Communicating Knowledge: Publishing in the 21st Century [Reprint 2010 ed.] 9783598440045, 9783598115066

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Tables
Figures
Abbreviations
CHAPTER ONE. Publishing from the Past to the Present
CHAPTER TWO. Publishing in the Global Economy
CHAPTER THREE. Forms of Publishing
CHAPTER FOUR. The Publishing Process
CHAPTER FIVE. Selling Books
CHAPTER SIX. Information Technology and Publishing
CHAPTER SEVEN. Publishing in a Networked World
Backmatter

Citation preview

John Feather

Communicating Knowledge Publishing in the 21st Century

K · G · Saur München 2003

Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Feather, John : Communicating knowledge: publishing in the 21st century / John Feather. - München : Saur, 2003 ISBN 3-598-11506-7

U Printed on acid-free paper © 2003 K. G . Saur Verlag GmbH, München All Rights Strictly Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher. The moral rights of the author have been asserted. Typesetting by Florence Production Ltd., Stoodleigh, Devon. Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wiltshire. ISBN 3 - 598 - 11506- 7

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The Author

John Feather has been Professor of Library and Information Studies at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom since 1988. He has served as Head of his department, Dean of the Faculty and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University. Before going to Loughborough, 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 of copyright in Britain (Mansell, 1994); The information society: a study in continuity and change (3rd ed., Library Association Publishing, 2000); and, with James Dearnley, The wired world: an introduction to the theory and practice of the information society (Library Association Publishing, 2001). With his colleague Paul Sturges, he is the Editor of the well-known International Encyclopaedia of Information and Library Science (2nd ed., Routledge, 2003).

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Contents

Preface Tables Figures Abbreviations

ix xi xii xiii

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

1 1 6 14 20

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

27 27 30 35 40 45 48 53

Chapter Three Forms of Publishing Introduction The variety of published material The sources of published material The formats of published material

59 59 60 75 79

viii Table of Contents Chapter Four The Publishing Process Introduction What is an author? Authors and publishers Creative relationships: authors and editors Business relationships: contracts and rights From author to bookseller Conclusion

97 97 99 105 106 112 116 123

Chapter Five Selling Books Introduction Selling consumer books Book clubs and direct selling Book prices and the demise of the Net Book Agreement Wholesaling and the distribution of books E-commerce and the book trade Selling to libraries

131 131 133 137 139 144 147 149

Chapter Six Information Technology and Publishing Introduction ICT and print publishing Electronic publishing The impact of electronic publishing ICT and the business of publishing Authors and readers

159 159 161 164 169 178 180

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

185 185 187 192 198 202

Bibliography Index

211 225

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Preface

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, systems of communication are undergoing profound change. Some analysts see this change as revolutionary, comparable with the invention of printing in the west in the fifteenth century, or even of written language itself in the ancient world. Others see it as merely evolutionary, a further application of new technologies to the process of storing, transmitting and communicating information. All agree, however, that there has indeed been great change, symbolised by the development of the global system of communication between computers which we call the Internet. The Internet, however, is only the outward sign; it is the power of the computer itself which really underpins what has happened and what continues to happen, for this is the most powerful tool in history for the 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 the languages and symbols in which knowledge is put into permanent form for present and future use. The printed book – so recently the iconic cultural product of western society – suddenly seems in real danger 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 leisure activities and other aspects of culture. Its place in this complex is far from clear. For some commentators it is primarily and manifestly a knowledge industry; for others it is a cultural industry; for others again it is a part of the leisure and entertainment industries. In fact it is all of these, while yet retaining its own identity. The domain of publishing is being redefined by social, cultural and technological change. Within a generation it seems likely that some of its characteristic products – the reference book and the learned journal for example – will have been transformed both physically and commercially. But changes in the form of the product, and even in how it is traded, do not change the fundamental importance of the industry itself. The products of the publishing industry – books, magazines, newspapers, electronic formats – continue to be created, bought, sold and used throughout the world. This book is a study of the publishing industry at this time of change. Beginning with a brief historical introduction, and some account of the business structure of the industry, it then deals with what publishers produce, how they do so, how they sell what they make, and how all of this is changing under the impact of new technologies and new approaches to living and learning. The account is based partly on the writings of those who work, or have worked, in the industry; partly on the analyses of observers, not all of them academics; and partly on a study of the companies and organisations which together constitute the publishing industry. It has also benefited from many in the industry itself and in academic world who have (both wittingly and unwittingly) informed me and helped me to form my views over many years. It is intended to give the reader a snapshot of the oldest of the knowledge industries at this time of profound transformation.

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Tables

Table 1.1 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table Table Table Table Table Table

2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1

Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

3.2 3.3 5.1 5.2 7.1 7.2 7.3

The European world languages Titles published, c.1996 Countries with a favourable balance of trade in books 1996–97 British and American book output by title 1989–99 Destinations of British book exports 1999 US book publishing by category 2000 British publishing by category 1999 British publishing by value of sales 1999 UK daily newspapers: circulation and readership 2000–01 Authors and their products Fixed costs and copy costs Retail space for bookselling 1998–99 The impact of discounts on profit margins Communications systems compared Book reading in the UK Ownership of media

17 30 33 36 37 38 39 39 74 76 83 141 143 192 194 195

Figures

Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 7.1 7.2 7.3

Costs in Publishing Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication From author to reader: the simplified version Composing for publication The author and others From Author to Reader: a less simplified version From Editor to Warehouse A simple model of distribution The publishing process The domains of publishing The publisher as organizer Publishing: an interactive model

81 98 98 104 104 117 119 123 124 186 205 207

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Abbreviations

ASLIB Proc ATL BIR BJSE BRQ CRLN D-Lib M Elec Lib IFLA J Inf Soc IWR ISTC JASIS J Comm J Doc JEP JIS JIT JOLIS JPHS JSP LAR LP LRTS

Aslib Proceedings Advanced Technology Libraries Business Information Review British Journal of the Sociology of Education Book Research Quarterly College and Research Libraries News D-Lib Magazine Electronic Libraries IFLA Journal The Information Society Information World Review Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship Journal of the American Society for Information Science Journal of Communications Journal of Documentation Journal of Electronic Publishing Journal of Information Science Journal of Information Technology Journal of Librarianship and Information Science Journal of the Printing Historical Society Journal of Scholarly Publishing Library Association Record Learned Publishing Library Resources and Technical Services

xiv

Abbreviations

MCS OLM PW PRQ Sci Comm Ser R SLJ SP

Media, Culture and Society Online Libraries and Microcomputers Publishers’ Weekly Publishing Research Quarterly Science Communication Serials Review School Libraries Journal Scholarly Publishing

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CHAPTER ONE

Publishing from the Past to the Present

Introduction: what is publishing? Communication is a fundamental characteristic of all animals. It is not only human beings who have developed communication skills of a high order. Uniquely, however, we have developed verbal and visual languages, which have become our primary means of communication with each other. Indeed, the development of language is taken as one of the indicators of the distinctiveness of our species, and the evolution of language skills in the young is a key indicator of personal, social and intellectual development. The use of language as a communication medium is, however, subject to physiological constraints; there are limits to the distance over which we can make ourselves heard, to the time for which we can remember what has been said, and to the quantity of information which any one person can remember. The differences between individuals – the volume of the voice, the sharpness of the hearing, the retentiveness of 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, developed elaborate and sophisticated means for overcoming the physical constraints on spoken language.1 Facts, ideas and thoughts can thus be transmitted from one to many as well as from one to one; and they can be transmitted over distance and time, even from the dead to the living.

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Publishing from the Past to the Present

Preserved and transmitted language has thus become one of the principal means by which we have expressed ourselves. Visual and oral communications have, of course, remained critically important; indeed both have been substantially revived in the most literate societies in the history of the world because of the evolution of technologies which allow them also to be transmitted widely, as we shall see. But the transmission of written language has, for many centuries, been at the heart of the cultural enterprise of the west. The invention of writing is at least 5000 years old. The invention of printing is far more recent, just over 500 years ago in Europe and a little longer in the Far East. Each, however, represented a formidable leap in the intellectual evolution of mankind, although the full impact of the former 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 as social class, economic status, gender and race. In the past, such distinctions were even more marked. In Western Europe 2000 years ago, for example, there was a Latin-speaking literate elite; 1000 years ago that elite was probably an even smaller percentage of the population as a whole, but there was also, partly overlapping with it, a larger group which was literate in one or more vernacular languages, some of which were derivatives of Latin. Two hundred years ago in Britain, almost everyone 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 in Britain whose first and only language is English; there are others who are literate in some other languages (such as Gujerati, for example) but not in English. At any time and place in history where literacy is to be found, a similar story of variations can also be found.2 It is against this background that we have to understand the development 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).

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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 best reflected in the most comprehensive and least specific of these senses, ‘to make generally known’. But it is in the most restricted sense that the word is normally understood as to ‘issue copies . . . for sale to the public’. It is in this sense that it is used here, recognising that even this sense is very broad. If we take COD’s exemplary ‘book, engraving etc.’, we can multiply the examples: magazines and newspapers are obvious extensions. But what of computer software, or recorded sound, or videos, or indeed multi-media products which effectively combine all three? These are also ‘issued for sale to the public’, and contain knowledge and information in textual and visual (as well as aural) form. The dictionary definition still makes logical sense, and – perhaps more to the point – still relates to the reality which we can see and analyse in the world today. We should not, however, focus only on the media which are published. The other element in the definition draws our attention to the commercial dimension of the activity: ‘for sale to the public’. In due course we shall look more deeply at what we actually mean by both ‘sale’ and ‘public’ in this context; for the moment, it is enough to recognize that in the definition of an authoritative dictionary, publishing is seen as being an essentially commercial transaction.3 For all practical purposes, therefore, we can take it that ‘publishing’ is a business activity; and that a publisher is concerned with making a profit. There are, of course, other activities which do make information or opinion ‘generally known’ and even make use of media which are also used by publishers. Perhaps the most obvious contemporary example is a Website which can be accessed without charge, but it is equally true of advertising posters on billboards, or broadcasts on radio or television. In each of these examples, the intention is certainly to ‘make public’; in some of them a commercial transaction is involved, but the relationship between provider and end-user is widely understood to be different. Exactly how different it really is, and the practical consequences of that difference, we shall explore in a later Chapter.4

4 Publishing from the Past to the Present If, for the moment, we take the commonly understood meaning of ‘publishing’, we can trace its European history back to the Mediterranean world in the last few centuries before the Common Era. Manuscripts were copied by scribes for sale to customers; some were written on commission, but others appear to have been produced speculatively with a view to subsequent retail sale.5 This practice vanished with the Roman Empire, but the copying of manuscripts, of course, did not. A trade in the copying of manuscripts re-emerged in Paris in the twelfth century,6 and thereafter spread unevenly around western Europe, 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 the demand for such manuscripts that there was a search for a more costeffective and rapid means of book production. The solution was printing, invented in the Rhine Valley in the middle of the fifteenth century. During the next generation, printing was taken to the heartland of contemporary western civilization – France and Italy – and thereafter to the more peripheral countries – the Low Countries, England, Poland and the Iberian Peninsula. The details of this need not detain us, but one important point must be made. Even from the brief, and vastly simplified, account in the last paragraph, it should be clear that publishing and printing are two separate activities, and that they are not dependent on each other. Publishing existed 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 older trade in manuscripts had been a form of publishing, just as in our own day the process of selling many other information products is, in all its fundamentals, an activity which can be defined as publishing. Printing, however, made possible the publishing industry, as we now understand it. Its development was slow and fitful. There are complex interrelationships – not yet fully explored or understood – between the history of publishing and wider history of western culture. The printed word, the dominant communication device of early modern and modern Europe, facilitated advances in learning and education, and can be argued to have had a critical influence on political, social and economic change. Europeans took with them their assumptions about literacy, and the technology of printing which supported it, as they

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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 were reduced to writing for the first time so that they could be printed; those who spoke the language then had to be taught to read. But there was little available for them to read in many of these languages, and gradually 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 vanished because they were unsustainable in a print culture. Throughout its history, printing has had a normalising effect on language, and through the 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 truly revolutionary nature of the event. In truth, however, the very technology contained within itself the seeds of the revolution. Printing is a process designed to make multiple copies of identical items; it is indeed precisely for that reason that it was both cheaper and more accurate than the work of a scribe copying a manuscript. As a consequence, however, printing made little commercial sense unless multiple copies were indeed produced. Printing involves significant capital investment in both equipment (the press, type and so on) and materials (paper and ink); all of that investment must be made before a single copy of a book can be produced. Thereafter, it can only be recouped, and a profit generated, if enough copies of the book are sold at the right price in a reasonable time. These truisms were a stepchange in the economies of book production in the second half of the fifteenth century. It was the recognition of them, albeit perhaps implicitly, 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 took a generation for the trade to become a little more stable, as books began to be widely distributed through existing trading networks, some of which had existed for centuries, which linked the markets and fairs of Europe.7 This was only possible because much of what was printed in those early years was in Latin, the common language of the Western elite. Vernacular printing and publishing was a somewhat later phenomenon, 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, was a native who consciously developed a market for literature in English, partly perhaps because the small demand for Latin works could be satisfied by imported continental editions. The gradual displacement of Latin by the vernaculars as the language of printing and publishing is a long story, not wholly completed until the nineteenth century. The loss of the universal language of the learned elite created the circumstances in which linguistically defined, often national, publishing industries could develop. Only in the present century has something like a new universal elite language emerged which now dominates the publishing world.

