been significant change overa comparatively short period of time. Authors began to use wordprocessors in the early 1980s, but it was some years before the files

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which they produced were compatible with the systems used forphototypesetting. By the early 1990s, however, the increasing domi-nance of Microsoft’s Word software, and its evolution into the normof word processing, meant that is was practicable to devise systemswhich publishers and printers could use economically to manipulateauthors’ texts. It is now, as we have suggested,5 common practice forauthors to be contracted to submit their work on disk in one of a smallnumber of compatible word processing packages. Some editors willthen work only with the electronic file, although others still prefer towork on paper, or to use a paper copy in parallel with the electronicversion. In any case, the author’s file is disturbed only when correc-tions are needed.

This has effectively eliminated major sources of typographical errorsin the processes of typesetting and proof correction. It saves time, andhence money. Indeed, it is probably a significant factor in holding downthe real costs of book production. This has helped to keep book pricesunder control, although despite the use of more cost-effective technol-ogy retail prices have typically increased at a rate above that of generalretail price inflation.6 There are also, however, other implications, notall as favourable. We have already suggested that one effect of thischange has been to shift the balance of responsibility from the publisherto the author in many respects, and especially in ensuring typographi-cal accuracy and consistency. Although good publishers still have their books professionally copy-edited, all but the most assiduousprobably spend less time and effort on it than was traditionally the case. Proof-reading has certainly become a cursory activity in somepublishing houses, with both authors and editors tending to assumethat the bulk of the work has been done at an earlier stage or bysomeone else. This has obvious dangers, as well as economic benefits.

The process of transition from word-processed file to the appear-ance of a traditional printed text has also become a less complex matter.A modern word processing package has dozens of fonts, and cangenerate any type size which is likely to be used in the great majorityof books. It can deal with all the variations of the Latin alphabet(accented letters and so on), and it can generate both Cyrillic andGreek, and sometimes Arabic. There is software for many Asiaticscripts, including not only Chinese and Japanese, but also Pali (forcertain Indic languages) and Thai. Indeed, computers have vastly easedthe problem of producing books in what printers historically called


‘exotic’ scripts, and especially in Chinese with its tens of thousands ofcharacters. Scripts, fonts and sizes, however, are only one contributorto the appearance of the printed page. Layout and design are equallyimportant, and again it is now possible to replicate the traditionalappearance of a Western printed book from matter keyboarded in aword processor.

This was not always so. Publishers began to try to exploit the outputof word processors (and before that of electric typewriters) at a veryearly stage in their development. At that stage, the output looked more like typescript than print. From the late 1960s until, in somecases, the early 1980s, there were some publishers, especially of acad-emic monographs, who produced books directly from the copysubmitted by authors with no resetting but also with no editing andvirtually no design. They looked like what they were: photolitho-graphic reproductions of the output of a typewriter or a daisy-wheelprinter. All of this has now vanished. The development of desktoppublishing (DTP) systems in the 1980s was the first stage in bridgingthe gap between the word processor and typesetter. DTP systems are PC-based, but have software which allows the operator to createboth typography and layout which looks like a traditional printedbook.7 The systems now used by both publishers and book produc-tion companies have effectively restored the traditional appearance ofthe book. Indeed, they offer a greater range of choice to the designerthan was available in many traditional book printing houses 30 or 40 years ago.

For the publisher, the key to full exploitation of the potential of electronic files is to ensure that the files which the author creates arecompatible with the systems which will be used after the work issubmitted. In practice, transfer from word processed file to computer-driven typesetter is never quite straightforward. From the publisher’spoint of view, the easiest way in purely technical terms is to requirethe author to produce ‘camera-ready copy’ (CRC), but this leaves littleroom for manoeuvre, and is rarely employed except by the publishersof very short-run academic monographs. CRC is just that: the outputfrom the author’s file can be photographed and turned into printingplates. Even without DTP systems, an aesthetically acceptable outputcan be achieved. It is perhaps a little more common to ask the authorto encode his or her files with the tags and markers that are needed togenerate fonts, spaces and so on. More often, however, the mark-up


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process is done for the publishing house (often by freelances) usingsome system such as Standardized General Mark-up Language(SGML) which delivers consistency and accuracy. This does, however,require some specialist knowledge and skill, and is probably stillbeyond most authors’ expertise.8 In practice, authors’ word-processedfiles are normally edited and marked up by or for the publisher beforethe final version is generated for printing.

The generation and editing of author’s text inevitably dominates anydiscussion of the immediate impact of ICT on print publishing, for itlies at the very heart of the process. Authors work differently, and theyrelate differently to their editors. It has already been suggested thatthere has been a consequent shift of responsibility from publisher toauthor in some critical matters.9 In business terms, this shift could alsobe seen as a shift of power from publisher to author. Precisely becauseauthors are expected to do more than was once the case, they are morefully in control of the process of creating their books. They can evenhave some influence on the physical appearance of their work.Towards the end of this Chapter we shall return to this theme for onelast time, as we explore how ICT has empowered authors even moredirectly, by offering them cheap and robust systems for producingtheir own books and bypassing at least some parts of the multinationalpublishing industry.10

Electronic publishing

Electronic publishing has already featured many times in this book, aswe have analysed how the modern publishing industry actually works.We shall now examine it more systematically, and try to assess itsimpact and significance for the industry as a whole. We must beginhowever – perhaps somewhat belatedly – by trying to offer a defini-tion. Two dictionaries offer us the following:

‘the publishing of books etc. in machine-readable form’,11

and;

‘the publication of information on magnetic tape, discs, etc., sothat it can be accessed by a computer’.12


These definitions differ in one important respect. The first is explicitlyconcerned with the electronic publication of material which mightotherwise have appeared in printed form as ‘books etc.’; the latterrefers more generally to ‘information’. In both cases, we must assumethat the use of the words ‘publishing’ and ‘publication’ relates to theirown definitions of those words and the range of commercial implica-tions which they attach to them.13 The issue here is not just a matterof semantics. If we regard publishing as being essentially a series of commercial transactions (albeit transactions in which the object ofthe commerce is intellectual as well as physical property), then much,and perhaps most, of the material covered by the second definitioncannot truly be described as publications. The Collins Softback defin-ition could be argued to cover the Internet, and particularly the WorldWide Web, where the vast bulk of material is free of charge at the pointof access. Such access charges as there may be represent either capitalinvestment by the end-user (hardware and software) or a charge which goes to the access provider rather than the information provider (telecommunications costs). Although the free availability ofinformation on the Web is by no means irrelevant to publishers, as we shall see,14 we cannot make much sense of electronic publishing in acommercial sense if we broaden the definition to include it. For ourpresent purpose, therefore, we shall confine ourselves to a discussionof those aspects of electronic publishing whose products are objects ofcommerce as well as carriers of information.

Even this leaves us with a wide range of materials to be covered. It has been argued that electronic publishing should be seen as a whole new industry rather than merely a branch or development oftraditional publishing.15 Certainly from a technological perspectivethis could be argued to be the case.16 A brief consideration of theoutputs and format of the electronic publishing process will perhapshelp to clarify the point. The most familiar physical format is the CD-ROM, an optical disk containing digital data which is readthrough a computer. The CD can carry anything which can be digi-tized: text, graphics, still or moving pictures, or sound. Any particulardisk may have only one of these (such as sound in the case of the audioCD), or a combination of some or all of them (called multimedia).What appears can be anything from near-broadcast quality video totext which looks like old-fashioned typescript. The other format whichwe need to consider is that of material accessed online, typically across


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the Internet. The Internet can transmit anything which a CD can store,as well as having an interactive facility which a CD does not. On thewhole, however, at the present stage of development complex materialwhich is accessed online is likely to be of somewhat lesser quality interms of video and audio than is material accessed on a CD. Moreover,charges are normally incurred (even if not directly by the end-user) foraccess as well as for the material itself. It is immediately clear that byany traditional definition of publishing, much of what is commerciallyavailable on CD can be argued to be outside the domain of thepublishing industry; we have already suggested that this is true of the bulk of the material on the World Wide Web and elsewhere on theInternet.

Practice, however, is rapidly overtaking theory in electronic pub-lishing. There is no doubt that many publishers came alarmingly closeto missing the boat. While few would have wished to move into themusic or computer games industries, the production of multimediapackages in the mid-1990s was a real challenge to what some publish-ers were doing. The pioneering work in developing multimedia packages outputs came from the software houses rather than the pub-lishing houses, at least in the early years.17 Only towards the end of the 1990s did some publishers began to catch up, and make importanttitles available in electronic formats. Publishing on CD-ROM has now become a familiar part of the landscape, and the products are tobe seen in both publishers’ catalogues and – perhaps even more signif-icantly – in bookshops.

Online publishing – which some would regard as the purest form of electronic publishing – is still largely confined to products for acad-emic and business users. Electronic journals have already achieved asignificant place in the academic world, and are coming to be acceptedas one of the normal forms of publication of research.18 In the busi-ness world, where the currency and accuracy of data are critical andcosts can be passed on to customers if the data is good enough, manyof the traditional financial information services are now available only online. At least one major print publisher of business informa-tion has stated publicly that it intends to become entirely electronic in the near future.19

The shift from print to electronic publishing which can be seen insome sectors is indeed an important development, to which we shallreturn.20 Even so, it does not necessarily and invariably represent the


revolutionary change in the publishing process which is sometimespresented.21 Let us consider some of the key elements in that processin this context.

First, there is the critical issue of the writing and selection of materialfor publication. From the author’s perspective there are clearly sometechnical differences. He or she is, by definition, obliged to prepareand submit a file in a specified digital format, but, as we have seen, thishas almost become the norm for print publication as well. There aresome facilities available to the author which are less readily accessibleto the author of a printed work. In dealing with statistical data, forexample, the author can create graphic representations as tables, chartsand the like, knowing that they will be published in the precise formin which they are compiled. The same applies to the use of colour,normally available on all modern output devices, but often not used inprinted scholarly journals.22 In broad terms, the author’s contributionto an electronic publication is the same as it is to a print publication,and many of the issues which were raised in Chapter Three andChapter Four are still applicable.23 Similarly, the selection of materialfor publication electronically is essentially the same as for printedworks. Editors will take account of subject matter, quality, commer-cial viability, suitability for purpose and so on. As we have seen, someelectronic journals have online submission and refereeing as well asonline dissemination, but the objectives are the same as with conven-tional journals.24 Up to the point at which the material is ready to gointo public domain, electronic publishing replicates much of whathappens in traditional publishing.

At subsequent stages in the process there are indeed some signifi-cant differences. The output may be carefully edited for presentationas well as content, in a process equivalent to that of the design of aprinted product, and in the case of a CD, although not an online publi-cation, there is a also a production process analogous to the printingand binding of a book or journal. Advertising, sales and distributionfor CDs are also parallel to what is done for books with a similarcontent and market. Online products are of course different in all ofthese matters, and it is in that sense that they can perhaps be under-stood as being more truly electronic publications in every respect.

Drawing parallels with print publishing, and noting continuity aswell as change, should not be taken as a denial of the very real ways inwhich electronic publishing is different. This is true even in terms of


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content. The example of the author’s ability to generate graphics andto use colour is a specific instance of a general truth: that an electron-ically published product can take advantage of the whole capacity of acomputer. Multimedia publications exemplify this. CD encyclopae-dias, for example, can be supported by video and audio material, as well as graphics and photographs. The quality and depth of theproduct can therefore be greater than that of its print-on-paper prede-cessor. When we add to the mixture the facility to move from oneproduct to another through electronic links on the Internet, we areclearly dealing with a different kind of publishing.

Electronic publishing is, in the final analysis, simply one more wayof putting material into public domain. The real issues, from thepublisher’s perspective, are not technical but commercial and profes-sional; they are issues of quality control, design, pricing and sales. Likeall publishing, electronic publishing is centrally concerned withcontent and profit, and format is merely a means to an end.25

Electronic formats can, as we have suggested, give the author andthe publisher greater freedom in the use, presentation and design ofcontent, especially when the work is published online and can there-fore take advantage of links across the Internet and the Web. Electronicdocuments, however, also have certain other characteristics which havesignificant implications for publishers. The most important of these isthat digital documents can be copied and transmitted with little diffi-culty. This poses the greatest challenge that copyright law has ever hadto face, and raises fundamental issues about whether intellectual prop-erty can continue to be protected as it has been inn the past. In turn,this raises questions about the very basis of the economics of commer-cial publishing. If publishers can no longer be certain that they arebuying the sole rights in a work, this will certainly have an impact onthe prices which they are prepared to pay. To exacerbate matters, theuncertainty is not one that can be addressed through contracts, and inpractice it is barely susceptible to being remedied at law. This matteris of such importance for the future of publishing that we shall returnto it in a more general context in Chapter Seven.