From printing to publishing To describe Gutenberg or Caxton as a ‘publisher’ is at once both accurate and misleading. It is true that both were concerned with the sale and distribution of their books, but they were also the producers who owned and operated the technology of printing. Although they had different 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 equipment and production. It is the gradual separation of these various functions which is central to an understanding of how publishing became the distinctive activity recognized in the dictionary definitions of the late twentieth century. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was little distinction between the three basic book trade functions: publishing, printing and bookselling. From that time onwards, however, the printing function became gradually more distinct. The reason for this is superficially simple, although the process by which it happened is not yet fully understood, and varied in different parts of Europe both in time and in significance. The essence of the change was that there was a growing recognition, implicit rather than explicit in many cases, that both the skills and the business of printing were fundamentally different from those of publishing. The printer was an employer of labour; even to operate a single press required at least three specialist

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craftsmen; two pressmen to operate the machine itself, and one compositor to set the type. In practice, printers typically employed more compositors than pressmen, although some owners may themselves have worked in one or both capacities from time to time. In addition to labour costs, the printer also had to provide materials and equipment. The minimal equipment of a single press and a sufficient quantity of type represented a significant investment; materials such as ink and (most importantly) paper also had to be bought, paid for and stored. The early modern printing house may have been a small-scale operation by later industrial standards, but it was by no means trivial. In early seventeenth-century London, we should envisage a master printer who owned the business, probably helped by his immediate family, employing three or four journeymen, having the help of one or two apprentices, and owning two presses and a large quantity of type and miscellaneous equipment. He needed a workshop in which all this could be operated, and a warehouse in which supplies, and perhaps printed sheets, could be kept until they were needed. He was dealing with a number of specialist suppliers (paper merchants or wholesale stationers, and suppliers of ink) as well as with those who wanted the materials 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 the dominant force in the major Western centres of book production. This was in part an artificial phenomenon. Governments wished to restrict the circulation of printed matter. At a time when control of the press was regarded as a norm throughout Europe, they could most easily do so by regulating the numbers of printers and the number of both their presses and their employees. This gave the printers a significant hold over the rest of the trade, and they found themselves in a position to charge high prices for their work. Printing became a prosperous business, and its separation from the more speculative business of publishing was an obvious advantage to its practitioners. By operating essentially as the paid agents of publishers, the printers ensured that their incomes were not dependent on the vagaries of the success or failure of particular titles or editions. They printed what was commissioned from them, and were duly paid, regardless of the commercial fate of the material which they printed. The printers’ domination of the London book trade was gradually undermined, however, as their skills were more widely disseminated.

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Artificial attempts to restrict the number of master printers, journeymen and apprentices, which persisted for much of the seventeenth century, were only fitfully enforced. The printing trade developed its own customs and traditions, including its own conventions about the employment of labour. We can deduce some of this from contemporary records of relationships between masters and men, and some from printed sources. By the late seventeenth century, the master printers – the owners of printing houses – were actually under pressure from two directions. Their customers were looking for the best deal they could get; and so were their employees. In particular, the compositors who set the type (a laborious and skilled handcraft process until almost the end of the nineteenth century) were nearly always in demand, and they could command high wages whatever the official regulations might say. Moreover, they were, by definition, literate; by the end of the eighteenth century, primordial trade union organizations were negotiating with the employers in an early and successful form of collective bargaining across the London printing trade.10 This pressure from within was made worse by the pressure from without. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, some publishers were actually dividing the production of some books between more than one printing house. The reasons for this are a matter for speculation in most cases. In a handful of instances, it was for political reasons; dividing the work made the perpetrators of an undesirable book less easy to trace. Most books, however, had no such inhibitions placed upon them; so called ‘shared printing’ was forced upon their publishers because the small printing houses of the period, limited in both equipment and personnel by official regulation, were also limited in the amount of work they could do. In a free market, some would have expanded; but the limitations on size were also a limitation on the capacity to generate income. Printers, despite the demand for their services, became essentially the agents of publishers. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was the latter who dominated the formal structures of the London book trade. They did not, however, call themselves ‘publishers’. The common term of the period was ‘stationer’, later displaced by ‘bookseller’. The terminology is confusing, but its use has something to commend it. In seventeenth-century London, ‘stationer’ was almost a technical term. It was used to describe a member of the Stationers’ Company of London, the trade guild to which all members of the book trade

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(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 occasionally she) was engaged primarily in the selling of books, but was often also responsible for financing their production. A seventeenthcentury London bookseller sold books from a shop which was typically in the premises in which he and his family lived. There were scores 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 as one or more in most of the major provincial towns. We know little about the stock which they carried, but enough to know that it was limited. Much of it was probably second-hand, or at least old. The new books were typically those which had been produced for the bookseller himself. As a producer, however, the bookseller was not the physical producer of the book, as the printer or the binder. He was the organizer and financier of the production, that is, what we now call the publisher. This was reflected in the imprint which appeared on the title page; this example is typical: ‘London: Printed by Ruth Raworth for Humfrey Moseley, and are to be sold at the signe of the Princes Arms in Pauls Church-yard. 1645.’11 The printer (Raworth12) is named; the bookseller (Moseley) is not merely named, but has his address printed precisely so that the purchaser knew where to obtain the book (the shop whose sign was the Prince’s Arms, located in the churchyard around St Paul’s Cathedral). We should also note the words ‘by’ and ‘for’; from these prepositions it is clear that Raworth is Moseley’s agent, working to his orders. These imprints encapsulate the relationships within the book trade, and it is from them that historians first began to reconstruct their understanding of how the trade worked. The key question which must now be addressed, and one which is central to an understanding of how publishing came to be a distinctive activity, is to understand why and how the bookseller (Moseley in this case) came to be in possession of the text which was printed for him and sold by him. There was, of course, only one possible source for 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 of Milton’s poems and implies that he persuaded him to release them for publication: ‘The Authors more peculiar excellency in these studies, was too well known to conceal his Papers, or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him.’13 This sentence appears in the preface, which is headed ‘The stationer to the reader’ and signed ‘Humph. Moseley’. It leaves no doubt as to who is in charge of the enterprise. The dominant role of the bookseller in this transaction is unusual only in being so explicit. The underlying assumption, however, is that Moseley has acquired these poems from Milton through some mechanism which has conferred on him the right to publish them. At least by 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 allowed stationers (that is, members of the Stationers’ Company) to claim ‘ownership’ of particular titles, or – to use the trade term – ‘copies’. In soliciting his work from him, Moseley had, in effect, obtained from Milton the right to print (or to have printed) these poems; in contemporary 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 the crown to control what was published, and in part from the desire of the stationers to regulate their own trade in an orderly way. Since its earliest days (it was formally established by Royal Charter in 1557), the Stationers’ Company had maintained a register of rights in copies owned by its members; these were variously acquired, but so far as the Company was concerned, the essential point was the ownership conferred the unique right to print a particular copy and it was that fact which recorded by registration in their ‘entry book’ or ‘register book’ as it was variously known at different times. Although this was essentially a matter of internal self-regulation for the book trade, it could never be wholly so and, by and large, the operations of the Company were supported by royal and ecclesiastical authorities as the system developed between the 1560s and the 1630s.14 Within the

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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 the operation 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 regime within the book trade itself, and when the monarchy was restored the Stationers’ Company’s powers were confirmed by statute in the Printing Act of 1662. For the next 40 years, the regulation of the book trade and attitudes to it swung with the political pendulum. For much of 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: the attempt to exclude Charles’s Roman Catholic brother from the throne gave all political factions a good reason for wanting a less regulated press which they could use for propaganda purposes. When his brother did indeed succeed, as James II (1685–1688), the Act was reintroduced, but it barely survived the more liberal regime which followed after the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) and the establishment of an essentially parliamentary system of government. The Printing Act finally lapsed in 1694, and since that date, except very occasionally in time of war, there has been no state-controlled prepublication censorship in the United Kingdom. The book trade’s arrangements for the control of rights in copies, however, did survive the end of the legislation under which they were, in part, regulated. After a period in which the anarchy feared by the trade establishment never 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 longterm importance for the book trade. It was now possible to use the civil and criminal courts to protect the ownership and use of rights; throughout the eighteenth century, the trade became increasingly litigious as a consequence. There was, however, another dimension. The 1709 Act imposed a time limit on the existence of rights – seven years in the first instance, with a further seven in certain circumstances. This was to become a common characteristic of copyright law all over the world, 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 freely used 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 London book trade used the courts over and over again to question the meaning of legislation; their efforts were doomed to failure, for although the language could be argued to be obscure and perhaps ambiguous, the intention was plain. In a landmark judgement in 1774, the House of Lords confirmed that rights in copies existed only for a maximum period of 14 years after first publication.16 This judgement was one of several factors which drove the final separation between bookselling and publishing in the London book trade. The confirmation of the time limits on copy ownership forced publishers to look for new books to publish and not to rely on reprinting old favourites. Reprinting could of course continue – and it did – but it was now openly competitive. The monopolistic attitudes which had pervaded the trade almost since its very beginning were no longer legally acceptable or commercially viable. The effect was to make publishers more entrepreneurial, and not all of those who had dominated the trade in the mid-eighteenth century managed this transition well. It was indeed a radical change, for between the mid-1770s and the mid-1820s the pre-industrial craft-based book trade was transformed into a publishing industry for an increasingly mechanized society with a vibrant and expanding economy. This transformation can be exemplified in the histories of three famous names, all of which still survive: Longman, Murray and Macmillan. The house of Longman dates back to 1727, although in fact even that was a continuation of an older bookselling business which had its origins in the late seventeenth century. For much of the eighteenth century, successive generations of Longmans were both publishers (in the modern sense) and retail booksellers. They were owners, or part owners, of the rights in hundreds of titles, including some of the great bestsellers of the age. From the mid-1770s onwards, however, and particularly after about 1800, the firm began to concentrate on publishing new titles and keeping its popular books in print for as long as they were in copyright. At the same time, they slowly abandoned their retail business. The transformation from eighteenthcentury bookseller-publisher to nineteenth-century publishing house was complete.17 John Murray came into publishing from the outside. Almost from the very beginning when, like the first Thomas Longman, he bought an existing business (1768), he concentrated on publishing new books.

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He had little choice, for he had no stock of inherited copies, and it was difficult for an outsider to buy his way into the charmed circle of the copyright owners. He was fortunate, for his business career (he died in 1793) coincided with the period when the London book trade was becoming more open to entrepreneurs such as him. He published hundreds of books, and barely engaged in retailing at all; his son followed him into what was essentially a publishing house. Murray can be argued to be perhaps the first successful businessman in the London book trade who was primarily – and for much of the time solely – a publisher.18 For the Macmillan brothers, entering the trade in the 1840s, there was a stark choice. After an apprenticeship to a traditional bookseller in Cambridge, Alexander and Daniel established a shop there, and began to publish books. They recognized that a London base was essential if this enterprise was to be successful, and after an abortive attempt in the 1840s there was a gradual shift of emphasis until the whole publishing business was in London by 1863. Alexander Macmillan (his brother had died in 1857) had recognized the inevitable. Publishing and bookselling 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 the story of how publishing and bookselling came to be separate enterprises. The collapse of the legal regime which protected the eighteenthcentury copy-owning booksellers forced them to reconsider the conventions within which they worked. Publishing now needed enterprise, entrepreneurship and a concentration on the most profitable activity. That activity was the publication of successful new books. Longman made that transition; many others did not. Those who came in from outside were not hidebound by the conventions of centuries; they were entrepreneurs from the beginning, and found it comparatively easy to compete in a trade which was conservative and reluctant to change. John Murray was such a man. Within a generation or so, the transformation wrought at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had itself become the conventional structure of the trade. The Macmillans could be booksellers and publishers, but they had to see the two trades as what they were – separate and different. The printerdominated trade of the sixteenth century had thus become what it has

14 Publishing from the Past to the Present remained – an industry dominated by its capitalists and primary producers, the publishers who control the oldest and still the most familiar of the knowledge industries.

The language of publishing In the West, publishing has always been an international activity. As we have seen, the earliest printed books, like so many of their manuscript predecessors in Europe, were written in Latin, the common language of the educated elite. The emergence of the vernaculars as literary and official languages in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had many causes, of which indeed the invention and dissemination of printing may be argued to have been one. The essential point for our purposes, however, is that for whatever reason there was a gradual shift from Latin to the major vernaculars as the languages of printing from about 1550 onwards. English led the way, but French and German were not far behind. In the Protestant countries of northern Europe, the vernacular translations of the Bible had an immense influence on the form and even the respectability of the languages into which it was translated, and indeed on vernacular literacy.20 The vernacularization 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 intellectual spheres – wrote major works in Latin precisely because it enabled them to address an international audience. But they were the last generation of natural philosophers for whom Latin was the normal means of communication.21 Long before Latin was displaced as the language of scholarship, it had been superseded in trade and even in diplomacy. Trade had always been conducted in the vernacular, and indeed printed guides to foreign languages are found from the sixteenth century onwards. It is one mark of the ever-growing importance of Britain’s international trade that the teaching of modern languages became a profitable enterprise in the eighteenth century, and perhaps earlier.22 Diplomats continued to use Latin in some circumstances until well into the eighteenth century; 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

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gaining ground; the publication of authoritative grammars and dictionaries gave them a greater formality and authority, and their use for official purposes in government, administration and justice firmly implanted them in the work of the state.23 As the major vernacular languages became respectable, their use became normal; it was a virtuous circle. This development, however, left publishers with a problem, for the potential market for a book was now confined by language as well as by subject matter. Translations inevitably became more common. Of course, translation had always been practised, and long ante-dates the invention of printing. Indeed, Greek texts were known in medieval Europe largely through Latin translations of Arabic translations of the originals written in a language which was unknown even to most scholars.24 Caxton’s output of English books was inaugurated and continued to be dominated by translations from French. By the middle of the sixteenth century, many major texts in both Latin and newly rediscovered Greek had been translated into English, French and other languages. Texts were also of course translated from one vernacular to another. The first English book to be widely translated was Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, first published in 1678, and translated into Dutch, French, German and Welsh before the end of the century. Translation thus became the normal means of written communication between speakers of different languages. There was, however, another development which ran in parallel with this: the search for a common language to replace Latin.25 The choice of language followed political and cultural power. In eighteenth-century Europe, the dominant language was French. There were good reasons for this. From the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to the outbreak of revolution in 1789, France was, despite many challenges, the predominant land power in Europe. During the earlier part of this period, her music, painting and architecture dominated Western culture. Politically, the absolutist monarchy symbolized by Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715), and less convincingly continued by his successors up to 1789, was a model which was imitated in style and substance across Europe from the Protestant kingdoms of Scandinavia to the great monarchies of Austria and 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 the political system which it helped to undermine. Much of their writing

16

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was indeed translated into other languages,26 but it was also widely circulated in the original. Reading and speaking French was as much the mark of a cultured and educated man in the eighteenth century as a knowledge of Latin had been in the sixteenth. English was little known, and English books barely read outside England, at least until late in the century.27 Nevertheless, where French had led the way, English eventually followed. Britain inherited France’s mantle of political and cultural domination after the Battle of Waterloo (1815). Throughout much of the nineteenth century, British influence predominated in European affairs, and indeed in many other parts of a world increasingly dominated by European powers. In the 1820s and 1830s, as the English began to travel again after their long confinement during the war against France (1793–1815), publishers in Paris and Leipzig began to publish reprints of English books both old and new. Some were authorized editions and some were not, but all, despite being intended for English speakers, helped to create a large body of English material which was easily available in continental Europe. Gradually, knowledge of the English language spread among Europe’s elites. English became a commonly taught second language in schools in France, Germany and Scandinavia. And when Britain’s political power began to implode in the middle of the twentieth century, her language remained as the common currency of business across much of the continent. The spread of English outside Europe began in the sixteenth century, and followed trade and the flag for the next 300 years. In itself, this is not surprising. Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands took their languages to their colonies in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Indeed, they survive there today. Spanish is the predominant language of the whole of central and South America except Brazil (where Portuguese prevails), Surinam (Dutch) and Guyana (English). This is a straightforward legacy of colonialism and empire, but it is noteworthy that it is almost 200 years since Spain withdrew from her colonies on the mainland of America. The use of Spanish has not only survived; it has been embedded in the national cultures which emerged in the wake of decolonization. The importance of Spanish in the Western hemisphere has been further enhanced by both the legacy of Spanish colonial settlements north of Rio Grande (especially in California and Texas), and by a huge inflow of Latin American

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immigrants into the United States during the last 100 years. In Los Angeles, Miami, New York and many lesser cities, Spanish is at least the equal of English as the language of the streets in many areas. The linguistic legacies of the European empires seem destined to outlive the empires themselves by centuries if the example of Spanish is a foretaste of what it to come. Certainly, French still flourishes in more than 50 countries which are or were French colonies. Dutch residually survives in Indonesia, and modified into Afrikaans is an official language in South Africa. There are even pockets of German speakers in southern Africa, over 80 years after Germany’s African empire was handed over to others. Russian is still widely known in the former Soviet satellite countries in eastern Europe (although its use is often rejected on principle), and is widely used in the former Soviet republics in western and central Asia. But above all, English has become something akin to a universal global language. Four European languages have exceeded all others in their migration around the world. The figures in Table 1.1 are probably underestimates, and of course they change all the time. It is clear that English has far outstripped the other languages which have spread beyond their native continent.28 Indeed, the estimate of 572 million English speakers does not take into account the millions more who have a limited knowledge of the language, or who are learning it for purposes of education or business; when these people are included a widely accepted estimate is of the order of 1200 to 1500 million.29 The widespread knowledge of English throughout Europe and the wider world from the middle of nineteenth century onwards explains much of the structure of the modern publishing industry which we shall analyse in Table 1.1 The European world languages Language English Spanish French Russian Dutch (Source: see note 28)

Estimated number of speakers (in millions) 572 300 170 150 15.3

18 Publishing from the Past to the Present later chapters of this book. Underpinning that, of course, is a factor far more 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 industry lies in the simple fact that all but a tiny percentage of the 270 million inhabitants of the world’s predominant political and economic power are either monoglot English-speakers or speak it as their first or second language. Publishing and language are symbiotically connected. When a language is known to tens or hundreds of millions of literate people, there is a market for its books, magazines and newspapers. The more readers there are, the larger the total market, and the greater the likelihood of a viable number of potential readers even for the most specialized literature. This in turn makes such languages attractive to those who, while not being native speakers themselves, seek an audience among those who read the language. Since the middle of the twentieth century this has increasingly meant, in practice, one thing only: that more and more authors, especially of academic and professional books, write in English regardless of where they are in the world, or what language they use in their daily lives. Until World War II, German was as important as English as a medium for scientific publication. But the diaspora of German scientists in the 1930s, and the physical destruction of the German scientific and industrial infrastructure in 1942–45, brought this to an end.30 British and American companies are not the only publishers who benefit from the dominance of English. There is a significant trade in the publication of English books in India, for example, where it is the largest of more than a dozen publishing languages,31 and there are publishing industries in all the major English-speaking countries such as Australia, South Africa and Canada. But the world’s largest book market, defined by language, is very largely supplied by the two countries which have the largest number of native English speakers, the United Kingdom and the United States. The other world languages are, of course, also used by publishers. Spanish in particular is of increasing importance, partly because of its domination of Latin America, but also because of its rapid expansion in the United States and the political connotations which that carries. It is particularly significant that there is a large and growing market for children’s books in Spanish in the USA, suggesting continued future

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growth.32 Ironically, this growth is probably benefiting the American publishing industry rather than that of the Hispanophone countries themselves.33 Spanish-language publishing in the USA is, however, something of an exception. The harsh fact is that for most countries in which one of the European world languages is used for cultural and educational purposes, book needs are largely met through imports from the language’s native country.34 Indeed, the predominance of British and American publishers in the Anglophone world is reenforced by the apparently universal desire to learn English; books for learners of the language (children and adults) are typically imported rather than produced locally.35 The only non-European language which has had an impact remotely comparable to that of English, Spanish and French is Chinese. There are well in excess of 1000 million speakers of the various Chinese dialects, although many of them are in countries where the literacy rate is low. Moreover, they are scattered all over east and south-east Asia, and to a lesser extent in the rest of the world. Significant Chinese communities are to be found in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. But there are Chinese communities across the globe from Sydney and San Francisco to Manchester and Milan. This is not, however, the result of Chinese colonialism in the European sense, but rather of what is now called economic migration.36 Indeed, many of the overseas Chinese communities were founded because people were escaping from China rather than because they were promoting her interests. Since the communist revolution in 1949, the political divide between homeland and overseas Chinese has perhaps grown even greater, and China certainly cannot seek export markets for books (or very much else) among the children of her diaspora. Some recent developments in the use of the Internet to publish Chinese language materials for the international Chinese community only serves to emphasise the fundamental 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 educated multi-lingual speakers of some of the less commonly known European languages;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, economic, educational and cultural purposes.39

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The internationalization of publishing The growth of the European colonial empires, which reached its apogee in the second half of the nineteenth century, made certain European languages politically predominant over large parts of the world. In turn, this phenomenon created a market for books in those languages far away from their homelands. In a sense, this was even true in the United States, although by the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the book trade in the newly independent republic was becoming genuinely independent of its British ancestor. The trade developed in the USA throughout the nineteenth century, but it was in 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 whose names survive to this day, and some of which still retain their identity even 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 a rapidly developing regime of international protection for copyright through a series of bilateral treaties which gave mutual recognition to domestic copyright laws. This movement reached its climax in the signature of the Berne Convention in 1886.41 The basic principle of the Convention – that a book published in any signatory state was fully protected under the copyright laws of all signatory states – was not acceptable to American politicians or publishers. Throughout the century, British authors were subjected to unauthorized reprints of their books by American publishers, from which they derived no financial benefit. Dickens was probably the most famous, and certainly the most vociferous, of those who suffered form this ‘piracy’.42 It was not until the very end of the century, in 1891, that foreign authors could easily obtain some reasonable protection under American law.43 One consequence of the long-running copyright dispute was that British and American publishers were in competition with each other. Partly as a protective measure, a number of British publishers established offices or branches in the United States. Macmillan had a New 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; these included Putnams and Harpers, although they were apparently more