Despite the potential difficulties, however, publishers are lookingfor, and increasingly finding, ways in which they can exploit the bene-fits of ICT as a carrier of content. Exploitation is not across the board.Electronic publication of fiction is still in its infancy, although a fewauthors and publishers have experimented with it with some success.26


There have even been experiments with interactive fiction in whichreaders can play a part in the development of the plot, or choose alter-native plots at various points in the story.27 Children’s publishers,especially in the young adult market where the customers are sofamiliar with networked computing, were among the pioneers of elec-tronic publishing, and they are continuing to exploit it.28 The use ofelectronic media is argued to have changed children’s books signifi-cantly, and to have fragmented what was allegedly an homogenousgenre.29 Whether or not one accepts this perhaps rather esoteric argu-ment, it is unquestionably the case that a new approach is needed bypublishers and authors if they are to be successful in developing high-quality, multimedia products for the children’s and youth markets.30 Itis, however, in the academic, professional and reference fields that elec-tronic publishing has so far made its greatest impact, with educationalpublishing following not far behind.

The impact of electronic publishing

Reference publishing in transition

Reference books represent one of the great traditions of the publishingindustry.31 Some titles have a history of a century or more, and havethemselves become the subject of scholarly study.32 The compilationand publishing of great works of reference is, however, an expensiveand time-consuming business. The market is specialized, even forgeneral works of reference. Although there has always been a smallprivate market for such works as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, andsome smaller works (such as the various derivatives of the OxfordEnglish Dictionary) are directed at that market, the most importantbuyers of reference books are actually libraries. Even in libraries, refer-ence books are treated differently. The ‘reference’ section of a typicalpublic, university or college library consists of books which may notbe borrowed.33 This is partly because many of them are very expen-sive, but mainly because they are considered to be works which willbe consulted briefly by a large number of users, and should thereforebe continuously available. Reference publishing is, as a consequence,exceptionally heavily dependent on library budgets, and particularlysusceptible to changes in library provision.


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One very important development in libraries in the 1990s was theincreased reliance on electronic sources of information. Almost alllibraries except the very smallest now offer some sort of networkaccess to their users. This can range from full access to the Internet toaccess to a local area network through which a limited number ofselected databases is available. Whatever the specifics, library usershave become familiar with electronic sources, and with the idea thatthey are part of what the library provides. This has had an inevitableimpact on the publishers of reference books. The growing expectationof users for the ease of access which electronic sources (theoretically)offer coincided with the need of librarians to restrict expenditure.Publishers have inevitably moved rapidly to the provision of tradi-tional reference materials in the least traditional of formats. Some ofthe greatest of reference works are now available electronically, eitheras CDs or online. These include Grove’s Dictionary of Music,34 and theOxford English Dictionary. All manner of problems can arise fromthis, not least for publishers as they feel their way towards economi-cally viable policies on pricing for online products.35

At the same time as many key reference products are beginning tobe published electronically as well as on paper, a number of majorpublishers are converting their entire backlists of reference and otheracademic titles so that they can made available online.36 There areserious questions over the economic viability of print as a medium for major works of reference in the future.37 It seems almost certainthat the future of reference publishing will be largely electronic. Theimplications of this are significant for publishers and readers alike.Publishers will need to develop new skills and ensure that they keepabreast of the most rapidly developing technology in history. They willalso need to face up to a new kind of competition. Good referencematerials will always be expensive to compile, although providing elec-tronic output can make significant inroads into costs of productionand distribution. The problem is that publishers may be perceived asputting their priced products in competition with the typically freeproducts available on the Internet. It is true that some are facing thischallenge by developing their own presence on the Web and makingcontent available through their own portals and gateways.38 This is an important and welcome development, but it is does not address the issues which arise out of costs and charges. Publishers will notnormally be willing to make material freely available when it has cost


them a great deal of money to assemble it. Yet they are competing in a ‘marketplace’ in which uncharged access is currently the normalexpectation. The only option left open to them is to compete on thecurrency and accuracy of the information and the quality of its presen-tation. The hope is that librarians and library users will recognize thequalitative difference which is on offer, and be prepared to pay for it.It is precisely in this sense that the publishing industry’s traditionalconcern with content (‘content management’ in contemporary jargon)remains so important, and gives it an edge over potential rivals.39

The scholarly journal transformed

It seems likely that reference ‘books’ will normally be electronic bythe end of the present decade. It is more than likely that many schol-arly journals will beat them to the finishing post, at least in scientificfields.

We have already discussed a number of aspects of the publishing ofacademic journals,40 but some of their key features need to be reiter-ated before we consider the shift to electronic publication:

• these are highly specialized publications. Even those which coverthe whole of a broad-based subject (such as the English HistoricalReview, or the American Journal of Physics) are read almostentirely by academics and other researchers in the field, and veryoccasionally by undergraduate students. The more specializedjournals may have a regular readership measured in scores ratherthan hundreds;

• a significant proportion of the readers are also contributors to them.This is particularly true of the most specialized; in other words, thesmaller the readership, the more likely it is that most readers willbe past, current or future authors of papers in the journal;

• many of the most specialized are issued by commercial publisherswho need to make a profit. On the other hand, some journals arepublished by learned societies and distributed to their members(Publications of the Modern Language Association; Journal of theRoyal Society of Chemistry);

• subscriptions are typically expensive, and have increased at a ratefar beyond the rate of general price inflation. This has led to a


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vicious circle of cancelled subscriptions, which in turn has in somecases led to shorter print runs and even higher prices;

• the principal market is academic and special libraries except for ahandful of commercially published journals. This makes the journalpublishing sector peculiarly susceptible to university and researchagency budgets, which are themselves vulnerable to the vagaries ofpublic sector funding;

• journal publication is essential to career progression in many acad-emic disciplines, especially in the sciences, and an importantcontributor to it in almost all subjects;

• quality control of content is critical to the prestige of a journal.This is assured by a complex system of peer review and refereeing,supported by editorial boards.

In various ways all of these factors have driven academic journalstowards electronic publishing. Perhaps the central issue has been thatof the rising cost of journals at a time when titles were proliferatingand library budgets were at best constant. The academic communitywas locked into the use of refereed journal publication not only as ameans of disseminating the results of research, but also as a criticalelement in appointment and promotion processes within its ownprofession. The pressures on libraries – which bear the brunt of thefinancial burden – were becoming intolerable even 15 years ago, so thatfinding a way around the commercial publishing system for journalsseemed desirable and perhaps essential. This was the impetus for manyof the early experiments which explored how an electronic journalmight work.41 Many of the technical problems which were encoun-tered in the 1980s were overcome by the development of the Internetand Web-based interfaces in the mid-1990s. Moreover, academics, andespecially scientists, were among the earliest adopters of network tech-nology; indeed, the Internet was largely developed within the scientificcommunity and the Web was specifically designed to serve scientistsin the first instance.42 As long ago as 1990, electronic communicationwas a fact of academic life.

The journal problem, however, could not be solved by technologyalone. Libraries had tried to meet the demands of their users for journalswhich they could no longer afford to buy by using inter-library lendingand document delivery systems of various kinds. Such services hadindeed existed since before World War II (for the proliferation of the


scientific journal literature has been seen as a problem since at least the1920s!43), but their use was growing as fast as the literature itself by the1970s. Journal articles were typically supplied as photocopies, a servicemade possible by the ‘fair dealing’ rules which were developed (specifi-cally for this purpose) under the umbrella of existing copyright laws.44

Libraries saw themselves increasingly as providing access to informa-tion rather than simply being storehouses of books and journals. It wasa trend which was inevitably strengthened by the introduction of onlineinformation services from the late 1970s onwards. Even as scientistswere speculating on the possibilities of electronic communications,therefore, libraries were already exploiting such systems as alreadyexisted, and were developing strategies to cope with the very problemwhich the scientists themselves were both creating and addressing.

The missing factor in the equation was the publishers. Some of thelearned societies were early enthusiasts for electronic publication,45 butthe commercial publishers showed greater reluctance. It was onlytowards the very end of the 1990s that the almost universal availabilityof the Internet in the academic community and the robustness of theWeb finally persuaded them that electronic journals were a viableoption. What was becoming clear however was that some of the manyrelationships in academic journal publishing would need to be re-engi-neered. The sense that authors, editors and readers were part of thesame community would certainly have to be maintained. By contrast,the supplier-customer relationship between libraries and publishersneeded to undergo significant change, as did that between libraries andend-users. In theory, an online journal can be made available to anyonewith access to the Internet. In practice, it remains a product for whicha charge normally has to be made. But how that happens has under-gone profound change. Instead of subscribing to the journal, a library(or indeed an individual) can pay for the particular article which iswanted without having to acquire several others which may never beread. The conundrum for publishers was how to reconcile charging foraccess to individual articles with generating a sufficient income streamto support the publication. This could only be achieved by workingclosely with the academic community.46

In general terms, this is indeed what has happened. In the early years of electronic publishing, the enthusiasts sometimes envisioned afuture in which journals would be published by academics or theiruniversities, and the traditional publishers would be cut out of the


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loop altogether. This is, of course, theoretically possible, and indeedsuch journals have been developed.47 But there is still a publisher; it isjust that it is a different kind of organization, not driven by the needto make a profit. What has actually happened is that the journalpublishers (such as Elsevier and Blackwell) who have moved into electronic publishing on a large scale have negotiated agreements withlibraries to give access to their users. The immediate future certainlylies in such licensing schemes. A university, or a body acting on behalf of a group of universities (such as all the universities in acountry, for example), buys access rights from the publisher. These aretypically defined in terms of who may consult the material (membersof the university, all registered users of a particular library, or somesimilar group), and the scheme for charging for use. The latter may bean annual fee or a charge per access. In either case, the role of thesubscription agent is also being redefined as the provider of an onlineportal or content gateway.48 Electronic publishing of journals is therefore leading a cultural change in the community which the journals serve: academics, librarians and publishers are working closelytogether to develop the scholarly communication system in a net-worked environment to their mutual benefit.49

Ultimately, however, this will only be successful if the integrity ofthe system is also preserved. For the academics, this depends on theconfidence which they can have in electronic publications both interms of their long-term future and their control over the quality ofthe contents. Certainly, there is evidence that it is the libraries, tryingto relieve the pressure on their budgets, which are pushing forward onthis front against some continuing resistance from the more conserva-tive elements in the scientific community.50 One solution which hasbeen widely advocated and practised is so-called parallel publishing, inwhich there is both a printed and an electronic version of the sametitle,51 but this can only be an interim measure for it makes littleeconomic or academic sense in the long term. The real solution lies inthe creation of robust data archives in which articles can be storedindefinitely. It seems likely that the partnerships between the academiccommunity – represented by its libraries – and publishers will be theonly way to achieve a permanent resolution of this issue.

There then remains the critical issue of quality control, and it is herethat there are both the greatest fears and the least change. Publishersand editors have emphasized that there is no reason why electronic


journals should not be subjected to the same quality controls as theirprinted predecessors. The functions of the editor, the members of theEditorial Board and the referees remain, and do not have to changesimply because the output is in a different format. The changes arereally technological rather than conceptual.52 The whole process ofmanaging the editing and publication of a printed journal can be repli-cated for electronic journals, while achieving some efficiencies in theprocess which will contain costs without having an impact on quality.53

When properly conducted, electronic journals can meet all the tradi-tional criteria for academic success in such matters as peer review,abstracting and citation.54 The problem is to persuade the user andauthor community that this is true, and there is evidence that they are not yet wholly convinced. Until universities accept the parity ofesteem of electronic and printed journals, particularly for purposes ofappointment and promotion (and in the United States for the criticalissue of being granted tenure), some academics will hesitate to chooseelectronic publication.55 Ultimately, the issue will be resolved by acombination of cultural and economic factors; as print journals becomeless viable, electronic publication will become more acceptable.