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interested in acquiring British books to publish in America than they were in selling their American books in Britain.47 After the end of the copyright difficulties, however, it was not only books which flowed across the Atlantic. The British and American publishing industries began to grow very close to each other. Some of the established branches of British houses in New York gradually transformed themselves into semi-independent companies which published books in their own right. This happened to both Macmillan and Oxford University Press before the end of the nineteenth century. It was not, however, one-way traffic. Chapman and Hall, a venerable London house which was closely associated with Dickens, was in financial trouble by the 1890s, and was badly managed. As part of an attempt to rescue the firm, it became the London agent for John Wiley and Son, an even more venerable American publisher which was beginning to specialize in educational and scientific books. Before long, the Wiley tail was wagging the Chapman and Hall dog.48 Doubleday Page of New York bought Heinemann of London in 1920, and J. M. Dent was able to continue the distinguished Everyman’s Library only because of a long-term agreement with the New York firm of E. J. Dutton.49 These were the straws in the wind: American capital was beginning to sustain British publishing. Fifty years later, the wind had become a gale. Since about 1950, there has been an almost continuous process of takeovers and mergers in the American publishing industry. Where historic names survived, they often did so only as parts of larger organizations. This was the driver of significant cultural change within the industry in the United States itself, but was also a significant factor in the growing internationalization of publishing throughout the world. By the 1980s, eight groups dominated American publishing;50 by the end of the century, it was six.51 There were parallel developments in Britain from the late 1970s onwards, although some of the major houses retained their independence for much longer (notably Macmillan) and a few still do (notably Faber and Faber). The creation of conglomerate publishing companies, however, was only one aspect of a multi-faceted process. These companies were competing with each other on a global scale. A traditional understanding that British and American publishers divided the world market in English language books between them collapsed in 1976 under the threat of legal action in the United States.52 Under a cosy arrangement known as the British Commonwealth Rights

22

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Agreement, the American edition of a book was not marketed in the British Commonwealth (except Canada), and the British edition was not sold in North America. This enabled publishers on both sides of the Atlantic to negotiate profitable deals with their opposite numbers for the sale of the American, and British and Commonwealth rights, respectively. The end of the Agreement opened up vast markets to publishers in both countries, which could now only be regulated by contracts with individual authors about the territorial rights in their books.53 Since the early 1980s, therefore, the vast global market for books in English has seen intensive competition between British and American publishers. It was inevitable that some should fall by the wayside. 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, the publishing conglomerates became transnational and then multinational corporations. There are now key players in English language publishing whose holding companies are based in Germany, France and Australia as well as in Britain and America. The publication of books, like their distribution and sale has become a truly international business.54 The dominant position of the multinational conglomerates in the world publishing industry has had many consequences – cultural, economic, educational and political – which we shall encounter regularly throughout this book. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is indeed truly global in scale, although dominated by products in the English language, and hence by publishing companies based in Britain and the United States. Many of the major publishing houses are integrated into companies whose activities take in the printed and broadcast media and the Internet, as well interests which are nothing to do with communications at all. In Chapter Two, we shall try to quantify some of this, as we explore in more detail the current state of the industry which began as small craft-based trade in north-west Europe 500 years ago.

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

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2 See Harvey J. Graaf, The Legacies of Literacy, Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University 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 Oxford English Dictionary, which has an essentially historical and etymological approach. In the Collins Softback English Dictionary, for example, and in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, both of which are concerned with current usage, and of which at least the latter is primarily aimed 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 typically large folios, designed in imitation of contemporary formal manuscripts; many copies went into libraries rather than into private hands. Size, value and institutional ownership made them more likely to survive than the smaller, cheaper and less highly regarded vernacular works. Hence, the total loss rate of such books is assumed to be higher than among the larger and more valuable items. 9 There is an extensive scholarly literature on all of these matters, of which this is the barest summary. For a brief introduction, see Philip Gaskell, A New 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 University Press, 1998, pp. 81–100. 10 See John Child, Industrial Relations in the British Printing Industry: The quest 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: An historical study of copyright in Britain, London: Mansell, 1994, pp. 15–36. 15 I shall return later to some of the commercial and scholarly conventions which 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 of Longman, London: Longman (privately printed), 1974, p. 14. 18 See William Zachs, The First John Murray and the Late Eighteenthcentury London Book Trade, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British 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 Cambridge University 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 of 1530. 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 University Press, 1995. 22 These languages were not of course taught in formal education until late in the nineteenth century. In both Oxford and Cambridge, Latin and Greek were the principal subjects of study (and Latin still a mode of communication) until the middle of the nineteenth century. In the German universities too, Latin survived as a living language, although the subjects of study were more broadly based than in England and the teaching probably more assiduous and more effective. 23 The study of vernacular grammar began in the fifteenth century, with the publication of Antonio de Nebrija’s grammar of Castilian Spanish. The first attempt to produce an authoritative dictionary of a west European vernacular was that instituted by the Académie Française in the late seventheenth century. The first English dictionary was that of Robert Cawdrey published in 1604, and others were published in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. But the great English landmark is generally, and rightly, taken to be Samuel Johnson’s work, published in 1765. For a publishing and linguistic perspective on this see Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary 1746–1773, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 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 has been considered since the eighteenth century. 26 For example, Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes was translated into English in 1722, and his L’esprit des Lois in 1750; Voltaire’s collected works appeared in an English translation by Tobias Smollett between 1761 and

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27 28

29 30

31 32 33

34 35 36

37 38

39 40

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 in English Translation: A bibliography. III. The romance languages. Part 2. French literature, New York: Frederick Unger, 1970. Goldcar, p. 67. 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 widely accepted. The exception to this is English, for which I have used the authoritative account in David Crystal, English as a Global Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 54–63. This whole section is heavily indebted to Crystal’s book. Ibid., p.61. See Heinz Sarkowski, ‘The growth and decline of German scientific publishing 1850–1945’, in: Einar H. Fredriksson (ed.) A Century of Science Publishing: A collection of essays, Amsterdam, IOS Press, 2001, pp. 25–34. See also below, p. 32 and note 15. See Urvashi Butalia, ‘India’s fourteenth language: a publisher’s rumination’, Logos, 4:4, 1993, pp. 181–8. See Teresa Mlawer, ‘Selling Spanish-language books in the United States’, PRQ, 10:4, 1994–95, pp. 50–3. Compare the comments in K.N. Kiser and S. Taylor, ‘Spanish language publishing: special supplement’, PW, 245:37, 1998 (which notes the flourishing Spanish-language publishing industry in the USA), with Guillermo Schavelzon, ‘Why not a unified Spanish-speaking book market?’ Logos, 8:2, 1997, pp. 117–19 (which argues that Latin American publishers are nationalistic and inward-looking). See also below, pp. 31–32. For the international trade in books, see pp. 30–35, below. See below, pp. 114–15 for the significance of this for British publishers. There is a marginal exception to this in the so-called Straits Chinese communities in Malaysia and Singapore, but it is numerically insignificant in global terms. For a useful summary of the issues, see East Asia Analytical Unit, Overseas Chinese Business Networks in Asia, Canberra: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 1995, pp. 13–33. 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. Svein Kyvik and Ingvild M. Larsen, ‘The exchange of knowledge: a small country in the international research community’, Sci Comm, 18:3, 1997, pp. 238–64. The authors examine the issues from the perspectives of their native Norway. I return to this point on pp. 34–35, below. See John Tebbel,Between Covers:The Rise and Transformation of Book Publishing 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 a signatory to the international treaties or the Berne Convention. 43 For a detailed account of this, see James J. Barnes, Authors, Publishers and Politicians: The quest for an Anglo-American copyright agreement 1815–1854, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974; and Simon NowellSmith, International Copyright Law and the Publisher in the Reign of Queen 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.

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CHAPTER TWO

Publishing in the Global Economy

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 the spectrum, there are a few countries in which publishing is a major industry, and some of those countries are also players in the global market for publications. As we have suggested in Chapter One, there is a close link between language and the size of the publishing industry in the countries in which a particular language is predominant. As in so many other industries and services, the marketplace in which publishers operate is increasingly global. Textual material is, of course language-dependent, so that the language of publication can sometimes be a barrier to distribution. Nevertheless, millions of published products are sold through channels of international trade every year. The export of books and magazines (and to a lesser extent newspapers) from the major producer countries in the world languages has been a feature of the book trade since the late nineteenth century, but has been intensified by the economic, political and linguistic trends of the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the wake of the growth of international trade in the finished product, it was perhaps inevitable that the production itself would be internationalized. Although this also has a nineteenth century origin, in the establishment of overseas branches of European publishing houses and the influx of American capital into the trade in Britain,1 it

28 Publishing in the Global Economy is an essentially late twentieth-century phenomenon. At the present time, 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 has been retained within these conglomerates, they have introduced profound change into the industry, particularly in the United States and Britain. Moreover, the conglomerates typically have significant interests in addition to print publishing. These are usually – although not invariably – in the communications and media industry, and include terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasting, video, movie and recorded music production and distribution, Internet service provision, and telecommunications systems and services. In the publishing field itself, conglomerates publish newspapers and magazines as well as books. It is impossible to understand the workings of the publishing industry without gaining some insights into these massive enterprises. At the other end of the scale, there are still ‘small’ publishers, independent houses which survive and even flourish in the gaps which the conglomerates cannot fill. Although there are parts of some conglomerates which will take risks, it is, in general, the independent houses which are more likely to try to operate in small niche markets for poetry, local history and special interest books of all kinds. The conglomerates and the independents can coexist, although problems can arise when they are competition with each other for space in retail bookshops.2 But if the independent publishers in developed countries have their difficulties, publishers in many less developed countries are almost overwhelmed by theirs. Third World publishers are typically undercapitalized, lack easy access to modern production facilities, are constrained by an underdeveloped national market for books and limited facilities for distribution and sales, and many other obstacles. In the competition with the global conglomerates, they are even less well placed than the independents in Europe and North America.3 Their weakness reinforces the power of the multinationals. A global trade can only operate effectively if there are some rules of engagement. The publishing industry operates in the same economic culture as other industries. Since the 1980s it has been exposed to the development of free trade across the world, with the lowering of duties and a movement towards the use of private capital even in

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countries which still have some vestiges of socialism in their social and economic provisions. This, however, is only one aspect of the regulatory and legal regime which surrounds the publishing industry. Unlike many products, printed matter is not always neutral. Control of the contents of printed matter still characterizes many countries in the world, and acts as a limitation on free trade in books, magazines and (especially) newspapers. Even in countries in which there is little or no censorship, and even in those in which there is a philosophical commitment to a free press, there are still legal constraints. These arise largely from the existence of an international copyright regime which is, in effect, the regulator of the global marketplace for publishing. As we have seen, international copyright was developed during the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a protection for both authors and publishers.4 That is still its purpose today, expressed in the two great international agreements, the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, to one or both of which virtually every country in the world is a signatory. The effect of international copyright law is to guarantee to a publishing company that everything which it publishes is a unique product; it cannot be reproduced without permission, and can be sold only in the form in which it was originally produced it or in some other form of which the publisher approves. This regime is, of course, equally applicable to the largest and the smallest, but is most beneficial to those who are best able to access an international market, that is the large publishers in the major publishing countries. All of these issues need to be explored in some detail to set the context for a study of how the publishing industry works. In this Chapter we shall provide the framework for that study, and pursue some 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 crossmedia 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.