Of course, some printed journals will survive, at least for the timebeing. Most obviously those published by societies will probablycontinue in their present form, although gradually it can be expectedthat they too will be absorbed into the electronic world, if onlythrough the appearance of parallel electronic versions. The journalswith the largest circulations, those whose readership crosses the boundaries between subdisciplines and those which publish articles ofinterest to students, are likely to continue in printed form for longerthan those which are more specialized. With their larger circulationthey can often manage to maintain more reasonable levels of subscrip-tion and thus retain the very circulation which makes lower pricespossible; the vicious circle of journal prices has a virtuous counterpart!It is also the case that the humanities and social sciences have beenslower to develop electronic journals than have science, medicine andtechnology-based disciplines like computing itself. But there is now atrend towards the creation of electronic journals for the non-scientificparts of the academic community as well.56 Even some general interestmagazines are beginning to appear in parallel versions, as a number ofmajor newspapers have done for some years. The magazines includesuch major consumer titles as Newsweek, and political weeklies such


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as the New Statesmen, as well as slightly more specialized – but stillconsumer oriented – magazines like Scientific American.57 The news-papers include most of the world’s major titles such as The New YorkTimes, The Times and Le Monde.58

The electronic journal is a major element in the development ofdigital communications systems in the academic community, but thereare others, some of which impinge on the activities of publishers. Oneof these – little noticed, but becoming important – has direct implica-tions for both printed and electronic journals. One of the methods of communication used by scientists is the so-called pre-print, a sepa-rately issued version of a journal article, circulated to the authors’colleagues before its appearance in the journal itself. Commercially,this was of no significance for the publishers of printed journals;indeed a set of pre-prints (sometimes called offprints or reprints) wasoften the only material reward which authors received for their paper.Electronic pre-prints began to be developed in early 1990s for paperswhich subsequently appeared in printed journals; limited circulation inthis way simply overcame the inevitable delays in printed publica-tion.59 The fact that 10 or 20 people received pre-prints did notinterfere with the commercial circulation of the journal, for whichsubscriptions were almost invariably paid by the university or researchinstitute library, not by individuals. Pre-prints, however, have a poten-tially very significant impact on the economics of electronic journalpublishing. If a particular paper has a worldwide audience of say 100readers (an optimistic estimate in some cases), and half of those haveaccess to a pre-print, there is significant potential for loss of income ifthere is an access charge for the journal. Some see this is merelyanother aspect of parallel publishing, but it should more accurately beseen as yet another of the pressures on the journal-publishing industrywhich will need to find a means of protecting itself.60 The whole issue,which is far from being resolved, has been forced further up the agendaby the creation of a huge electronic archive of reprints and pre-printsat the US scientific research centre at Los Alamos.61

Publishing for electronic education

Educational publishing is a lucrative and important branch of theindustry. It has traditionally been dominated by a small number of


companies.62 Like academic journal publishing it is subject to manypressures from within its market sector. Curriculum change, at alllevels from pre-school to tertiary, has had a major impact on educa-tional publishers who have traditionally invested heavily in a smallrange of titles which they can expect to exploit for many years to come.During the 1990s, however, the delivery as well as the content ofcurricula was beginning to change under the impact of networkedcomputing. ICT is both a subject and a tool at every level of educa-tion. Once basic skills have been acquired (and they are now acquiredvery early in life in the developed countries), they can be applied as atool for further learning in every subject. Moreover, the Internet givesaccess to a huge range of materials of great educational value, or whichcan be used for learning purposes. The use of ICT was not, however,the only change in learning delivery in the last decade of the twentiethcentury. There was an increased emphasis on learning rather thenteaching, and on learning through project work rather than throughtraditional channels of knowledge transfer from teacher to student.The availability of networked information was a part of this, but onlya part. Student-centred project-based learning requires access to infor-mation resources of all kinds, including printed materials; thetraditional textbook has, at best, a small part to play.

Educational publishing has always been an integral part of the education system which it serves. It has been cogently argued that iteven helps to determine the agenda of the debate about education aswell as being subject to the consequences that may arise from itsresults.63 The problem which now confronts the publishers, however,is that of responding to, and participating in, systemic change which is more far reaching than mere curricular change could ever be. This isfurther compounded by young people’s attitudes to books and reading.Despite the importance of the children’s and young adult bookmarkets,64 there is some evidence of a decline in book reading especiallyamong teenagers.65 There is a general perception that the young adultmarket is in a poor condition as a result;66 a preference for multimediaand online sources, for both entertainment and information, can reasonably be assumed to underpin this phenomenon. Educationalpublishers have had to take account of these developments.

The challenges which face the educational publishers are in manyways similar to those which face all STM, academic and professionalpublishers as their traditional markets become more oriented to ICT


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products than they are to print. But it is exacerbated in the educationalarena by the relatively easy Internet access enjoyed by an increasingnumber of students at schools, colleges and universities. Teachersthemselves, at all levels, are able to compile digital packages of publicdomain material to support their students’ learning. This can ofteninclude means for monitoring student progress and even assessingformal student work. Publishers have been slow to come into this field.The development of NetLibrary in the mid-1990s was perhaps the firstsignificant sign of a shift of attitudes. This pioneering e-book publisherdeveloped an access and charging system similar to that used bypublishers of electronic journals and began to market itself to librariesin 1996.67 In a highly significant development at the turn of the newcentury, NetLibrary joined forces with the long-established HoughtonMifflin, a major player in educational publishing worldwide, to launcha series of digital textbooks.68 The outcome remains to be seen. But itis not unreasonable to expect that educational publishing will beanother field in which ICT will have a transformational impact overthe next decade.

ICT and the business of publishing

There is no almost no aspect of business practice which has been unaf-fected by the developments in ICT in the last quarter of the twentiethcentury. Even the familiar equipment of the mid-century office – thetypewriter and the duplicator – have been largely displaced. At awholly different level, instantaneous global communications systemshave opened up new markets and offered new challenges. With thedevelopment of e-commerce, a small business can overcome some ofits handicaps in competing with a large business, and specialist busi-nesses which could no longer survive in a conventional environmentcan flourish as their market expands across the Internet. Publishing isboth vulnerable to ICT and in a particularly strong position to respondpositively to it. As part of the information industry, publishing canexploit all the facilities which ICT, and particularly the Internet, canoffer to those whose professional concern is with the collection, orga-nization and dissemination of information. Electronic publishing ofbooks and journals, and the development of new kinds of multimediapackages for both leisure and education, exemplify this. Publishers can


also benefit from the new possibilities which ICT offers to them asbusinesses, with greater opportunities for market research, sales andstock control, to take but three examples.69

One important consequence for the development of ICT has beenthat the information industry itself has become a more integrated setof activities. The common use of digital networks for both informa-tion transfer and business transactions has facilitated the developmentof standardized systems and encouraged their acceptance. A familiarbut very significant example has been the universal adoption of theStandard Book Numbering system. The ISBN and the ISSN are nowused by publishers, booksellers and librarians throughout the world asthe basis of systems for ordering and monitoring stock. These uniqueidentifiers are a perfect example of which ICT does best: handle andcommunicate large quantities of alphanumeric data. In another sphere,electronic journal publishing shows us how publishers, authors andlibrarians can work together for their mutual benefit. An importantpart of the scientific communication and information system is beingchanged, and publishers are playing a full and important part in thisprocess. One long-term consequence will perhaps be a recognition that the commonality of interests between the various parties can leadto a greater mutual understanding and closer joint working. Digitalpublishing initiatives (such as EPIC70) suggest that this may be morethan a pious hope.

It is not only, however, in journal publishing, or even in STM, acad-emic, professional and other specialized fields, that ICT is changing thepublishing industry. Trade publishers find themselves confronted by apowerful competitor for the time and resource available for leisure.This has happened before, and the challenges posed by cinema, radioand television were each confronted in turn, and each eventuallyturned to the industry’s advantage. Will ICT be different? If we acceptthat this is a revolutionary change in human communications, then theanswer must be ‘yes’. But the changes need not be negative. The moreimaginative publishers are already producing multimedia packages,and electronic books and journals as well as conventional printedproducts. Within the umbrella of the conglomerates, there is scope forreal economies of scale, not just in business operations but also in theassemblage of the kind of expertise which is needed to support suchactivities. Again, there is evidence that this is beginning to happen aspublishers develop electronic versions of their backlists and so on.


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For the small independent publisher, ICT presents a different kindof challenge. In a sense, it makes it easier for them to compete with theconglomerates. A basic presence on the Web is easy to establish andcheap to maintain. While Websites have by no means replaced conven-tional marketing tools and techniques, they can offer smaller firms areal possibility of more widespread marketing than was realistic in thepast. Within an independent publishing house, ICT can help to run the business more efficiently by providing better and readily accessibleinformation about both stock and accounts. Independent houses aremajor beneficiaries of relatively cheap and simple DTP systems forbook production, and the ease with which authors can submit copy ina machine-readable form.

Authors and readers

How will all of this effect the primary producers and the ultimateconsumers of the publishing industry, the authors and the readers? Wehave already touched on this to some extent, but the question is animportant one and deserves a more systematic consideration.

Those who remember the days of mechanical typewriters know thatthe process of composing a long and complex text has become immea-surably easier. This is not simply a matter of saving time. A writer canconcentrate on content when all the apparatus of word processing isthere to help with the details of the presentation. The PC does notforget how paragraphs should be formatted, and it even helps tocorrect spelling and grammar! In a more profound sense, the electronicsubmission of copy by authors has put a good deal of power back intotheir hands. As we have already suggested,71 there has been a shift ofsome responsibilities from the publisher – and specifically from theeditor – to the author. This has some disadvantages, in that books maybe less carefully edited, but the advantages significantly outweighthem. The same trend has perhaps further increased the influence ofagents, for they share with the authors the added responsibilities andopportunities which ICT offers.

ICT also opens to authors whole new possibilities for putting theirwork in circulation. A personal Website can be little more than theelectronic equivalent of vanity publishing (although it is probablycheaper and certainly more widely distributed!), but some authors are


already experimenting with the use of Internet as a publishing mediumwhich avoids the industry altogether. Stephen King is perhaps the mostconspicuous example of this, and although his experiment was notwholly successful, he has at least demonstrated the technical possibil-ities, as well as the business difficulties.72

For readers, too, ICT has significant implications. As we have seen,the author-readers of scientific research literature are an integral partof the electronic publishing process, and will be its beneficiaries oncethey are convinced of its long-term viability. But, more generally,readers and their expectations are changing. Among younger readersin particular, the printed page is neither the most familiar nor perhapsthe most acceptable medium of information and entertainment. Thereis little point in regretting this fact, and in any case it should not beexaggerated. But it remains the case that future generations will havegrown up in a multimedia networked world, in which they will learn,work and relax. There is already an expectation that information iscurrent as well as accurate. It is that expectation, and the ability of ICTto meet it, that underlies the great changes in reference and educationalpublishing.

In Chapter Seven, we shall develop this theme further as we examinein detail how publishing is developing, and how in may develop in thefuture, in the networked world of the twenty-first century.


1 For an excellent and readable account of these developments, see JohnNaughton, A Brief History of the Future: The origins of the Internet,London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999. For a briefer introduction, seeBrian Winston, Media, Technology and Society: A history from the tele-graph to the Internet, London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 321–36.

2 See, for example, p. 110, and 119, above.3 For a brief account, see Hugh M. Spiers, Introduction to Printing

Technology, London: British Printing Industries Federation, 4th ed., 1992,pp. 11–14.

4 Andrew Boag, ‘Monotype and phototypesetting’, JPHS, new series 2,2000, pp. 57–77.

5 See above, p. 110.6 See Fishwick, p. 27 (Table C1).7 See David Browne, Welcome to Desk Top Publishing, New York: MIS.

Press, 1993, pp. 9–35.


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8 For a more detailed account of all of this, see Peacock, pp. 110–67; andSusan Hockey, Electronic Texts in the Humanities: Principles and practice,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 24–48.

9 See above, p. 110.10 See below, pp. 180–81.11 COD.12 Collins Softback.13 See above, pp. 2–3.14 See below, pp. 180–81.15 Horowitz.16 Although that was not Horowitz’s point, as we shall see.17 See the comments by Andrew Rosenheim, ‘Multimedia and electronic

publishing’, in: Owen, 1996, pp. 58–61.18 See above, pp. 85–87.19 Gosling.20 See below, p. 169–78.21 See, for example, D Hawkins, ‘Electronic books: a major publishing revo-

lution’, Online, 24:4, 2000, pp. 14–28; and ibid., 24:5, 2000, pp. 18–36.22 I am indebted to my colleague Derek Stephens for making this point in

explaining to me why he had submitted a particular paper to an electronicjournal.

23 See above, pp. 75–79, 99–116.24 See above, pp. 77, 105–06.25 See G. S. Machovec, ‘E-book market overview 2000’, Online Libraries and

Microcomputers, 18:3, 2000, pp. 1–8; and Iain Stevenson, ‘’The liveliest ofcorpses’: trends and challenges for the future in the book publishingindustry’, ASLIB Proc, 52:4, 2000, pp. 133–7.

26 See below, p. 181.27 See also above, p. 87.28 Rosenheim; and Giuseppe Vitiello, ‘A European policy for electronic

publishing’, JEP, 6:3, 2001 at www.press.umich.edu/jep/06-03/vitiello.htm29 Ewers. See also above, pp. 65–66.30 Anthoney, Royle and Johnson.31 See above, pp. 64–65.32 See for example, K. M. Elisabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words:

James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977; and Jenifer Glynn, Prince of Publishers: A biography of George Smith, London: Allison and Busby, 1986, pp. 199–207

33 It should be added that such sections also tend to contain some bookswhich publishers would not categorize as ‘reference’, but the finer pointsof the distinction need not detain us here.


34 See above, p. 65.35 See D. Tyckoson, ‘What were they thinking? The Oxford English

Dictionary on the Web’, Against the Grain, 12:4, 2000, pp. 66–73.36 Taylor and Francis is an outstanding and well-publicized UK example; see

also ‘ABC-CLIO launches e-books’, ATL, 30:3, 2001, pp. 260–83.37 Stoker; for a detailed discussion, see Collier, pp. 57–65.38 Donald C. Klein, ‘Web strategies for professional publishers: developing

an information service portal’, LP, 13:1, 2000, pp. 83–94.39 See also Stevenson.40 See above, pp. 70–72.41 See Page, Campbell and Meadows, pp. 60–2; and above pp. 86–87 and note

103.42 Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, London: Orion Business Books,

1999, pp. 8–26.43 Brian Vickery, ‘A century of scientific and technical information’, J Doc,

55:5, 1999, pp. 476–527.44 See above, pp. 51–52.45 For a discipline-based example, see Matthew Cockerill, ‘Biological and

medical publishing via the Internet’, in: Fredricksson, pp. 203–15.46 See John Cox, ‘The great journals crisis: a complex present, but a collegial

future’, Logos, 9:1, 1998, pp. 29–33.47 See, for example, Kate Wittenberg, ‘The Electronic Publishing Initiative at

Columbia (EPIC): a university-based collaboration in digital scholarlycommunication’, LP, 14:1, 2001, pp. 29–32.

48 Cox.49 For an example of how such partnerships can work, see Richard K.

Johnson, ‘A question of access: SPARC, BioOne and society-driven electronic publishing’, D-Lib M, 6:5, 2000, at www.dlib.org/may00/johnson/05johnson.html. SPARC is the Scholarly Publishing andAcademic Resources Coalition, a group of American publishers, universi-ties and others; see Sarah C. Michalak. The evolution of SPARC. Ser R,26: 1, 2000, pp. 10–21.

50 J. D. Gilbert, ‘Publishing revolution? Response and responsibility of thelibrary’, Libri, 50:2, 2000, pp. 122–8.

51 Gomes and Meadows.52 Christopher L. Tomlins, ‘The wave of the present: the printed scholarly

journal on the edge of the Internet’, JSP, 29:3, 1998, pp. 133–50; and A. F.J. van Raan, ‘The future of the quality assurance system: its impact on thesocial and professional recognition of scientists in the era of electronicpublishing’, JIS, 23:6, 1997, pp. 445–50.

53 Linda Beebe and Barbara Meyers, ‘Digital workflow: managing theprocess electronically’, JEP, 5:4, 2000, at www.press.umich.edu/jep/05-04/sheridan.html.


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54 Kent Anderson, Jack Sack, Lisa Kraus and Laura O’Keefe, ‘Publishingonline only peer-reviewed biomedical literature: three years of citationauthor perception and usage experience’, JEP, 6:3, 2001, at www.press.umich.edu/jep/06-03/anderson.html

55 See, for example, Aldrin E. Sweeney, ‘Tenure and promotion: should youpublish in electronic journals?’, JEP, 6:2, 2000, at www.press.umich.edu/jep/06-02/sweeney.html. Cheri Spier, Jonathan Palmer, Daniel Wren and SusanHahn, ‘Faculty perceptions of electronic journals as scholarly communica-tion: a question of prestige and legitimacy’, JASIS, 50:6, 1999, pp. 537–43.

56 Christopher L. Tomlins, ‘Just one more ‘zine? Maintaining and improvingthe scholarly journal in the electronic present: an overview’, LP, 14: 1,2001, pp. 33–40.

57 These can be found at www.newsweek.com, www.newstatesman.co.uk,and www.sciam.com, respectively.

58 At www.nytimes.com, www.the-times.co.uk, and www.lemonde.fr59 See J. M. B. Cruz, J. A. C. Garcia and R. F. Lopez, ‘Pre-prints: communi-

cation through electronic nets. An example of bibliographic control’, in:D. J. Farace, ed., Proceedings of the Second International Conference onGrey Literature, Washington DC, 2–3 November 1995, Amsterdam:TransAtlantic Grey Literature Service, 1996, pp. 210–17.

60 For two slightly different views on these issues, see P. B. Boyce, ‘For betteror for worse’, CRLN, 61:5, 2000, pp. 404–7; and Arthur P. Smith, ‘Thejournal as an overlay on pre-print databases’, LP, 13:1, 2000, pp. 43–8.

61 See Richard E. Luce, ‘E-print intersects the digital archive: inside the LosAlamos arXiv’, ISTL, 29, 2001, at www.ucsb.edu/istl/

62 See above, p. 62.63 See Jon Nixon, ‘Teachers, writers, professionals. Is there anybody out

there?’, BJSE, 20:2, 1999, pp. 207–21.64 See above, pp. 38–39.65 Henry.66 Sullivan.67 M. Breeding, ‘NetLibrary. Innovative interfaces to add e-books to library

collections’, Information Today, 17:4, 2000, pp. 1, 3.68 ‘NetLibrary, Houghton Mifflin launch textbook initiative’, ATL, 30:1,

2001, pp. 9–10.69 For some discussion of this, see Curtis, pp. 107–11.70 See above, p. 174 and n. 47.71 See above, p. 110.72 For a fuller discussion of King’s ventures into electronic fiction, see

James Dearnley and John Feather, The Wired World: An introduction to the theory and practice of the information society, London: LibraryAssociation Publishing, 2001, pp. 137–8.


CHAPTER SEVEN

Publishing in a Networked World

Introduction

Publishing is a business, a process and a system of communication. Wehave considered all of these aspects in previous chapters as we haveanalysed the size and structure of the industry, the way in which itworks, and how content is transferred from author to reader. Thesethree aspects influence and inform each other, and are interdependent.Among those involved in publishing, however, the perception of theirrelative importance varies considerably. For the corporate strategists of the global media conglomerates, publishing is simply one part of abusiness, and it is required to make its contribution to turnover andprofit. The publishing division is expected to meet financial targets andto be self-sustaining. For the editor, publishing is a complex set ofprocesses to be managed by leading a team of players all of whom havetheir own areas of expertise. The whole task must be accomplishedprofitably, but this can only be achieved if the right kind of books arepublished in the right sort of way. For the author and the reader,publishing is the means by which they communicate with each other.Without the publishing process and the business which underpins it,most works of most authors would not reach their audience.

Looking at the business, process and system of publishing is,however, to take an essentially internalized view. A broader approachwould locate publishing in a group of overlapping activities whichprovide a wider context in which it can be understood (Figure 7.1).

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The representation in Figure 7.1 is inevitably simplified, but it doesidentify some of the key relationships. Publishing can be seen to bepart of both the communication and knowledge industries and of theleisure industries. It is closely related to the mass media, and derivesits content both from the generation of knowledge and from artisticcreativity. Participants and observers may give different emphases todifferent parts of these connections. The literary novelist is a creative

186 Publishing in a Networked World

COMMUNICATION ANDKNOWLEDGE INDUSTRIES

LEISURE INDUSTRIES

KNOWLEDGEGENERATION

EDUCATION

MASS MEDIA

CREATIVEARTS

PUBLISHING

CULTURALOUTPUTS

Figure 7.1 The domains of publishing

contributor to the leisure industries and to cultural output. The STMpublisher is drawing on the fruits of knowledge generation and servingthe process of education. The mass media stand in a slightly differentrelationship to publishing. Indeed it could be cogently argued that itis the mass media which are at the intersection of the knowledge andleisure industries, and that publishing is merely one aspect of a greaterwhole. For our present purposes, however, it is useful to keeppublishing at the centre of the picture.

The relationships which are represented in Figure 7.1 have beengenerically true for many decades; indeed, with a different terminologythey could be argued to have been true since the invention of printing,and certainly since the middle of the nineteenth century. It is notinconsistent with this view, however, to argue that the contemporarymanifestations of these activities are significantly different from their predecessors. A full understanding of the present position ofpublishing, and some insights into how it might develop, depends onhow we understand a complex set of interconnected issues only someof which are seen in Figure 7.1. In practical terms, these key issues are the:

• convergence of media and of communications systems;• changing patterns of information sources and the use of informa-

tion;• implications of these developments for the business of publishing

and for the generation and protection of intellectual property.

We shall examine each of these in turn.

The great convergence

Convergence has come to be a useful shorthand description of acomplex multifaceted process which has brought information andcommunications technologies together with systems which used to bealmost entirely separate. Digital technologies lie at the heart of thisprocess; they created the need for it, but are also the reason why it canbe done. Among the systems and technologies which we are consid-ering are telecommunications, broadcasting, audio and video recordingand indeed publishing. To understand the convergence process and its

Publishing in a Networked World 187

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implications, we must start by considering briefly what activities haveconverged, and try to identify how they formerly differed and wherethe differences have been elided.

The first group of issues is derived from the nature of the commu-nication process itself. In applying the Shannon and Weaver model,1

it is useful to distinguish between different kinds of recipients. Someprocesses are designed to take information from a source to a singlerecipient, while others have multiple recipients. The archetype of the former is the person-to-person telephone call, where the caller (thesource) wishes to speak to a particular individual (the recipient). Anyfurther or additional communication can only take place if anotheraction is initiated. This might involve a second or subsequent phonecall, or making a written record of the conversation which is subse-quently circulated or reproduced, or recording the conversation as it happens and then distributing the tape or a transcript of it, and so on. But all of these actions are subsequent and separate; they derive from the one-to-one communication but they are not a part ofit. The communication itself is self-contained. Other systems aredesigned for multiple recipients. A communication to many people ismost familiar as broadcasting. A radio or television broadcast has asingle source – a broadcasting organization – but many recipients.Being public is as much of the essence of broadcasting as being privateis of a telephone call.

The technologies which support telephone calls and broadcastingdeveloped independently of each other, and in their original formswere quite distinct. Telephones were based on a wired network inwhich individual instruments were linked to a central point, the tele-phone exchange. Exchanges themselves were then linked to each other,providing a potential for routing a call from any point on the networkto any other. Broadcasting, on the other hand, made use of wirelesstechnologies. The signal was sent from a transmitter into the atmos-phere, and could be received by anyone who activated the appropriateequipment. In fact, the apparently clear-cut distinction between wiredand wireless transmission began to break down many years ago.Cables were used for transmitting broadcast sound as long ago as the1920s, partly to overcome the inadequacies of the wireless transmis-sion network; from the late 1940s onwards cable television began todevelop in the United States for the same reason. The cables, however,were used only for this purpose; a broadcast signal was received at a


nodal point, and then redistributed to subscribers through the cablenetworks.2 Similarly, telephony made some use of wireless technologyfrom the 1920s onwards. It was, however, of only limited application(such as ship-to-shore), not least because it was of very poor quality.It was not until satellite-based technologies were developed in the1970s and 1980s that voice telephony made regular use of transmis-sion systems which included unwired links.3 There was thus somecrossover between communications systems, but no convergence of the systems themselves. In considering these early examples ofcrossovers, however, we have introduced the second factor into theconvergence equation: the distinction between physical and virtualnetworks, or between cable-based and wireless communications.

The third key distinction between systems concerns the temporalrelationship between transmission and reception. An interactive telephone call is always synchronous; caller and recipient must besimultaneously connected to the network, and through the network toeach other. An asynchronous telephone call cannot be interactive. Ifthe call is taken by an answering machine, the recipient can listen to what was said by the caller, but he or she can only respond by initiating a return call. In a different way, the same principle is applic-able to broadcasting. The recipient can receive the transmission onlyat the time when it is broadcast. Nevertheless, an asynchronouselement can be introduced into broadcasting. A programme which istransmitted live is, by definition, synchronous. In practice, however,most programmes are actually pre-recorded, and it is the tape of therecording which is actually transmitted when the broadcasting organi-zation wishes. It is, however, the source – the broadcaster – which hastotal control of this aspect of the communication process.

Convergence is essentially the evolutionary process which hasbrought these separate technologies together. It is, of course, the elec-tronic computer, using integrated circuits and transistors, which hasmade convergence possible. The technical details need not detain ushere. The point which has practical consequences is that any datawhich is entered into a computer in digital form can therefore bemanipulated by the computer without regard to the physical format orvisual appearance of the input and output. In other words, a computeridentifies text, symbols, graphics, photographs, moving images andrecorded sounds simply as sequences of digital code. Provided that twocomputers have the same software – or software which makes two


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different systems compatible – data which is entered into one machinecan be read in another. In the late 1960s it was demonstrated that digitaldata could be transmitted between computers which were linkedthrough a hard-wired network. It was this realization, and the devel-opment of the protocols to make files and systems compatible, whichlay at the heart of the early development of what became the Internet.4

The key development for the widespread adoption of the Internetwas in telephony. Voice telephony is still essentially cable-based,although many long-distance, and almost all international, calls areactually routed at some point through satellites. The modern telecom-munications network, however, can be used for much more than voice calls. It carries digital signals, which means that it can transmitanything which can be digitized. In effect, this means that it can be used for communications between computers as well as betweenpeople. It was this capacity of the telephone network to transmitdigital data which made possible the development of the Internetwithout, at least initially, the installation of a new and separate networkof cables. The Internet became a public service facility – albeit with avery strong and rapidly growing commercial input – during the 1980s.At the same time, satellite television also became a worldwide phenom-enon. Only the transmission and reception equipment distinguishedbetween one form of input and output and another. The signals them-selves were simply bits of digital data. By the turn of the twenty-firstcentury, the process of convergence was all but complete. Telephonelines and networks were used for sending electronic mail messages;television programmes were delivered down cables which were alsoused for voice communication and Internet access, while someprogrammes became interactive. Ironically and perhaps perversely,when wireless technology was seemingly in decline, it experienced arevival in the 1990s by massive growth in its use in the one area inwhich it had never previously been successful – voice telephony. Themobile phone and the networked computer – the ubiquitous symbolsof the new technologies of information and communication – exem-plify the outcomes of the great convergence.