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Publishing in the Global Economy

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. The largest single source of data on a global scale is in the UNESCO Yearbook, but that is dependent on statistics submitted by individual countries. The returns are not uniformly reliable, and are far from being complete or current. Nevertheless, it is all we have which can provide some sort of broad framework within which we can begin to assess the size of the global publishing industry. The latest data which is available from this source is from the mid-1990s, typically 1996, and we 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 source which has been used may well be more reliable than much of the data supplied to UNESCO by many countries, but it is not strictly comparable, and includes data from the USA only, not from Canada. Even Table 2.1 Titles published c. 1996 Continent Africa North America (USA only) South America Asia Europe Oceania (Source: see note 6)

Number of titles published 9 598 139 309 28 322 270 605 367 626 11 358

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with these caveats, however, it is clear that Asia, Europe and the United States, as we might expect, dominate world publishing. When we analyse these data at a more detailed level, some interesting facts begin to emerge. In all six continents, there are very significant variations between countries. At the extremes in Africa for example, we have South Africa with 5418 titles published in 1995 against a mere 12 in Burkina Faso in 1996.7 Apart from South Africa, the only subSaharan country which exceeded 1000 titles was Nigeria (1314 in 1995), with Malawi’s 117 (1996) being more typical. North Africa presents a somewhat different picture.8 Between them the countries of that region published 4549 titles in 1996, of which only 26 were from Libya and no fewer than 2215 from Egypt. Some of the Tunisian and Algerian output is in French, but the books published in Egypt are almost all in Arabic. We shall return to this point. South America offers a similarly varied picture. At one of the scale Ecuador reported the publication of 12 titles in 1995, while Brazil produced 21 574 in 1994. The largest output in a Hispanophone country was 9 850 in Argentina in 1996. Language is a relevant issue here as well, since the use of Spanish theoretically opens up markets in both the United States and Spain itself. Again we shall return to this point.9 It is, however, in Asia that some of the most interesting national statistics are to be found. The Asian total includes 100 951 titles from China in 1994. The second largest producer was Japan (56 221 in 1996), followed by Korea (30 487 in 1996). All three countries, of course, have distinctive 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. Chinese publishing is still essentially propagandist in purpose, but for that very reason is made widely available to Chinese communities elsewhere in the world, especially in Asia.10 On the other hand, as we shall see, there is some Asian publishing in English, which is not insignificant, notably in India. It is in Asia also that we can find confirmation of the importance of Egypt in Arabic publishing. The Arab countries of Asia together report 6583 titles, of which 3900 were from Saudi Arabia in 1996.11 Together, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have effectively cornered the market in Arabic publishing.12 Europe also shows some striking variations. In 1996, the United Kingdom reported that 107 263 titles were published. The next largest producer 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 the Netherlands (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-first century. The Russian publishers have to depend largely on their vast domestic market. Spanish is the language of all of central and south America except Brazil and Belize, and is widely spoken and read in the United States.13 French still has an international status, as the European language of much of north Africa and a number of countries in west Africa, as well as of pockets elsewhere in the world.14 Despite the vestigial use of Dutch in Indonesia, neither it, German nor Italian is a world language in same way. Why then do they appear here? All three countries are major centres of international publishing. In both Germany and the Netherlands, there are major companies which produce English-language material for the world market, especially in the academic field. This in no accident. Indeed one of the major German scientific publishers took a policy decision as long ago as the 1940s to concentrate on English-language publishing for its scientific journals.15 Italy has long been the centre for the publication of international co-published books, especially on artistic subjects. Elsewhere in Europe, most countries have an established publishing industry catering for the national market. A few (such as Belgium) have the advantage of working in languages which are also used in other, larger, countries. Some have the disadvantage of a national language virtually unknown outside its homeland (Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia, for example). The predominance of the major publishing countries is emphasized when we set these production figures against the available data on the balance of trade in books. Table 2.2 show data (1996–97) on the countries which, according the UNESCO Yearbook,16 have a favourable balance, that is, which export more books (by value) than they import. The massive predominance of the United Kingdom and the United States is ample evidence both of the extent to which these two countries dominate the international book market, and of the domination of that market by their principal publishing language, English. Of the other world languages, Spanish generates trade for Spain herself, for Colombia and for Chile; and French for France. The figures for both Russia and China partly reflect the economic and (in China’s case) political restrictions on the import of books. There is a very clear picture here of how the world trade in books is structured. The net

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Table 2.2 Countries with a favourable balance of trade in books 1996–97 Country United Kingdom United States of America Spain Germany Italy Singapore Russia Hong Kong China France Slovenia Slovakia Colombia Finland Jordan Chile Dominican Republic Moldova St Vincent

Balance in US$ 855 714 000 698 001 000 412 502 000 386 861 000 367 590 000 174 462 000 164 378 000 151 740 000 91 375 000 30 776 000 28 118 000 21 573 000 18 067 000 9 831 000 8 403 000 4 154 000 969 000 577 000 1000

(Source: See note 16)

outflow of books from a handful of countries, in four or five languages, is a clear indicator of where the publishing industry is strongest, and has 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 with some caution. A detailed analysis would have to take account of population, literacy levels and many other factors. But even raw data can suggest some valid conclusions. The largest single importer country is Canada, with an unfavourable balance of US$777 001 000 in 1997; it is a reasonable assumption that most of this originated in the USA, although some would be British and some from France.17 Other major importers 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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(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 in excess 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. In Austria, German is effectively the only language. In Switzerland, French, German and Italian divide the country between them, and most educated people are fluent in at least two of these; the native Romansch is a minority tongue, spoken by only 65 000 people.19 In Mexico the predominant language is Spanish, as Portuguese is in Brazil. In South Africa and Zimbabwe, English is the common language of commerce, politics and culture, and the first language of a significant part of the population. Indigenous languages do exist, and some material is published in them (and in Afrikaans in South Africa), but despite official support they are under pressure from the common tongue. A particularly acute case is that of India, where huge potential markets exist for books in the indigenous languages, but the literate middle class prefers to use English. The reason is only partly because the language offers a common medium of communication. There is also a social cachet attached to being Anglophone.20 This is another insight into the extent of the international cultural domination of the countries of origin of the world languages. Linguistic, cultural and economic issues cannot usefully be separated in discussing this topic, as they continually re-enforce the fact of the historical dominance of European and American publishers over the world book trade. UNESCO’s attempt to redress the balance in the 1980s, through its New World Information Order, was perhaps doomed to failure; it certainly failed. The reasons were partly political, as the then US administration found NWIO to be a useful peg on which to hang the reasons for withdrawing from an organization which it distrusted and disliked. Even without this factor, however, top-down direction could not reverse the dominance of two or three European languages and the fact that the infrastructure of publishing and the other information and communication industries was better established in a small number of developed countries.21 Nowhere is this problem more acute than in sub-Saharan Africa, where ever since independence governments have tried to encourage the development of publishing industries and the use of indigenous languages as an important element in the assertion of self-identity.22

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Even in Europe, the growth of national cultural consciousness among minorities in existing nation states can promote developments in the publishing industry, as happened in Scotland in the 1990s.23 In sub-Saharan Africa, however, book trade infrastructures are typically weak, and literacy levels are still low. The usual policy has been first to encourage and then to require that primary education is conducted in indigenous languages, and to build a school textbook industry on this basis. The problem is that for secondary education, learning English is essential (especially for those who do not come from bilingual homes) if students are to make progress in careers in business or the professions. At tertiary level, English typically remains the language of learning and teaching. Even advocates and supporters of the development of indigenous language publishing recognize the fundamental problem: there are many languages for which the market is very small, and the infrastructure underdeveloped.24 The widespread use of Swahili in east Africa has created something of an international trade in books within the region, but sales and distribution are a problem even when there are no political obstacles. Indeed, the development of a book trade between African countries has been largely the result of support from external agencies.25 Only in countries like India and Indonesia with huge populations, reasonably effective education systems and partly industrialized economies have there been real successes, and even those two remain net importers of books.26 Distribution for export remains a problem outside Europe and the USA even for wholly developed countries like Singapore.27 The fact is that the world book industry assumes a flow from north to south and from 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 of the British and American publishing industries, is clear from the analysis in the previous section. We shall now take a more detailed look at both of them so far as the data permits. Table 2.3 shows a simplified version of the 10-year trend of production in both countries.28 To put this in an international context, 24 485 books were published in France in 1999, and 80 779 in Germany.29

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

UK Titles

US Titles

1989 1994 1999

61 195 88 714 110 155

125 209 139 250 100 405

(Source: see note 28)

These data suggest that during the 1990s there was a significant growth of publishing in Britain, both in absolute terms and in relation to the growth of the industry in the United States. Certainly we shall find further evidence that the 1990s was a good time for British publishing and indeed for the British book trade in general, largely because of a significant restructuring of the domestic retail trade.30 Between 1998 and 1999, the number of titles published in the UK increased by 5.7 per cent.31 Perhaps an even more telling statistic is that in the same year there was an increase in the value of publishers’ sales by 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 per cent greater than it had been at the beginning.33 In 1999, UK publishers sold 825 million books, which generated a total income of £3176 million.34 Comparable data for the USA confirm that the American publishing industry was also going through a period of growth. There was a 6.3 per cent growth in total sales between 1998 and 1999; the total value of retail sales in 1999 was US$24 480 600 000.35 A significant proportion of books published and produced in both countries is sold for export. In 1999, each exported books of approximately the same value, with the UK reporting book exports to the value of US$1814 million, while from the USA there were sales worth US$1846 million.36 A more detailed analysis of British book exports is also instructive.37 By far the largest export market for British books is the United States (worth £202 million); the next largest is Australia (£76 million), followed by Germany (£68 million), Ireland (£66 million), and the Netherlands (£64 million). In Table 2.4, this data has been presented by continent to give a general overview of the destinations of British book exports to the 71 countries which imported items to a total value of more than £100 million, that is about 80 per cent of the total trade.

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Table 2.4 Destinations of British book exports 1999 Continent Africa North America South America Asia Europe Oceania

UK Book exports 1999 (£ m) 65 239 23 168 541 89

(Source: see note 37)

Of the top 20 destinations, eight are countries in which English is either 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 from Table 2.4 is the huge importance of the European market to the British publishing industry, taking over twice the value of British books as does North America, despite the predominance of the use of English in both the United States and Canada. Almost all of the books exported from the UK are in English; this is a measure of the English-language market in the rest of Europe, where English has no official status in any country.38 Moreover, the bulk of this market is in western Europe, which took British books worth some £492 million in 1999.39 The former Soviet Union and eastern Europe accounted for only £36 million, reflecting the continuing difficulties of doing business in a region where the 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 (and dollar) industry, and which take the English language and British and American books in English all over the world? We shall examine this question more closely in Chapter Three, but it is useful at this stage to consider some of the statistical data. It is not possible – and perhaps would not be very useful if it were possible – to compare directly the statistics from the American and British book trades. Each country’s publishing industry has its own statistical data collected in a way which provides valuable management information in the industry. We

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shall begin with the United States (Table 2.5). One suggestion which can be derived from these data is the importance of the market for professional books, and of the educational market (both school and university) for the industry as a whole. Equally notable, and perhaps encouraging, is the growth in sales of books for juveniles (books for children and young adults in British parlance), although this has to be set 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 of the trade as whole from 1992 to 2000 was 5.2 per cent, with some indication 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 titles published. (Table 2.6). While direct comparison is not possible, we can see that in Britain, as in the United States, professional and specialist books of various kinds are critically important to the industry. Published British data on book sales do not, unfortunately, allow the same degree of detailed analysis as is possible for the American publishing industry. The only publicly accessible source divides sales into three categories, each further divided into home sales (by retail value) and exports (by invoiced price). These are brought together in Table 2.7, in an attempt to offers some sort of broad picture of the British trade from this perspective. A number of factors must be considered in interpreting the data. Table 2.5 US book publishing by category 2000 Category Adult hardback Adult paperback Juvenile hardback Juvenile paperback Religious Professional Mass market paperbacks University presses ELHI (school books) Higher education books (Source: see note 35)

Sales in US $ m

% Change 1999–2000

2686 1901 1202 753 1247 5130 1559 402 3881 3237

–11.6 –7.2 13.2 16.4 2.5 8.7 0.5 –2.4 13.3 3.5

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Table 2.6 British publishing by category 1999 Category

Titles published 1999

Fiction School books Children’s books Scientific, technical and medical books Academic and professional books Non-fiction

9730 3963 9043 19 569 35 445 30 994

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

The categories which are used, although they are common in the trade, and rather less precise than those used as the basis of Table 2.6, and only very general comparisons are therefore possible. But despite all 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 of exports; school and English-language teaching books are critical to export success.