Two further distinctions between communications systems must be introduced at this point. First, we have to consider whether acommunication is unique or repeatable. A telephone call, for example,is unique; the broadcast of a pre-recorded television programme isrepeatable. Secondly, we must look at where the balance of power lies


between the source and the recipient. In conventional broadcasting,control lies entirely with the source; the broadcasting organizationdetermines what is transmitted, when and to whom. Interactive digitalchannels give the recipient slightly more control, by allowing theviewer to select camera angles, or to call up pages of information aboutthe event being transmitted.5 Real control by the recipient, however,only comes when the end-user can determine when the communica-tion is used rather than when it is received. An obvious example iswhen a recipient makes a video recording of a broadcast and watchesit at a subsequent time of his or her choice. Electronic mail incorpo-rates a similar time-shifting facility; sender and recipient do not needto be online simultaneously.6

We can now attempt a classification of communications systemsusing these distinctions, and try to identify whether and how conven-tional print publishing fits into these patterns. Printed products derivefrom a single source but are intended for multiple recipients. They arephysical rather than virtual products, and the distribution systemtherefore is also physical. Production, distribution and use are asyn-chronous. From this brief analysis, it seems that publishing can beaccommodated in the model of communication which we have brieflydeveloped in the last few paragraphs. But is it also feasible to regard itas part of the great convergence? To answer that question we need toprobe a little more deeply into the implications of convergence forend-users.

Printed documents give the recipient almost complete control overthe use of the product, although none at all over its manifestation. Theuser cannot ask for additional illustrations, for example, but he or shecan read the document at any time and in any place, can read it in anysequence which is appropriate or desired, can keep it and return to itat any time, and so on. A book, newspaper or magazine, once acquired,is almost entirely under the control of the recipient; certainly thesource – the author and publisher – loses all control over it as a phys-ical object. At this theoretical level, therefore, it is possible to arguethat publishing can be accommodated within a model which alsodescribes other communications systems (Table 7.1).

The convergence of technologies and media presents significantchallenges to the publishing industry. As can be seen from Table 7.1,there is nothing in this model which is unique to the industry’s printedproducts except the need for a physical link between source and


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recipient. It is that which actually creates the need for the distributionsystem which is arguably one of the weakest points in the publishingindustry in both Britain and United States.7 In other respects, however,the profile of publishing in Table 7.1 overlaps with the profiles of bothbroadcasting and the World Wide Web, taken here to exemplify theInternet. Of course, Table 7.1 is a mechanistic representation of the position. It coveys nothing about the quality, availability, cost andstability of the product, or of its fitness for purpose. It does, however,forcefully illustrate that publishers have to give serious thought to howtheir product, for so long the privileged cultural artefact of the westernworld, can be adapted for survival in a very different communicationsenvironment.

The use of information media

Convergence has given new power to both the originators and end-users of information to choose the forms of communication which aremost convenient to them, and which best suit their needs. The choicesare not necessarily mutually exclusive. A simple example is the choicebetween a newspaper, radio and television as a source of informationabout current affairs. There are many people who regularly use all


PHONECALL

FORM OFCOMMUNICATION

ONE to ONE

ONE to MANY

SYNCHRONOUS

ASYNCHRONOUS

PHYSICAL LINK

VIRTUAL LINK

UNIQUE EVENT

REPEATABLE

SOURCE DRIVEN

RECIPIENT DRIVEN

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

* *

*

*

*

*

*

* *

*

*

*

*

TV orRADIO

E-MAIL PRINTEDITEM

WEB SITE

Table 7.1 Communications systems compared

three, making a choice which suits their own convenience at the time.A familiar pattern throughout the industrialized world is to glance ata newspaper before leaving home in the morning, listen to radio newswhile driving to work, and watch television news in the evening withperhaps a longer session of newspaper reading as well. The choice isdictated by circumstances and by personal preference. The media haveadapted themselves to the needs of their users. Tabloid newspaperseschew details of hard news and concentrate on other things; thebroadsheets devote many pages to analysis recognising that theycannot be as up to date on fact as the broadcast media. Radio newstends to be repetitive, expecting its audience to move in and out incomparatively short periods of time. Television news is built aroundthe availability of visual images and is designed to move at a pace whichwill hold the viewer’s attention for half an hour or so. This pattern ofcompetitive co-existence of the three media was established in the 30years between the advent of mass television in Europe in the mid-1950s and the deregulation of broadcasting from the mid-1980sonwards. For the newspaper publishers, the lesson which they learnedwas that they had to adapt to survive; titles which did not were lost.8

The relationship between the three news media offers a particularcase of a general phenomenon: the need for the publishers and authorsof printed products to respond to other forms of publication andcommunication. This response may have several characteristics. Somecommentators see publishing, especially of hardbacks, retreating intoniche markets. It is true that niche markets are important to publishers,and that publishing for specialist subjects can be highly profitable.9

The essence of this argument is that publishers should identify whatthey can do best, and those fields in which the printed book is mani-festly superior to its various perceived competitors. The problem isthat the domain which is unique to print seems to be diminishing. Adifferent response is to accept that the printed book is indeed a productof diminishing interest in the marketplace, and for publishers them-selves to try to replace it with more attractive media. Those who arguealong these lines see the future in electronic delivery of publishedmaterial, whether as CD-ROM (or some successor technology) oracross the Internet. The argument here is that this is what the marketwants, and therefore this is what it will have to be given if publishersare to survive. For some, this is to be welcomed as a means of facili-tating innovative approaches to the process of publishing.10


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An appropriate response by the publishing industry to technolog-ical change will only be properly determined by taking account ofwhat end-users actually want. Defining user needs is, in itself, acomplex issue. The users of the publishing industry’s printed productsare not a single homogenous group. Some groups can, of course, beidentified, and we have implicitly done so in identifying particularmarkets. Thus STM books or school textbooks, for example, aredesigned for specific sectors. Sales outside those sectors are minimaland of little commercial importance; without their core markets, thesesectors could not survive. General trade books, both fiction and non-fiction, face a different problem. Their appeal, by definition, is broadbased, and that fact can be exploited in promoting and marketing them;but the other side of the coin is that they face intensive competitionboth with each other and with other media. The patterns are verycomplex.

Surveys of leisure reading habits have revealed comparatively fewchanges over quite long periods of time. The classic description ofBritish reading habits was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.It showed book reading as a majority activity among the populationas a whole (although only just), more women readers than men, moreyounger readers than older readers, and a clear correlation betweenregular leisure reading and higher levels of educational attainment,higher incomes and higher social class.11 The observations made in thelate 1970s remain essentially true today; such difference as there istends to show an increase rather than a decrease in the leisure readingof books. In 1999, 58 per cent of men and 71 per cent of womenreported that reading was one of their leisure activities (Table 7.2).12

To put this in context, the 1999 survey showed that 99 per cent of all adults watched television at home, but only 54 per cent visited the cinema.


Table 7.2 Book reading in the UK (percentage of population)

1977 1987 1997

Men 52% 54% 58%Women 57% 61% 71%


The data in Table 7.2 shows those respondents to a survey who claimedthat reading books was one of their home-based leisure occupations.There are unfortunately many things that we do not know about whatthis means in practice. A key factor which was missing from thesesurveys is that of age, although the alleged decline of reading amongyoung people is not irreconcilable with the findings, since the popula-tion as a whole is getting older. Nor is anything known from thesurveys about what sort of books people read, or how often they doso. Even this comparatively crude data, however, clearly illustrates thatbook reading is far from being the dying activity that some commen-tators (especially in the popular press) sometimes seem to imply. Fromthe publishing industry’s perspective, one encouraging aspect of theanalysis of reading habits is that most of these books appear to havebeen bought by their readers. In 1995 (the latest available data), only19 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women in the UK borrowedbooks from public libraries once or more every month.13 Nevertheless,the industry has no room for complacency; the number of booksbought in the United Kingdom fell from 350 million in 1998 to 330million in 1999, about half of these being bought for or by children.14

The data do not take us as far as it would be interesting to go; but theydo confirm that book reading remains a significant leisure activity inthe United Kingdom, and that the domestic market for books remainssubstantial. The significant increase in domestic access to other infor-mation and entertainment media (Table 7.3) has apparently not had adeleterious impact of book reading.15

Leisure reading is, however, only one aspect of the use of printedpublications. As we have seen, a very significant percentage of the totaloutput of British and American publishers is of books which are not


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Table 7.3 Ownership of media (percentage of UK households)

1991–92 1998–99

Television 98% 98%VCR 68% 85%Audio CD player 27% 68%Computer 21% 34%

(Source: See note 15)

intended for leisure reading by the general public. They are technical,professional and educational books, and works of reference. A signif-icant proportion of them are bought by companies, libraries and otherinstitutions rather than by individuals; if individuals do buy them it islikely to be because they have to, rather than because of making aconsumer choice in the normal sense. In practice the end-users of suchbooks (and of course journals) may have some influence on what isbought, but ultimately have to acquiesce in what amounts to a corpo-rate decision. Such decisions are not only about what to buy and whatnot to buy, but also about formats. In the academic world, and incertain professions such as law and medicine, the shift from printed toelectronic products has been taking place for a decade or more, and isaccelerating as the availability of material across the Internet continuesto increase. In education, at every level from kindergarten to univer-sity, electronic resources are becoming more common and are partlydisplacing traditional textbooks.

Some publishers, as we have seen, have responded to these develop-ments by following their customers into new formats and media. Someindeed have led them. It is no accident that the pioneers of electronicpublishing included companies involved in law and medicine (such asButterworths), scientific journals (such as Elsevier) and school text-books (such as the residual Longman element in the Pearson Group).All of these were in sectors where there were major challenges in theirtraditional markets driven by the changing expectations of customers.Convergence of technologies has had a significant impact on profes-sional, academic and educational publishing, as has the crossoverbetween technologies. For the users – whether they are learners,teachers or professional practitioners – the importance of medium andformat lies in its fitness for purpose. Fitness is judged against manycriteria, including convenience, cost, quality and longevity. For someproducts, this means that print-on-paper will continue to be the mostappropriate format; for others, it means exploiting a whole suite oftechnologies and media.

There is little doubt that in a number of key fields of publishing theage of the printed book and journal is rapidly coming to an end. Aswith the newspapers and the broadcast media, the process is actuallyone of adoption of the most appropriate system, and the adaptation ofexisting systems into a new role. The law provides an importantexample of this. In common law systems, such as those which prevail


in the United Kingdom, the United States and much of the Common-wealth, lawyers need to know about precedent, including very recentprecedent, as well as statutes. The law actually changes and developsvery quickly; electronic access to the latest reports of cases has becomean integral part of how lawyers work. Yet they continue to use bookswhich contain the statutes, and summaries, explanations and interpre-tations of the law. As a profession, lawyers were early adopters ofelectronic technologies; in a decade or so, they developed workingstrategies which combine electronic and printed products to supporttheir work. The law publishers have inevitably followed them.

Similar patterns can be seen emerging elsewhere. Research scientistsrely heavily on the Internet for personal communications, not leastbecause access is normally free in universities and other research estab-lishments. Towards the end of the 1990s, however, electronic journalsbegan to displace the traditional printed journal, as we have seen. Theproblem of the prestige of the electronic journals compared with thatof their printed counterparts is gradually being addressed by the scien-tific community itself. So too is the issue of archiving (so that paperscontinue to be accessible for the foreseeable future), and that of circu-lation and distribution. Printed journals have not yet ceased to exist,but the more specialized of them must now be presumed to have alimited future lifespan. We should not, however, fall into the glibassumption that all academic journals face a wholly electronic future.Indeed, one of the benefits of technological change has been that thereis no longer a single viable system of communication. The usercommunity is increasingly in command, and can determine what ismost suitable for a particular purpose. 16

For the publishing industry the shift in the balance of power fromproducer to consumer is a trend which cannot be ignored. Indeed, when it is set against the similar shift from publisher to author,17 we canperhaps see the beginnings of a significant long-term change in the relationships between the participants in the communication chain.Throughout the industrialized world, there is a growing recognition ofconsumers as stakeholders in the industries which produce the goodsand services which they buy. Publishing is not exempt from this trend.The most adventurous publishers are indeed embracing it rather thantrying to protect themselves against it. The growing familiarity and everincreasing robustness of electronic technologies, and particularly of networked computing, is opening new opportunities to publishers who


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position themselves among the gatekeepers of knowledge. For the end-users, or consumers, or recipients, or whatever terminology we use(perhaps even readers and book buyers!), the publisher is simply one ofmany participants in the process of bringing information to where it isneeded, or one of many providers of entertainment and leisure activities.As a result, the familiar gatekeeper metaphor is itself becoming lessattractive; the successful players in the publishing industry now seethemselves removing the gates and encouraging everyone to come in.

The long-term viability of publishing as a multibillion dollar globalindustry depends on its capacity to provide what the market wants.There is evidence that publishers are able to do this, and are even ableto cater for the great diversity of demand – from contemporary poetryto financial information – which the market generates. This is beingachieved, however, at the expense of some of the old certainties of theindustry, not least in terms of its greatest capital asset – intellectualproperty – and its traditional corporate structure.

Copyright: the threatened asset

The modern publishing industry can trace its origins to the invention of printing, the first technology which was able to reproduce large numbers of identical copies of complex and lengthy textual documents.Within less than a century of its invention, the practitioners of the newcraft were seeking ways to control the very capacity for reproductionwhich lay at the core of the developing industry. Developing mecha-nisms to control the output of the printing press was, for different rea-sons, also dear to the hearts of political and ecclesiastical authorities inearly modern Europe. The development of censorship and the gradualevolution of the idea of copyright intersect at many points in the historyof publishing, and are not entirely separate even today. For publishers,the use of the law to control the reproductive technology which lay atthe heart of their industry came to be essential. Since the late nineteenthcentury, as we have seen, international law has effectively protected the investments of publishers in their books by giving them global rightsto control the reproduction, distribution and use of their contents.18

The enforcement of copyright law became steadily more difficult inthe second half of the twentieth century. Photocopying was a poten-tially destabilising factor in the academic journal sector from the


mid-1950s onwards, and was eventually controlled only by conces-sions in the law of copyright and the associated rules for fair dealing.19

Even this did not really deal with the problem, for it is almost impos-sible to police the law. The problem was compounded by the almostuniversal adoption of lithographic printing from the 1960s onwards.20

Photocopying entire books is laborious and time consuming, and theproduct is of low quality. A lithographic reprint of a book from platesmade from a copy of the original is, on the other hand, effectivelyindistinguishable from the original edition. The equipment which isneeded is readily available, comparatively inexpensive and relativelyeasy to operate. Illegal copying for profit is broadly speaking undercontrol, at least in the industrialized world. The prevalence of illegalreprinting in some other countries, however, which has sometimesbeen defended by arguments which embraced educational, social andeconomic necessity, testified both to the comparative simplicity of thetask and the very real demand for cheap books. Again, the publisherswere forced to make concessions; these were embodied in the ParisAmendments to the Berne Convention, which effectively recognizedthe validity of the ‘respectable’ case for reprinting.21 It was anotherdecade, however, before the British and American publishers (whowere the principal victims) were able to persuade all producer countrygovernments to clamp down on pirates whose only motive was profit,and whose products were not covered by the amended Convention.

The battle against the pirates was won by a series of compromiseswhich watered down the strict prohibition on copying which is funda-mental to the concept of copyright. Even that limited victory hadbarely been achieved before a far greater threat appeared. This threatwas that of electro-magnetic, and subsequently electronic, copying.The first commercially available manifestation was audio tape, whichbegan to come on to the market in the mid-1950s, and took on its nowfamiliar cassette form in the 1970s. Videotape was invented in the early1950s; it left the confines of the television industry itself in the early1980s, after which the VCR became a familiar domestic appliance.22

Cheap and largely unpreventable domestic recording presented athreat to broadcasters, the music industry and the movie industry.Commercial piracy of both movies and music became common, andthe tapes were widely available throughout the world by the end of the1980s. This was of little direct interest to the publishing industry, butit did establish a climate in which copyright laws were regularly and


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successfully flouted, and in which effective law enforcement wasproving to be almost impossible. Indeed, many people probably didnot even realise that they were breaking the law by buying and usingthe pirated tapes. Technology had advanced far more quickly than the law could keep up with it, or a generally accepted public moralitycould be developed around it.

Computing introduced another factor into the equation. Unautho-rized copying of software was a bugbear of the computer industry fromits very beginning, but as the technology became ubiquitous towardsthe end of the twentieth century, the problem grew in proportion. The development of the Internet made a difficult situation worse. Allof this was, and is, a matter of concern to publishers in several respects.First, the multinational conglomerates which dominate the world publishing industry have interests which include movie and video production and distribution, recorded music, computer software andapplications packages such as games, as well as books, magazines andnewspapers. In very specific terms, losses to these companies caused bypiracy of any of their products tend to weaken the company as a whole.More generally, the undermining of respect for the law of copyright isre-enforced. Finally, some publishing companies are developing andselling electronic products which are directly susceptible to electroniccopying, thus exposing them to direct losses. At a time when rights areseen to be more important than at any time in the industry’s history,23

it seems that the very concept of intellectual property in general, andcopyright in particular, is being very seriously questioned, and thatthere is a danger that the case will be lost by default.

The challenge for publishers is coming from many different directions. Technologically, the simplicity of copying, whether elec-tronically or photographically, has made any sort of control quiteimpossible except with the active participation of the owners of thedocuments and the equipment. Libraries, at least in the industrializedworld, have a reasonably good record of trying to control photo-copying, although self-service photocopiers (which are now almostuniversal in libraries) effectively transfer the burden of control to theend-user’s conscience. Schools, colleges and universities are similarlyaware of the need not to break the law, if only to protect themselvesfrom prosecution. But the commercial copy shops which have prolif-erated throughout the world are not always so fastidious. In effect, the customer is asked to confirm that he or she has the right to make


the copy, but this is rarely if ever verified. Publishers have alwaysargued that large-scale unauthorized copying damages their revenuesand hence their ability to invest in new books and journals. While the force of this argument might be questioned in the case of veryspecialized publications, it would certainly be valid if mass copying for educational purposes were to be allowed to run out of control.Moreover, the law itself is far from watertight. To take an obviousexample, while it is illegal for a teacher to make copies of copyrightmaterial for distribution in class (without appropriate permissionshaving been granted), there is nothing which prevents all the studentsin the class from making copies for themselves on an individual basis,subject to the fair dealing rules. Licensing of photocopying machines,or some other controls at the point of copying, is politically andsocially unacceptable in a democracy. The dilemma remains, and as aconsequence significant investments by the publishing industry areprotected only by the sometimes flimsy fabric of the user’s awarenessof the law and his or her willingness not to infringe it. Unauthorizedcopying is probably seen by most perpetrators as a victimless crime,even if they are aware that it is a crime at all.

The Internet and the World Wide Web present even more compli-cated problems. Anything mounted on the Web, to take the mostsignificant body of material, is protected by the law of copyright,unless the producer specifically puts it into public domain. Much ofthe material which is there is indeed put into public domain inprecisely that way. There are many reasons for this, not the least ofwhich is that some of the greatest advocates of the use of the Web areopposed in principle to any inhibitions on the free flow of informa-tion, and see copyright as simply another manifestation of censorship.Copyright material on the Web is, of course, protected by the law. The fact that copyright has effectively been in the sphere of inter-national law for more than a century makes this less difficult than itmight otherwise be, at least in concept and theory. It remains the case, however, that the law is, for all practical purposes, unenforceableexcept by common consent. It is illegal to make multiple copies of apaper in an electronic journal for classroom use. But how can this bepoliced? The truth is that very often it cannot.

The publishers’ response to the pressures on the law of copyright hasbeen to find new ways in which they can charge for copyright material.In some ways, technological developments are actually helping to


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solve the problems which they have partly created. Electronic journalsthemselves can be taken to exemplify this. While it is impossible toprevent either electronic copying of the file, or photocopying a print-out of it, it is possible, and indeed normal, to charge for each access. Insome ways, this is providing a more robust revenue stream than licencefees for photocopying of printed material, since it is impossible to usecharged-for electronic journals at all without making some payment.The current trend against uncharged access to documents on the Webwill re-enforce this approach. No doubt future technological develop-ments will also help, perhaps by limiting the number of times that aparticular electronic document can be consulted by the same user, orpreventing its use beyond the limits of a specified local area network.Publishers will be at the centre of these developments as the Internetcontinues to evolve over the next few years.

The protection of intellectual property is one of the foundationstones of the economics of the global publishing industry. Whatever thephilosophical arguments may be for the free interchange of informa-tion, the hard fact is that publishers have invested billions of poundsand dollars in buying copyrights and developing them into useableproducts, and in creating and maintaining the infrastructure throughwhich they can be promoted, distributed and sold. Although much ofthe industry appears not to be threatened by the apparent collapse of public acquiescence in the law of copyright, the implications are fargreater than the narrow confines of the world of academic journals andeducational materials. The very fact of the globalization of the indus-try, as we have suggested, has made its parts more than ever dependenton each other. While it may indeed be the case that every division anddepartment of a multinational publishing company is expected to showa profit, it is also the case that the corporate profits sustain all of themprecisely because it is a cost-effective way of providing the infrastruc-ture. In the industry’s own version of chaos theory, it might be arguedthat every illegal photocopy is making it more difficult to publish thefirst novel of a future winner of the Nobel Prize.

The business of publishing re-made

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the publishing industrycan look back on 20 years of continuous and radical change, and must


look forward to change being a permanent condition. For half of thelast millennium, publishers produced the most culturally privilegedproduct of Western civilization. The prestige of the product derived from its association with education, intellectual enlightenment,religious belief and practice, economic and social attainments, andpolitical success across the globe. The printed book became thesymbolic artefact of European domination of much of the world.Publishers basked in some of the reflected glory of their product. Evenwhen they were attacked (by both authors and readers) for payingtheir authors too little and charging their customers too much, theculturally essential service which they performed was recognized. It isno accident that the newly independent nations of Africa and Asiatried very hard in the 1960s and 1970s to establish indigenouspublishing industries. It was seen as part of the concept of nationhood,and part of a country’s claim to true independence.

Much of this has changed. Above all, the printed word no longerstands at the summit of the cultural mountain. The development ofother media for domestic entertainment and to support teaching andlearning have displaced it from its unique pinnacle. The publishingindustry has been forced to react accordingly, and has sometimes done so slowly and reluctantly. The model proposed in Figure 7.1 isan attempt to explain how the publishing industry relates to two keyeconomic activities, both of which are growth areas throughout theindustrialized world.

It has taken many decades to develop the recognition that know-ledge is a product, and that the communication of knowledge is afundamental economic activity. By the end of the twentieth century,however, this was a commonplace. The problem for publishers is tofind their place in the knowledge economy. The communication mediawhich they have historically used – printed books and journals – andthe associated systems of distribution and sales which they have devel-oped, have been challenged and partly displaced. There are significantareas of knowledge communication where print is no longer able tooffer the highest quality of product. This first became apparent asbroadcast news began to displace the traditional, fact-laden, news-paper. The trend, however, has been massively re-enforced by theaccessibility of completely current information across the Internet, andthe flexibility of electronic products which allows regular updatingeven of significant works of reference with a long-term importance.


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Reference publishing, once one of the mainstays of many houses, ismoving into an electronic environment where it will continue toflourish, but will be a very different phenomenon.

The move towards electronic journals is another manifestation ofchange. Despite the continuing reservations of some academics, andthe economic and legal problems which still remain to be fullyresolved, the electronic journal has become familiar to those at theleading edge of academic research in many disciplines. It offers a viablesolution to the almost overwhelming cost of subscriptions to conven-tional journals, while at the same time giving scientists and otheracademics access to the research results which they need.

Electronic products, whether online or using a self-standing carriersuch as a CD, put publishers in a different relationship with theirsuppliers, agents and customers. We have explored some of this inconsidering the relations between publishers and authors, and betweenpublishers and librarians. There is, however, a wider dimension whichprovides the context. Traditionally, the publisher was at the centre of the process of the communication of knowledge. The publisherrecruited and commissioned authors or journal editors, acted as thefinal arbiter of the quality and acceptability of content, organizedproduction, promotion, sales and distribution, and – above all –provided the capital to underwrite the whole process. In any classicdescription of publishing, the publisher as controller and capitalist (inthe literal sense) predominates, and clearly stands at the very centre ofthe operation (Figure 7.2). Even when we analyse the process in greaterdetail, as we did in Chapter Four, the publisher continues to have thisuniquely powerful role.