We can take this no further at this point, although we shall return to the various categories in due course for a more detailed analysis.43 Table 2.7 British publishing by value of sales 1999 Category

Home sales (retail value in £)

Exports (invoiced value in £)

2165

277

239 766 3170

266 329 872

Consumer School books and Englishlanguage teaching books Academic and professional TOTALS (Sources: Fishwick, Tables B1, D1, D2, D3.)

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Publishing companies The modern publishing industry developed in the nineteenth century out of a craft tradition of book production.44 The separation of printing from the other activities in the trade, and the later growth of a distinction between bookselling and publishing, created a structure in which a supply chain was controlled by the publisher who provided the essential capital to support the process. Until well into the twentieth century, however, this was largely a trade of small businesses. 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 controlled by a single individual whose own tastes and interests were reflected in the output, or list, of books which they published. Capital came from within the family. The dependence on an individual or a family meant that they were exposed to all the vicissitudes which that implies: a generation which was not interested, or simply incompetent, could destroy a house, as could the failure to produce an heir, or the unexpected death of the head of the firm. This did not mean that all publishers were gentlemen of exquisite literary taste dedicated to producing ‘good’ books. Of course some were, but there was always a need to make a profit. The problem was not whether publishers did business in a businesslike way; it was whether they could keep a balance between commercial and other factors in determining the direction of their businesses. The history of Penguin Books, one of the great innovative publishing houses of the twentieth century, exemplifies both the strengths and the weaknesses of the traditional customs and practices of the trade. Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin, had a through grounding in the business in a publishing house owned by his uncle, John Lane.45 He set up Penguin to follow thorough his idea that he could produce cheap editions of middlebrow books at a low price and sell them through a multitude of unconventional outlets as well as in bookshops. His idea was, of course, a brilliant success. He effectively created a new branch of the industry. But he had no heir; as he approached retirement age, the company fell into disarray and almost went bankrupt. It was eventually rescued by Longman, a house whose own history could be traced back through a family line to the early eighteenth century, and was about to encounter its own problems.46 Except in Lane’s originality,

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this is not an untypical story. The publishing industry in Britain and the United States in the early 1960s was still recognizably that of a hundred years earlier. Some vestiges still survive. Perhaps the most visible is the continued use of familiar personal names in imprints. To Longman, we can add Macmillan, Butterworth, Routledge and Heinemann in Britain; in the United States we have Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin, Henry Holt and others. None of these is still a free-standing independent house run by the family whose name it carries. Yet the names – the imprints in trade jargon – do carry some weight. It is partly historical, but it is also what the advertising industry calls a brand. For regular bookbuyers, not least for librarians, a particular imprint is suggestive of a certain kind of book, and can even be taken as a sort of prima facie guarantee of 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 to happen in the late 1960s, it was partly because of the business dogmas of the time which argued that only big companies were efficient enough to survive, and partly because of the ambitions of a few rich individuals around the world. The trend accelerated towards the end of the century because technological developments made the dissemination of information in any form, including print, an essentially international business conducted in a de facto international language. The drivers of change were thus both commercial and technological. The combination has proved irresistible. As a result, the publishing industry at the beginning of the twenty-first century is largely embedded in the world of the media, telecommunications and the Internet. This is most easily understood by looking briefly at a few of the world’s major publishing organizations, although it would be impossible to describe most of the companies themselves as ‘publishers’. We shall begin with the familiar name of Macmillan. The firm was founded in 1843 as a bookseller and publisher in Cambridge, and descended through the family (which included Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963) until almost the end of the twentieth century. It had a reputation for mainstream literature, although not without some adventurous authors, and solid non-fiction for both the academic and general markets.48 It had an international profile 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 countries when, at the end of the century, it became part of the German group, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. Holtzbrinck had its origin in Stuttgart in 1948 as one of the many new publishers which re-established German publishing after the end of the Nazi era. It gradually expanded into book clubs and other aspects of the trade in Germany, and began to seek a way into the lucrative English-speaking market. Macmillan was acquired in the mid-1990s as one means of meeting this objective.49 The Holtzbrinck Group now has extensive holdings on both sides of the Atlantic, and is a major force in world publishing. In Germany its imprints include Fischer-Verlag, one of the major general publishing houses, and Kindler-Verlag. It also publishes Die Zeit, one of the most influential of German newspapers which has an international circulation, as well as many German regional newspapers. In the United States, it owns Farrar, Straus and Giroux of New York, a publisher with a prestigious list of literature and children’s books, and Henry Holt, 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 the Macmillan imprint itself, but also through two of Macmillan’s own acquisitions, Pan, a mid-range paperback publisher, and Sidgwick and Jackson, a publisher of literary fiction and some academic non-fiction. Nor is this the end of the story. Holtzbrinck is also heavily involved in publishing business information. It is the publisher of Wall Street Journal Europe, and also of Handelsblatt, the leading German financial newspaper. It is no surprise to find that the company is also publishing online, making use of its databases of commercial information. Finally, in the course of its various acquisitions, it became the owner and publisher of Scientific American, a magazine which spans the gap between the popular and the academic.50 Holtzbrinck can be taken to exemplify the trends in the development of the commercial infrastructure of publishing in the late twentieth century. It is multinational and has a wide range of interests in books, magazines and newspapers. It is moving into electronic distribution of some its high-value products. Yet its name is all but unknown outside financial circles and the higher reaches of the publishing industry itself. A book is published by Henry Holt, or

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Macmillan or Fischer-Verlag; Scientific American and Wall Street Journal Europe still look as they always did on the news-stands. What has changed? Before we attempt an answer, let us look at some other examples. We shall begin this time with an old and respected American imprint, Houghton Mifflin.51 Like Macmillan, the company can trace its history back to the middle of the nineteenth century. In the intervening 150 years it has built a solid reputation for academic books, reference books and above all text books for every level from kindergarten to graduate school. Indeed, Houghton Mifflin books are almost an integral part of the American education system. Since August 2001, Houghton Mifflin has been a part of a company called Vivendi Universal.52 Again, the name may be familiar only to readers of the financial pages of the newspapers, but at least one of the companies within the group is known by hundreds of millions of people across the globe – Universal Studios, one of the great names of Hollywood. Vivendi had its origins as a utility company in France in the nineteenth century, providing, inter alia, piped water to the city of Lyon. In the 1980s, a shrewd management team saw the way of the future, and reoriented the company towards the media and telecommunications industries. It was the creator of Canal+, a highly successful independent French television channel, and moved rapidly into cable and satellite broadcasting. From there it was but a short step into becoming a telecommunications company and an Internet Service Provider. It now has 290 000 employees, and in 2000 generated an income of 3.6 billion, an increase of 5 per cent on the previous year. It is an interesting comment on the profitability of the publishing industry, not least of the textbook market, that such a company should choose to move into it. As we have seen, textbook publishing is indeed one of the most vibrant areas of American publishing.53 Our third example is perhaps more familiar, because its creator is himself a major international celebrity, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch has developed his inherited family business in Australian newspapers into a multinational corporation whose revenue in 2000 was US$14 billion, and whose assets are said to be valued at US$43 billion.54 As News Corporation, the company owns 175 newspapers around the world, and prints altogether some 40 million copies of them every week. The titles range from the top to the bottom of the market, taking in the tabloid 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 the company’s activities. Like Vivendi, News Corporation has a Hollywood presence; in its case, it is Twentieth-Century Fox, another name from a golden age. Fox itself had diversified into television, and through its many specialist channels for children, news services and so on is a major provider to satellite and cable companies, as well as having its own broadcasting operation. And of course among those to whom it provides are other News Corporation giants – BSkyB, the major British satellite broadcaster, and Star, which dominates the Asian satellite television market. All of this is in addition to a wide range of Internet-based activities and various sporting interests, such as control of Australian Rugby League, which are closely related to the sports channels on the company’s satellite television stations. Finally, News Corporation is the owner of Harper Collins. Harper Collins is one of the giants of American publishing. In 1998/99 it had the second largest sales of any US publisher, at US$100 million,55 and it has imprints in Australia and the United Kingdom as well as the United States. Harper Collins itself was a creation of an earlier round of mergers and takeovers when the long established Harper Brothers (one of the oldest of surviving American publishing houses) joined forces with the British Collins imprint (floundering after the death of its flamboyant founder, Billy Collins) to create a company which thought that it could compete around the world from a base on both sides of the Atlantic. But the lure of the corporation was too great, and one of the largest publishing houses in the world is now merely one small part of one of several multinational media companies. For a further example, we will return to Penguin, absorbed into Longman after the death of its founder. But Longman itself suffered a tragedy with the early death of the last member of the family, and became a part of the Pearson Group, a British company with extensive newspaper interests. Pearson’s origin, like Vivendi’s, was far away from the metropolitan sophistication which allegedly characterizes the publishing industry. It began as a small provincial building company in the middle of the nineteenth century, diversified into oil at the turn of the twentieth century, and gradually turned itself into what was essentially 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, including the Financial Times, Britain’s leading financial newspaper, and the

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Westminster Press Group, a dull but profitable group of English regional 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, Pearson Longman, as it had become, began to focus on the educational market, and recognized the profound changes that were taking place. A major restructuring merged the identities of many of its parts; indeed, the historic name of Longman was all but lost in the process. But one Longman tradition – that of educational publishing –was retained, albeit transformed by modern technology. Pearson Education still publishes textbooks but has also been a pioneer of the production of educational software and computer-based learning packages. Over half of its revenue (which was nearly £3.2 million in the first nine months of 2001) comes from Pearson Education. The rest is roughly equally divided between the Financial Times (which now includes overseas operations and Internet based services) and Penguin, the only imprint which has truly retained its identity within the group.

Conglomerates and independents The radical restructuring of the publishing industry has not been achieved without creating its own problems. For many bought up in the industry as it was in the 1960s, its soul has been destroyed. One has written that ‘most publishing houses have become indistinct in their conglomerate settings’.57 Another comments (although with many caveats) that ‘corporate management finds itself incapable of taking the kind of long-term view that literary publishing requires’.58 A distinguished literary agent with many trenchant opinions on the industry, takes the view that ‘in this growing age of bureaucratization in the publishing business, as the adventurous entrepreneur publisher gives way to cautious editorial committees subservient to corporate business administrators, conservatism and negativism have become the prevailing attitudes.’59 Whether or not any or all of this is true (and these and other authors adduce much evidence to support their opinions), it is certainly the case that it is widely perceived to be true. Authors, booksellers, and many in the publishing industry itself, see the multinational conglomerates as money-making machines by which the 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 positive side to it. The conglomerates expect every part of the organization to contribute 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 through which efficiencies can be achieved and money can be saved. Stock control, meaningful accounting, the provision and analysis of information about sales and markets, and systematic tracking of the creation, production and sale of a book may not have been entirely unknown in the old publishing houses, but none was a universal practice. Multinational corporations have to operate first and foremost as businesses. Indeed, in the 1980s, the returns on capital in publishing were exceptionally high, and it has been argued that it was precisely this which attracted the attention of the multinationals in the first place.60 They developed their own modus operandi, which was indeed different from that of the old family firms and their immediate successors, but which generated revenues and allowed books to be published. Complaints from authors, agents and editors were common as publishing houses began to merge in the 1970s. In the 1990s, they became more strident. Indeed, there is little doubt that the growth of the cross-media corporations, with interests ranging from electronic publishing to children’s comics, have created a new and harsher business 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 cherished their authors and, at least in their own mythology, had nursed unknown writers from the near-failure of first books to literary triumphs and resplendent royalties 10 years down the road.62 The long-established belief in and around the trade that ‘books are different’ was challenged by the very nature of the conglomerates. As one media product among many, and originating from small divisions of multinational conglomerates, books are losing the position of cultural privilege which they have occupied for centuries.63 Even in the trade itself, a survey in 1995 revealed that some booksellers considered that 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 despite the attempt to retain historic names and the individuality which they implied. It is argued that standards, not least of editing and

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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 as small businesses and run within the family or by a small group of coworkers – is still to be found. Indeed independent publishing outside the conglomerates appears to be flourishing. Perhaps one of the differences is that during the 1980s and 1990s many experienced people left their employers, now part of a conglomerate, and became small independent publishers in mid- or late career rather than at the beginning. One who did that, having worked for a number of major imprints, has written that despite all the problems (largely financial) of an independent publisher, he ‘wouldn’t swap it for the world’.65 Independent publishers can operate successfully in niche markets. New technologies have made this easier than ever before. Desktop publishing systems, which require little more investment (or skill) than a personal computer, offer an economically feasible means of production.66 Finding shelf-space in major bookshops may be a problem for the independents, but the World Wide Web offers a means of marketing and selling books which does not require an expensive marketing infrastructure.67 The independents can continue to nurture new novelists and poets, and provide an outlet for social and political dissent, as they always have. Independent publishing houses, outside the conglomerates, seem likely to remain an important part of the publishing industry in Europe and North America. They represent the continuing cultural importance of print publishing, and should not be seen as operating on the fringes. There are also, as we shall see in Chapter Three, some mainstream areas of publishing in which independents have a critical role 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 seriously consider. Even in literary publishing, quite apart from the fact that many imprints in the conglomerates publish literary fiction, there are some sizeable independent houses, perhaps most notably the British company Faber and Faber, which continue to publish high quality work through conventional commercial channels. The difference 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 twentyfirst century. But the conglomerates and the independents are finding a mutual modus vivendi which can bring benefits to both. The conglomerates may dominate a global industry, but the independents make a significant contribution to its overall success. For general trade publishing, both fiction and non-fiction, both creativity and entrepreneurship are essential. Both can sometimes be achieved within a conglomerate, but the independents offer a vital outlet for both and will continue to do so.68

The legal framework of publishing A global industry, such as publishing has become, can only operate effectively if it can be reasonably certain that it can do business in a stable environment. Publishing is, of course, as exposed to social, economic and political instability as any other international trade, but it is perhaps exceptionally exposed because of the nature of its product, and the political and indeed emotional arguments which can rage around it. As we have seen, publishing has been an international business since the very beginning of an organized book trade in western Europe.69 By the middle of the nineteenth century, the international trade was sufficiently well developed to need some form of international regulation, but this took a long time to develop. The underlying problem was, and is, easily stated. When a publisher pays an author for a new book, what is actually acquired is the right to publish it. In a rudimentary way, this was recognized as early as the sixteenth century. The principle was embodied in statute law in Britain in 1709, and in the laws of most European countries by the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Essentially, these early copyright laws, although they differed a little between countries, recognized the fundamental fact that the author owned what he or she had created, and therefore had the right to sell it or lease it. The purchaser, usually a 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, the principle was simple, but a complication was introduced by the fact that in almost all jurisdictions, the rights which were acquired were for a limited period of time only. They then reverted to the author, or

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perhaps to his or her legatee or estate, or ceased to exist altogether, so that anyone could exploit them. In modern copyright law, normal practice is that copyright passes into public domain 50 or (in the European Union) 70 years after the death of the author.70 The real difficulties arose when the book attracted a market outside the jurisdiction in which it was published. This could, of course, be satisfied by exporting copies of the book to other countries. Once that had happened, however, there was nothing to prevent a publisher in that country from reprinting the book without any acknowledgement or payment to the original publisher or author. Such a reprint might be protected by the copyright law in the country in which it was produced, but there was no redress for the author or first publisher. It was to address this situation that an international law of copyright was developed during the nineteenth century.71 The first stage was the negotiation of bilateral treaties between European states, the first being that between the United Kingdom and Prussia in 1846. The effect of these treaties, with minor variations of detail, was to give copyright owners the same protection in the foreign country as they had in their own. A Prussian author was protected by British copyright law in the United Kingdom, and a British author under Prussian law in that country. The principle of reciprocity established by these midnineteenth century copyright treaties remains as the basic principle of international copyright law today. In 1886, a group of 10 countries, including the United Kingdom, jointly developed the Berne Convention, which was in effect a multilateral treaty which embodied the reciprocity principle. Gradually, other countries joined, although it was not until 1891 that foreign authors were given some protection under the laws of the United States. Indeed, unauthorized reprinting of foreign (and especially British) books in the United States was endemic for most of the nineteenth century, and a major cause of contention. During the twentieth century, the Berne Convention, modified from time to time to take account of new developments, was signed by virtually every country in the world, so that copyright protection became as global as the book trade itself. Only the United States stood out, and even that country eventually acceded to a similar UNESCO document, the Universal Copyright Convention, approved in 1956.72 Full copyright protection in virtually every country in the world has now 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 book knowing that the work cannot legally be reproduced in any country which is a signatory to either the Berne Convention or the UCC without consent and payment. One difficulty arises from the fact that there is still a handful of countries which are not signatories to either. China did not sign them until 1992, and some of the successor states of the Soviet Union still have not done so. Other countries have only limited legislation; Indonesia, for example, has bilateral treaties with the United Kingdom and the United States, but is not a signatory of either convention.73 Dealing in subsidiary rights which derive from the basic principles of copyright protection has become a significant area of activity in the publishing industry. Custom and practice have developed in the trade under the umbrella of domestic laws, bilateral agreements and the international conventions. In broad terms, the trade recognizes: • • • •

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

Territorial and language rights are essentially self-explanatory. A publisher may choose to sell the edition worldwide, or may decide to license it to a publisher in another country for sale in that country or elsewhere. It is still, for example, a common practice for a British publisher to license a book to an American publisher to produce an edition for sale in the USA and Canada only, but not in the rest of the world. Language rights relate to translations; thus the publisher of an English book may license rights to publishers in, say, France, Russia and Japan, for translations in French, Russian and Japanese respectively. Usually, territorial and language rights intersect, so that the French translation rights will be for worldwide sales, and so on.74 Format rights is a term used here to denote the right to publish the work in a format other than its original. The most common is a paperback reprint, for which the rights may be licensed to another publisher by the publisher of the original hardback edition. Again, this may intersect with territorial rights, although there are various possible combinations of packages; thus the hardback and paperback rights in an American book may be sold to different British publishers for the

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UK editions. Increasingly, format rights are also being considered in relation to electronic versions of books also published (either simultaneously or previously) in printed form. Other format rights include the right to publish the work in serial form in a magazine or newspaper, or to publish some sort of digest of it, or to include some or all of it in an anthology or collection, or even to quote extensively from it.75 It is among the other rights that we find some of the least common but most lucrative ways in which authors and publishers can exploit their property. These include the right to make a movie or video of a book, the right to serialize it on television, the right to serialize or read it on the radio, and the right to read it at a public performance or to record a reading of it for sale and distribution.76 Copyright law, and the dealings in rights which have developed around it, have become important to both publishers and authors.77 There are now, however, some serious challenges to the stable and well-established regime which publishers have come to enjoy in the last 40 years. The first of these is from the development of new technologies. This has always been a problem. Copyright law has always lagged behind the development of technology, and it probably always will. Networked computing, however, offers graver challenges than earlier technologies. They made reproduction easy; the Internet facilitates ease of transmission and distribution as well. Electronic pirates, unlike their print publishing predecessors, do not need to find wholesalers or bookshops or develop any kind of formal infrastructure. All they need is a Website, and it is virtually impossible to control them. Publishers cannot afford to underestimate the potential of this problem. There is a lesson to be learned here from the music industry, which came close to meltdown following the development of the Napster software which allowed virtually unlimited copying and distribution of music on the Internet. The problem was resolved only when the industry reached a compromise agreement with the teenage student who had developed the system.78 The publishing industry is in less danger than the music industry only to the extent that its product is attractive to fewer people. The second great issue, related to the first, is that the copying of certain kinds of material for educational purposes is arguably getting out of hand. Since 1911 in the United Kingdom, and 1976 in the United States, the law has allowed what it calls ‘fair dealing’ for educational purposes.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, in the case of a periodical, the number of articles permitted from any one issue. The publishers have never been entirely happy with these provisions, and have long suspected that they are abused despite the best efforts of most librarians to enforce them. A number of factors have exacerbated the situation in recent years. The demand for photocopies of articles in scholarly journals has soared because the increased price of the journals themselves has forced many libraries to cancel subscriptions.80 This has reduced sales and forced up prices even further, resulting in further loss of sales. Overgenerous interpretations of the law, and some abuse of the rules, may create a danger of destabilising the fair dealing system for articles from scholarly journals which is by far its largest application, although some analysts deny this.81 The issue remains unresolved at a time when electronic document delivery systems, and the development of electronic journals, are creating other problems 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 being destroyed. There are those who challenge the very concept, as being inimical to the free exchange of information, the enhancement of knowledge, and the personal educational development of individuals. The latter point, in particular, has been, and still is a matter of political contention. As long ago as 1971, the Berne Convention and the UCC were revised, at the request of many developing countries, to allow publishers in such countries the right to translate or reprint books which were educationally essential, even if they were unable to make contact with the copyright owners. The revisions are known as the Paris Amendments, taking their name from the city in which the negotiations were conducted. In effect, the Paris Amendments are a compulsory licensing scheme, for if the copyright owner could be traced, and if the educational necessity of the book could be demonstrated, it was compulsory to grant a licence for reprinting or translation.83 The social logic of this was that developing countries could not afford the high prices necessarily charged by western publishers. The economic logic is that a modest income from a compulsory 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

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argument which is perhaps not yet fully accepted by all publishers in the industrialized world, although the scheme is operational. It was also argued that the Paris Amendments would help to eliminate the problem of piracy. In general, pirated editions were not produced in the world’s poorest countries, because piracy was inhibited by exactly the same factors which were inhibiting the development of a legitimate publishing industry. There was a lack of skill, lack of capital, and so on. Piracy was in fact a well-organized business, largely based in certain Asian countries, notably Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Thailand and South Korea. Thence the pirated books were exported to poorer countries in Asia and, in particular, to Anglophone Africa. It is true that this trade has been significantly reduced, although it has not been entirely eradicated. Whether this is really because of the effect of the Paris Amendments, or because of the more rigid enforcement of domestic legislation (which in some countries, notably Singapore, is indeed draconian) is unclear. But the fact remains that there is a more orderly regime in place to facilitate the transfer of Western textbooks to poor developing countries.84 It is indeed the orderliness of the regime which is a matter of such great concern to the global publishing industry. Whether the threat comes from Third World pirates, advocates of unfettered freedom of information, underfunded libraries, or students with a taste for developing subversive software, it remains a threat. There will undoubtedly be further changes – perhaps radical – in the law of copyright and its international applications in the future, and perhaps in the near future. The pace of technological change means that the gap between it and the 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 modern Europe has become a multimillion dollar global industry. It is embedded in some of the richest and most powerful corporate entities which have ever been created. It is a cause of political contention, and the subject of international treaties. And yet at the other end of the scale, it is still pursued by dedicated individuals who make a modest living from producing books which they believe to deserve a wider

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audience. The industry has products which appeal to the student, the businessman, the scholar and the leisure seeker. It is highly competitive, not only with other industries, but within itself as firms seek to give themselves advantageous positions in the market. And in the last decade, it has found itself as part of a larger complex of communication and information industries which have converged around the new and revolutionary presence of the Internet. Despite all this, at its heart, the publishing industry is still about producing books, magazines and newspapers which enough people want to read to make it profitable to produce them. We have tried to quantify what it produces, but this is only a starting point for the real analysis. In the following chapters we shall turn to the core issues: what books are produced, who is involved, what they do, and how books are delivered to their readers.