It can be cogently argued that in electronic publishing, this modelhas been fundamentally changed, and that the publishers must nowshare their power with other players. This is true to some extent evenin the comparatively simple cases where there is a physical productwhich a publisher can sell to a customer, such as a CD-ROM. SomeCDs are of course sold to private individuals, just as books are. Butmost of them actually carry material, especially reference material,which has traditionally been largely in the domain of library ratherthan private purchasing. Many, of course, offer far more than anyprinted product ever could, including multimedia facilities and adegree of interactivity between content and user. When publishers sellthese products to libraries, they actually impose certain conditions on


their use. The most common is that if the library wishes to make thecontent of the CD accessible through more than one workstation, itwill have to buy a licence to allow it to be used in this way. There maybe other conditions attached, some of which bear on the publisher; forexample, the publisher may agree to provide a free or reduced-costupdate of the content at regular intervals. The one-off purchase of a


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PUBLISHER

AUTHOR

BOOKSELLER

READER

PRINTER

Figure 7.2 The publisher as organizer

reference ‘book’ then merges almost imperceptibly into a serialsubscription. Whatever the details, the librarian has become more thanmerely a passive player in the transaction.

When we consider the knowledge generation process and the distri-bution of new knowledge, the partial displacement of the publisher iseven more apparent. New knowledge is typically created in universi-ties and other institutions by employees whose job (or part of whosejob) it is to conduct research and make its results available to thecommunity as a whole. In the traditional model, this new knowledgewas effectively handed over to a publisher for distribution and sale.The principle held good whether the output was a paper in a journalor a free-standing monograph. In the course of this book, we haverepeatedly encountered instances where this model is no longer applic-able, and seen some of the reasons why this should be so. Whether by the creation of electronic pre-print archives,24 or by semi-publiccommunications on Websites, or by the use of formal peer-reviewedelectronic journals,25 the research community has begun to takecontrol of its own publication processes. Universities themselves, often through their libraries, are becoming partners in the knowledgedistribution process as well as in the process of generation.26 Sinceuniversities are also among the principal users of the newly createdknowledge, they are questioning the role of the publisher and in partic-ular the financial relationship which subsists between knowledgecreators, knowledge distributors and knowledge consumers. What wasonce a comparatively simply chain of communication through a seriesof commercial transactions is beginning to look more like a partner-ship for putting new knowledge into public domain.

In the simplified model suggested in Figure 7.3, we have movedaway from the traditional terminology of ‘author’, ‘publisher’ and‘reader’. This is not wordplay. It is a deliberate indication of the factthat the roles are genuinely different in electronic communication ofnew knowledge. A publisher can, of course, be the knowledge distrib-utor; indeed, that is precisely the role of publishing houses whichproduce electronic journals. The relationships are, however, different.This model recognizes that the creators and primary users of newknowledge have a close relationship, which may not even require theintervention of the knowledge distributor. This model applies to bothformal and informal communication of knowledge. It illustrates theextent to which the traditional role of the publisher is being challenged


within the knowledge creation, or research, community. There is, ofcourse, a commercial dimension to this. Researchers typically haveeasy access to the Internet, while their institutional libraries are strug-gling to keep up with cost of journal subscriptions. There is also,however, an important intellectual dimension. The knowledge genera-tion process is itself becoming more interactive, no longer confined bythe boundaries of printed publications, with all their disadvantages of


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KNOWLEDGECREATOR

KNOWLEDGEDISTRIBUTOR

KNOWLEDGEUSER

Figure 7.3 Publishing: an interactive model

cost, delay and unidirectional communication. The publisher is nowone partner, and arguably a comparatively minor and even dispensablepartner, in the communication process, rather than the manager of it.

These changes will have a fundamental conceptual and commercialimpact on some of the publishing domain. Other parts will remain comparatively untouched. When we turn to the second of the majordomains mapped in Figure 7.1, that of the leisure industries, the changesare equally profound but very different. The publishers of consumerbooks and magazines have been comparatively successful in retainingtheir share of the leisure market as a whole. Despite the massive increasein access to electronic media and other forms of home entertainment,the reading of books is actually growing as a leisure activity.27 Morebooks are being produced for the leisure market than at any time in the past; even hardback fiction sales are going up. This does not meanthat book publishing is unchanged. Indeed, the commercial successes ofrecent years have been possible partly because of changes in editorialpolicies and methods, and in the business structures of the publishingindustry. There are those who argue that these changes have not beenentirely beneficial, although, as we have seen, there is no evidence tosuggest that there are significantly greater obstacles to the publication ofworthwhile books than was the case in the past.28

It might be argued that we are looking at a new de facto divisionwithin the publishing industry as a whole, in which knowledgepublishing and leisure publishing are becoming different in more thanthe content of the published objects. The knowledge distributors arebeing brought closer to both the creators and the users by their use of a common technology and communication system. The leisurepublishers, on the other hand, still stand in their traditional relation-ship with their suppliers (authors) and consumers (booksellers andreaders). Although this is an oversimplification, there is a significantelement of truth in the distinction which is being suggested. It wasalways the case that there were specialized publishing houses whichdealt with different kinds of books; some would publish fiction, somewere renowned for their reference books, others specialized in mid-market consumer books, and so on. Many of these specializationsactually remain, although under the umbrella of the conglomerates.What is now emerging, however, is a more fundamental distinctionbetween publishers who are producing completed works to be sold inthe marketplace, and publishers who are involved in a continuous


process of knowledge generation and enhancement which is, almost bydefinition, never quite complete. This distinction does not entirelyoverlap with that between electronic and paper publishing, but it isclose enough to it for our purposes.

There is no evidence that book publishing is in decline; indeed, the very opposite would seem to be the case. On the other hand, it is clearly the case that some parts of the traditional domain of theprinted word are being taken over by other media and communicationsystems. Perhaps we can best reconcile this apparent paradox byconsidering the broad issue of fitness for purpose. Electronic journals,electronic reference materials and a vast range of information resourcesaccessible online have been successfully developed because they meetthe needs of end-users. Far from being inferior substitutes for a supe-rior traditional product which has been priced out of the market, theyare actually able to offer more services and facilities than print couldever do. They have been successful because they are better. Books andmagazines, however, continue to have their own proper sphere, inleisure, education and professional practice.

This may change. Within the next few years there will be genuinelyportable electronic books which can offer high-quality images forinformal reading whether for business or leisure. We should not,however, allow ourselves to be bemused by mere technology, and fallinto the trap of confusing the tool with the task. Whatever physicalform our leisure reading may take, and however it may reach us,behind it will be the creative and commercial processes which havebeen described in previous chapters of this book. Authors, editors andindeed publishing companies will flourish for as long as there arereaders who are able to buy the books which they produce.


1 See above, pp. 97–98 and Figure 4.12 For these developments, see Winston, pp. 305–7.3 Ibid., pp. 272–3, 288–94.4 Naughton, pp. 118–39.5 Which is typically a team game. In the UK, Sky Sports Interactive channel

on BSkyB is the best readily accessible example.6 That is, of course, the great advantage of email over voice telephony,

especially for communications between people in different time zones.


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7 See above, pp. 122–23.8 See above, pp. 73–75.9 See Anthony Cheetham, ‘The future is in niches’, The Bookseller, 4706, 8

March 1996, pp. 24–5.10 See, for example, Francis Bennett, ‘’Free at last’? An allegedly dispensable

publisher sees the Internet as a blessing’, Logos, 11:2, 2000, pp. 86–90.11 See Mann, Book Publishing, pp. 21–2; and Mann, From Author to Reader,

pp. 147–51.12 Based on Social Trends, 30 (2000), p. 210 (Table 13.3).13 Social Trends, 27 (1997), p. 219 (Table 13.12).14 Creaser et al., p. 199 (Table 6.14)15 Social Trends, 30 (2000), p. 210 (Table 13.2).16 See above, pp. 175–76, for more detailed discussions of these issues.17 See above, pp. 161–64.18 See above, pp. 49–53.19 See above pp. 51–52.20 See above p. 161.21 See above, pp. 52–53.22 Winston, pp. 133–5, 269–70.23 See Lynette Owen, ‘A bright future for rights’, The Bookseller, 4735, 20

September 1996, pp. 18–20.24 See above, p. 176.25 See above, pp. 171–76.26 See also above, pp. 173–74, for some examples and commentary.27 See above, pp. 194–96.28 See above, pp. 47–48.


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Index

Note: tables and figures are indicated by italicized page numbers

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academic publishing books 39, 47, 62, 64, 114, 117,

120, 132economics 153and electronic publishing 171–6marketing 139, 148multi-authoring 78paperback format 85unsolicited material 77see also journals

Addison Wesley 45adult books 38, 60, 61, 66, 68advertising and promotion 82, 83,

86, 120–2, 125, 132, 139, 167Africa 33

languages 17, 19publishing industry 18, 31, 203

agentsauthors’ 77–8, 99–100, 110, 117, 180subscription 152, 174

Amazon.com 147–8, 149Asia 37, 44, 53, 115

languages 16, 17, 19, 20publishing industry 30, 31, 35, 203

Australia 18, 22, 36, 149authors/authorship 9–10, 18, 75–9

bookseller link 116–23collaborative 79, 101–3commissioning 77–8, 108, 112communication models 97–8, 98and conglomerates 46–7contracts, rights, income 108,

112–16definition 99–104and electronic publishing 161–2,

167–8, 180–1, 185modes and products 75, 76relationships (editors) 106–12relationships (publishers) 75–6,

77–8, 105–6, 112–16and websites 180–1see also copyright; writers

Berne Convention (1886) 20, 29, 49,50, 52, 199

bestseller lists 61, 65, 84Bible 5, 14Bloomsbury 115

book productionbacklists 59, 87, 170, 179categorizations 38, 39, 60–8contracts and rights 84, 108,

112–16, 168costs and economics 82–8, 83,

115–16, 162design/designers 118–19developments 5, 80formats 84–5globalization 27–8, 148print runs 61, 62, 82–5, 115, 120,

172processes 108–24, 125, 147

book tradein Britain/US 18–19, 20, 35–9, 145development and history 6–14and e-commerce 146–9, 178globalization 28–9, 148, 202international 20, 27–9, 30–5, 30,

33IT effects 153marketing 47, 120–4, 131, 167statistics 29, 30–5, 30, 33

Bookseller, The 84, 120–1, 145booksellers

markets 85, 121–2, 132origins 8–12publisher relationship 46, 116–23

Booksellers’ Association 141, 149Charter Group 145

bookselling 131–53, 141book clubs 137–9, 148direct 132, 138–9, 148–9distribution 122–3, 144–6e-commerce 132, 147–9libraries 132, 149–53prices and profits 137, 139–44,

143, 145, 146, 147, 150–1,152, 162

promotions 141, 142, 167retail 131, 132–7, 141, 147wholesale 131, 144–6

bookshops/stores 28, 61, 64, 84, 111,131, 132, 134

chains 64, 111, 133–4, 136–7, 141,143–4, 146

CTN sector 135, 136independents 133, 134–5, 136, 142,

144, 146, 149supermarkets 135, 136–7W.H. Smith Ltd 135, 140, 141

Britain see United KingdomBritish Commonwealth Rights

Agreement 21–2broadcasting, cable and satellite 43,

44business information publishing 63,

87Butterworths 41, 196

Canada 18, 22, 30, 33, 37, 50, 114Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (de

Bernière) 121Caxton, William (c.1422–91) 6, 15CD-ROM publishing 80, 86, 99,

165–6, 167, 168, 203censorship 11, 29, 198, 201Chapman and Hall 21children’s publishing 39, 65–6, 177

electronic 169fiction 60–1sales/purchases 135, 150in Spanish 18–19

China/Chinese 19, 31, 50Collins Softback English Dictionary

102–3, 165communications

cable and satellite 28, 43, 44, 189,190

chains of 98, 104, 117, 119, 123–4,123, 132, 197, 206

electronic 87, 172global 178networks/networking 160,

174

226 Index

Shannon and Weaver model 97–8,98, 116–17

skills 1–2see also ICT; Internet; World

Wide Webcommunications industry 186

broadcasting 188, 189, 190, 191convergence of

systems/technologies 187–92,192

electronic mail 190, 191media 203–4and publishing industry 191–2telephony 188–9

computers 159–64software 3, 45, 160, 162, 189–90technologies’ convergence 189–90use in editing 87

computing studies publishing 63Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD)

2, 3conglomerates 111, 179

growth 109–10and independents 28, 29, 45–8multimedia ownership 22, 28, 74and territorial rights 114

consumers 149–50, 180, 197–8see also end-users

contracts and rights 108, 112–16, 117copy-editors/-editing 109, 118, 119,

162copyright 113, 114–15, 198–202

British–American issues 20–1, 114conventions and treaties 49–50copying/photocopying issues

51–2, 198–202and electronic publishing 168fair dealing rules 51, 52, 173, 199,

201impact on publishing industry 29international 29, 49legal basis 11–12, 48–53, 198–9origins 10–11, 97

piracy problems 51, 52–3, 199–200subsidiary rights 50–3, 114, 115see also Berne Convention (1886);

Paris Amendments (1971);Universal CopyrightConvention (1956)

culturesand language 5, 34publishing 110Western 4, 14–19

Dahn, Felix 124Dent, J.M. 21desktop publishing (DTP) systems

47, 163Dickens, Charles 20, 21dictionaries 15, 64, 65, 99, 102, 121Doubleday Page, New York 21Dutch language 15, 16, 17, 32Dutton, E.J., New York 21

e-commerce 146–9, 178editors/editing 117–18

and author relationship 106–12definition 106–7effects of electronic publishing

162, 167, 180, 185roles and standards 46–7, 101–2,

106–12educational publishing 38, 39, 43, 45,

62and electronic publishing 176–8,

196Egypt: Arabic publishing 31electronic publishing 51–3, 86,

164–78, 196academic journals 72, 86, 132, 209backlists 87, 170, 179books 86–7definition 164–5formats 165–6, 168–9and reference books 65, 161,

169–71, 203–4, 206

Index 227

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Elsevier 174, 196Encyclopaedia Britannica 169encyclopaedias 64, 65, 78, 102

and electronic publishing 168end-users 194, 196, 209

see also consumers; readersEnglish language 6, 16–18, 17English-language publishing 32,

35–9, 115, 148Europe

languages 17–18, 20publishing statistics 31–2, 35

European Union single market 37Everyman’s Library 21

Faber and Faber 21, 47fiction publishing 39, 60, 67–8, 84,

117, 194, 208and electronic publishing 168–9

Financial Times 44, 45Fischer-Verlag 42, 43format rights 51France

culture and language 14, 15–16,17, 32

publishing industry 32, 35

Germanylanguage 14, 17, 18publishing industry 31, 35

Ghostwritten (Mitchell) 100Gray’s Anatomy 63Grove’s Dictionary of Music 65, 170Gutenberg, Johannes (c.1399–1468)

5, 6

Hannibal (Harris) 121hardbacks 38, 51, 60, 61, 67

production economics 67–8, 82–5,115, 122, 131, 133, 193

rights issues 114, 115sales 134–5, 136, 138, 150, 208

Harper Collins 20–1, 44Heinemann 21, 41Highway Code, The (HMSO) 79Holt, Henry 41, 42–3Holtzbrinck Group 42Houghton Mifflin 41, 43, 178

ICT see information andcommunication technology

imprints 28, 41, 42, 45, 110, 120independent publishers 21, 28, 45–8,

111and children’s publishing 66and conglomerates 28, 29, 45–8and ICT 180

India/Indian languages 18, 31, 34,35, 53, 102

Indonesia 17, 19, 32, 35, 50information

delivery 87, 97, 164–5sources and media 187, 192–8storage and communication 80–1technology (IT) 147, 153

information and communicationtechnology (ICT) 159, 160,161

convergence of systems andtechnologies 187–92

and educational publishing 177–8Internet 19, 22, 54, 97, 203

academic/educational uses 172,173, 177

and booksellers 132, 148–9and communications 160, 190copyright issues 201and electronic piracy 51and electronic publishing 165–6,

168, 178–9and libraries 153and publishing industry 22, 41,

160, 173, 178Internet Service Providers (ISPs) 43

228 Index

ISBN/ISSN (International StandardBook/Serial Number) 145,179

IT see information technologyItaly 4, 32, 33

Japan 31, 34, 37, 50, 148, 162Johnson, Samuel 99journals 52, 70–2, 85–6, 102, 118,

132, 147archiving/pre-prints 176, 197,

206and copyright issues 52, 202economic issues 172–3, 174, 185electronic publishing 132, 166,

171–6, 179, 197, 204, 209parallel publishing 87, 174promotion/marketing 122, 152quality control 174–5readerships 171subscriptions/licensing schemes

132, 152, 171–2, 174juvenile books 38, 60, 68

keyboarding 161–2Kindler-Verlag 42knowledge industry 3, 14, 52, 59,

186, 186and publishing relationship 186–7,

198, 203–4, 206–9, 207

language rights 50–1languages

African 16, 17, 18, 30, 34Arabic 31, 162Asian and Oceanian 5, 16, 30development 1–2European 16–19, 17, 20, 30–4indigenous/non-European 19, 34Latin 2, 5–6, 14, 15–16North American 16–17, 18–19, 30,

32

and publishing 5, 14–19South American 5, 16, 30and trade 14–15vernaculars 5–6, 14–15and word-processing packages

162–3law

publishing 63, 197systems 196–7see also copyright

learned societies 70, 71, 139journal publishing 171, 173

legal issues 112–16, 168see also copyright

librariesclassification system 61and copying issues 52, 200–1and electronic sources 170, 204–6funding and purchasing 66, 85,

132, 149–53, 152and information services 153, 170,

173institutional 66, 67, 111, 132, 150,

152, 153, 207journal subscriptions 72, 86, 132,

152, 172, 207public 66, 116, 132, 150, 151, 152,

153, 195and reference books 169–70suppliers 150–3

Library Association 150Library Licence scheme 150, 151licence rights/licensing 50–1, 52–3literacy 2, 4–5, 35literary publishing 45, 47, 110Longman, Thomas 12Longmans 40, 44, 45, 196

establishment 14–16, 20

Macmillan, Alexander 12, 13Macmillans 41–2, 43, 70

establishment 12–14, 20–1

Index 229

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magazines 3, 68–70, 208and authorship 76editors 107–8parallel publishing 175sales and distribution 131, 152

Maher, Terry (Pentos Group) 140marketing/promotion 47, 120–4,

131, 167academic 139, 148STM 120, 122, 132, 139trade 120–2, 145, 146

medianews 73, 74, 193, 203ownership 22, 28, 74and publishing relationship 186–7

Microsoft 160, 162Milton, John 10, 11Mitchell, David 100multi-authored works 78–9, 101–3,

112–13multimedia products 3, 66, 165–6,

168multinational corporations 46, 77,

114Murdoch, Rupert 43–4Murray, John 12–13music industry 51

Napster software 51National Curriculum 62Nature 70Net Book Agreement (NBA)

139–44, 145, 146, 147Library Licence 150

NetLibrary 178networking

communications 97, 153, 160, 169,170, 172, 174, 177, 179, 181,185–209

trade/business 5, 132, 179New Corporation 43–4New Statesmen 176

New World Information Order(UNESCO) 34

New York 20–1news media 73, 74, 193, 203newspapers 3, 42, 44–5, 68, 152,

203and authorship 76, 78, 102categorization 72–3circulation/readership data 73–4,

74editors 106, 107and electronic publishing 175formats 43, 73, 84, 193production economics 86

Newsweek 175non-fiction publishing 60, 61, 67,

117, 194North Africa 31

official publications 79, 80online publishing 42, 165–6, 167, 170online selling/ordering 147–9ownership

and copyright 10–12media (conglomerates) 22, 28, 74media (domestic) 195publishing 29, 40–8, 110

Oxford English Dictionary 169,170

Oxford University Press 20, 21

paperback publishing 38, 50, 67formats 84–5production economics 82–4rights 84, 114sales and promotion 67–8, 120,

131Paris Amendments (1971) 52, 53,

199Pearson Longman Group 44, 45,

196Penguin Books 40, 44, 45, 65–6, 67

230 Index

periodical publications 68, 102personal computers (PCs) see

computersPilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan) 15Portuguese 16, 34Printing Act (1662) 11printing industry 8, 80

camera-ready copy (CRC) 163developments 2, 4–10, 147, 198lithography 161, 199processes 81–2

professional publishing 38, 39, 63,64, 114, 132, 139

paperback format 85proof-reading 47, 119, 147, 162Public Lending Right (PLR) 116published material

formats 79–88and libraries 151processing 98–9sources 75–9variety 60–75

publishers 40–8, 206–7conglomerates 22, 28, 29, 45–8,

179, 185and copyright issues 201–2early 12–16establishment 12–14, 20–2financial pressures 111independents 21, 28, 45–8, 111,

180ownership 29, 40–8, 110Third World 28

Publishers’ Association 150publishers’ editors 108–9publishing houses/imprints 40–8

American 20–1, 41, 42–3, 44, 45,178

British 12–16, 20–1, 40–2, 44–5,47, 65–6, 67, 70, 115, 121,174, 196

German 42, 43

publishing industryBritish–American links/issues 21,

35–9, 114–15business environment 110, 202–9,

205changes and trends 197–8, 203,

204, 209distribution and sales 67–8, 122–3,

131, 144–6, 152, 203domains and relationships 186–7,

186, 208economic and business issues

30–5, 161, 170, 203and electronic publishing 161–4,

166–7, 169–78formats 43, 79–88, 193growth and development 35–9,

187and ICT 178–80, 185–209internationalization 20–2, 27–8,

148, 202media 22, 80, 85–8

publishing processas a commercial activity 3–4communications model 97–8, 98costs and economics 81–8, 83,

120definition and development 2–4,

12effects of electronic publishing

166–9key issues 98–9language 14–19legal framework 48–53materials 60–75production processes 80–1, 97–9,

108–10promotion and marketing 47,

120–4, 131, 167typesetting 110, 119, 149,

161–2Putnams 20–1, 45

Index 231

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Random House 121readers

as consumers/end-users 18, 98,180–1, 185

leisure reading habits 194–6, 194,209

readers (publishers’) 117–18reference publishing 64–5, 78, 114,

147authorship and editing 102economics 85–6and electronic publishing 65, 161,

169–71, 203–4, 206and Internet 170parallel publishing 87

relationshipsauthor–publisher 75–6, 77–8,

105–16, 206business 46, 112–16, 116–23creative 99–104in electronic publishing 88,

173in publishing industry 186–7,

186, 208religious publishing 38report literature 78–9, 80reprints/reprinting 49

licences 50paperback 50, 67unauthorized 20, 199

reproduction 29, 51see also copying/photocopying;

copyrightResale Price Maintenance Act (1964)

140research monographs 62, 63, 122reviews/reviewing 61, 67, 83, 84,

122Routledge 41Rowling, J.K. 115royalties 113–14, 115–16Russia 17, 32

satellitebroadcasting/communications28, 43, 44, 189, 190

Saudi Arabia 31scholarly journals see journalsScience, Technology and Medicine

see STM publishingScientific American 42, 43, 70, 176scientific publishing see STMShannon and Weaver model 97–8,

98, 116–17, 188Simpkin Marshall 144–5Society of Authors 116South Africa 17, 18, 31, 33South America 16–17, 31, 32Spain/Spanish: language and

publishing industry 16–19,31–2, 34

specialist publishing 62–3, 71, 111,122, 139, 146, 193, 208

Standard Book Numbering system(ISBN/ISSN) 145, 179

Standardized General Mark-upLanguage (SGML) 164

stationers 8–9, 10Stationers’ Company of London 8,

10, 11statistical data 29, 79, 159, 167

international book trade 30–9STM (Science, Technology and

Medicine) publishing 18, 39,63, 64, 85, 111, 114, 117, 187,194

promotion/marketing 120, 122,132, 139

subsidiary rights 50–3, 114, 115Swahili 35

technical publishing 39, 196technology

distribution management 123Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS)

equipment 146

232 Index

electronic publishing 51–3, 86–8information 159–81in printing 4, 6, 80, 110, 162, 198in publishing 87, 110, 145, 146,

147, 160, 170, 172, 175, 193,198, 200, 208, 209

Teleordering 145–6see also information and

communications technology(ICT)

telecommunications 28, 41, 43, 98,160, 165, 187, 190

television tie-ins 64, 66terminology 8–9, 206territorial rights 50, 114–15textbook publishing 43, 45, 62, 64,

122, 198electronic 87, 178

Third World countries 28, 53trade publishing 63–4, 82, 179, 194

distribution 145, 146promotion 120–2

translation(s) 14–15, 50Twentieth-Century Fox 44typesetting 110, 119, 147

effects of ICT 161–2

UNESCO Yearbook 30, 32United Kingdom

and children’s publishing 66export markets 36–7, 37publishing statistics 31–2, 35–9,

60–1United States

and children’s publishing 66

and international copyright laws49

languages 16–17, 18–19, 32publishing industry 18–19, 32,

35–9Universal Copyright Convention

(UNESCO, 1956) 29, 49, 50,52

university presses 38, 47, 71, 111,117–18

Unwin, Philip 145Unwin, Sir Stanley 124

Vivendi Universal 43, 44

Walford’s Guide to ReferenceMaterials 65

Walker, Sebastian 135Wall Street Journal Europe 42, 43Websites 3, 51, 206Western culture 14–19Wiley and Son, John 21word processing 147, 160, 162–4,

180World Wide Web (WWW) 47, 80,

87, 148, 153, 160and copyright issues 201and electronic publishing 165, 168

writers/writing 2, 75, 76, 103–4,180–1

see also authors/authorship;copyright

young adult books 38, 66–7, 169,177

Index 233

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Documents

Communicating Knowledge Publishing in the 21st Century Topics in Library and Information Studies