Notes and references 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.htm 6 The latest data underlying this Table is from 1996. All the data is aggregated from the UNESCO Yearbook (see note 5 above), except that for North America (USA) which is from John Sumsion, Claire Creaser and Catherine 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.

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11 Again, we must remind ourselves to be cautious with the data; this is a suspiciously round figure from a notoriously secretive country. 12 See Nadia A. Rizk and John Rodenbeck, ‘Egypt’, in: Altbach and Hoshino, 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 English language in scientific publishing’, PRQ, 13:1, 1997, pp. 52–72. See also above, 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 of the 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 a useful basic guide to all languages. 20 See Jonathan Self, ‘The success of Indian writers in English raises a question: what about books in Indian languages?’, Logos, 9:3, 1998, pp. 162–9. 21 See Paula Youngman Skrelset, ‘A newer world information order: reaching for 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 Western observers of publishing in developing countries: Philip G. Altbach, ‘Publishing in national languages: what Africa could learn from other continents’, 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’s deficit balance of trade in books in 1996 was US$10 776 000, and Indonesia’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 and Information 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 the UK and US data are not strictly comparable. The UK figure (which is equivalent to approximately US$4 548 500 000 at October 2001 exchange rates) is of the value of publishers’ sales from their warehouses. The US data is the value of retail sales, and includes some categories (such as book club sales and some audio-visual materials) which are not in the UK figures. 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 been rounded up or down to the nearest million. 38 Although it is, of course, one of the official languages of the European Union. 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, but the statistics quoted in this Chapter show that there is still a huge gap between the former USSR and its former satellites and the rest of the continent. In 1999, Poland was the UK’s twenty-second most important customer 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

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62

63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

See the company’s Website at www.holtzbrinck.com On this point, see below, p. 70. See www.houghtonmifflin.com; and Tebbel, pp. 117–24. See www.vivendiuniversal.com See above, p. 38 and Table 2.5. Data from the company’s Website at www.newscorp.com Creaser et al., p. 194 (Table 6.9b). See www.pearson.com Epstein p. 18. Ian Paten, ‘Literary publishing within a conglomerate’, in Peter Owen, ed. Publishing Now, London: Peter Owen, revised ed., 1996, pp. 21–2. Richard Curtis, This Business of Publishing: An insider’s view of current trends and tactics, New York: Allworth Press, 1998, p. 12. See Giles de la Mare, ‘Publishing: time present and time future’, in Owen, 1996, pp. 14–15. 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. For a classic, if typically extreme, expression of the traditional publisher’s perspective on this, see Stanley Unwin, The Truth about Publishing, London: George Allen & Unwin, 8th ed., revised by Philip Unwin, 1976, pp. 15–19. See Ian Willison, ‘’Massmediaisation’ of the trade book: an American export?’, Logos, 11:3, 2000, pp. 139–43. 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. Richard Cohen, ‘Conglomerates versus small independents’, in: Owen, 1996, p. 47. See below, pp. 163–64. See below, p. 180. For a similar line of argument, see Eric de Bellaigue, ‘Conglomerates and the book business: what next?’, Logos, 8:3, 1997, pp. 127–34. Se above, pp. 11–12. For a general history, see Feather, Publishing and Lynette Owen, Selling Rights, London: Blueprint, 2nd ed., 1994, pp. 1–11. For a full, and fully documented, account of all of this, see Feather, Publishing, pp. 149–72. American refusal to accede to Berne, and its long-delayed development of any form of international copyright law, was a consequence of an attempt to protect the domestic printing and publishing industry against imports of foreign books. The details need not detain us here.

58 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84

Publishing in the Global Economy Owen, pp. 113, 118–19. For detailed accounts, see ibid., pp. 68–90, 137–65. Ibid., pp. 102–09, 208–28, 128–34, 166–73. Ibid., pp. 175–79. For the authors’ perspective, see below, pp. 112–16. See Barry Mahon, ‘The intellectual property industries and the new tech world’, BIR, 17:4, 2000, pp. 185–90. Owen, pp. 166–8. For this point, see below, pp. 172–73. See Harold Orlans, ‘Fair use in US scholarly publishing’, LP, 12:4, 1999, pp. 235–44; and Colin Day, ‘The economics of publishing: the consequences of library and research copying’, JASIS, 50:14, 1999, pp. 1346–9. D. G. Law, R. L. Weedon and M. R. Sheen, ‘Universities and article copyright’, LP, 13:3, 2000, pp. 141–50. Owen, pp. 7–8, 110–13, 156–7. See Philip G. Altbach, ‘Publishing in the Third World: issues and trends for the 21st century’, in: Altbach, Publishing and Development, pp. 7–8.

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CHAPTER THREE

Forms of Publishing

Introduction The publishing industry is a significant constituent of the global economy. It is part of the ever increasing knowledge-based element in economic activity. It handles intellectual property whose value runs into hundreds of millions of dollars. It also, however, has physical products. Indeed, the real value of an intellectual property lies essentially in the fact that it can be transformed into a piece of merchandise, whether that is a medicine, a movie or a magazine. Intellectual property, and particularly copyright, lies at the heart of the stability and profitability of the publishing industry. The law protects the commercial interests of publishers and creators alike, and provides an international environment in which they can publish books with a degree of certainty that the markets for any particular title will be protected, while at the same time there is a highly competitive market between titles. A publishing house can only continue in business if it continues to acquire new titles, and invests in their publication.1 Copyright law protects that investment, and allows the publishing house to develop a ‘backlist’ of titles which sell beyond their first edition, and which become 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 in the numbers of copies printed and sold. Moreover, even among books,

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there are many different kinds, aimed at different markets, and often produced and sold in very different ways. Although we can develop a paradigm of the publishing process,3 it is important to do so against a background of understanding of the diversity of the industry and the range of its products. In this Chapter, we shall examine three aspects of the diversity of the 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 is commonly understood to mean the commercial publishing of printed matter, with books as the exemplary format.4 Taking that as our starting point, we shall examine what these books are, and how they resemble and differ from each other. We can adopt various forms of distinction. 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 by language, by country of origin, by size, or by whether or not the book is illustrated. All of these distinctions are real and meaningful, although they are in some ways rather different from each other. We shall begin by looking at the variety of books in terms of their subject matter and contents, which is, after all, the main concern of the reader. The distinction between fiction and non-fiction is one which is recognized by publishers, librarians, and readers alike, even though there is some blurring of the lines at the outer edges.5 Fiction remains one of the largest single categories of published material. In the United Kingdom 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 children’s books published in the same year.7 Of course, this is not a homogeneous group of books. Some of these titles were written by well-established authors with a ready-made market. The size of such markets is itself enormously variable. For a handful of books it went

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into tens of thousands even in hardback, and hundreds of thousands in paperback. For others it might be no more than a few hundred. The distinction made in the trade is between ‘popular’ and ‘literary’ fiction, but it is important to understand what this really means. It is only in part a statement of print runs and sales figures; it is also a statement about the nature of the book itself. Literary fiction is understood to be more complex and to have a more serious purpose. It may even be a commercial success, but the author and the publisher are also seeking critical acclaim, through reviews (especially in certain newspapers) and through the enhancement of the author’s reputation. Popular fiction, sometimes called trade fiction,8 on the other hand, is aimed at a mass market, and seeks no such acclaim. It aspires to amuse and to entertain, and to make a profit. The regularly published lists of bestselling books give us some insight into this. If we take the week immediately before Christmas 2000, which is the annual climax of consumer book buying in Britain, the 15 top-selling fiction authors in the United Kingdom were almost all well-established popular novelists with long histories of previous bestsellers behind them. The books included fantasy (Terry Pratchett, at the top of the list); thrillers (Patricia Cornwell, Dick Francis); espionage, war and similar stories (John Le Carré; Andy McNab; Tom Clancy); romance (Maeve Binchy; Margaret Atwood) and historical fiction (Catherine Cookson).9 Yet literary fiction in Britain has a recent history of commercial success, all the more welcome to the trade for being unexpected.10 Fiction, whether for adults or children, is only one part of the book publishing industry. A much greater number of non-fiction titles is published every year; in 1999, there were some 99 000 in the United Kingdom.11 These can be further divided by their subject matter. How this is done depends on the purpose and origin of the classification system. Librarians have developed schemes which break down into small and very precise categories. Publishers, however, use broader and less specific divisions than the formal classification schemes. Inevitably, these reflect the commercial potential of books, and are themselves reflected in the organization of bookshops. In analysing non-fiction publishing, it is also helpful to try to develop an equivalent to the distinction between ‘popular’ and ‘literary’ which we used when considering fiction. There are some established categorizations which help us in this, although they are not precise definitions.12

62 Forms of Publishing Academic books are generally understood to mean those intended for use in colleges and universities by both students and teachers. Within this, however, there are subcategories. The longest print runs and the highest profits are for textbooks, that is books which are used by students as the basis of their learning in a particular subject. In some cases they are required reading, and indeed students may be expected to buy them. In any case, they are in great demand, and are bought in quantity by institutional libraries. In many subjects, especially in science and social science, they will need to be regularly updated to keep up with developments in the subject or with external change. Textbook publishing is inevitably closely linked with the education system. Changes in curricula, or changes in styles of learning and teaching, create the need for new books, and can decimate the market for an established favourite. In Britain, the radical changes in education in the last 15 years have led to the publishing of completely new school 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 these is 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 traditionally been a happy stamping ground for textbook publishers. When tertiary education 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 textbooks was effectively in the hands of eight companies.15 In Britain, the 1990s saw a similar boom in the textbook market.16 Textbooks stand at the student end of the academic range; at the other, research monographs are the opposite in almost every respect. Such books contain the results of the author’s original research; they are, essentially, written by academics for each other, and are unlikely to be read by anyone else. Print runs are small, and prices are correspondingly high.17 The market for such books is to be found almost entirely in academic and specialist libraries, although a few copies may be bought by individual academics. Between the textbooks on the one hand and the specialized monograph on the other, there is a complete spectrum of academic books. Indeed, in some subjects, such as law and medicine, students typically work with the books which they will continue to use throughout their

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careers. A category which is widely used in the book trade in both Britain and the United States to describe some of these books is that of Science Technology and Medicine, or STM. Although it seems selfexplanatory, it is commonly understood to mean the books used by the professionals and trainee professionals in these fields as opposed to introductory student textbooks or academic research monographs. Such books are regularly updated and carry great authority. Some of the standard works are even known by the names of their long dead original authors, few if any of whose words survive into the current edition. One of the most spectacular examples is the book still known as Gray’s Anatomy, which has been familiar to medical students and practitioners for more than a century.18 STM books tend to be the products of specialist publishers with close links to the professions which the books serve, as well as to the universities in which new entrants are taught. Journals are an important part of STM publishing, since it is through scholarly journals that scientists typically publish their research results. As we shall see, scientific journals are in the forefront of electronic developments, which in turn means that the future direction of STM publishing is surrounded by uncertainty.19 More broadly, STM is a part of the growing category of professional books, 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 first of 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. They are of little or no interest to the general reader, and will only be found in those bookshops which cater to a specialist audience. Professional publishing is a generally successful sector, and despite the growth of electronic formats, it continues to flourish.20 Set against all of these we have what are usually called trade books or general trade non-fiction, known in the United States as consumer books. The distinctions are not entirely clear cut. In some subjects, trade books are used for educational purposes, and books written for educational purposes have a wider market. In Britain, this is most obviously true in history and biography, where books by academic historians reach out to a wider audience as well as to the historical profession.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. Instant book making became a common characteristic of British and American publishing in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Much of it is about external events or to celebrities both real and fictional.22 Some of it is connected to television series or to trends which have been created by television.23 It should not be assumed, however, that all television ‘tie-ins’, as they are known in the trade, are trivial or temporary. 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 became important in the late 1960s, and their successors continue to be found in the bestseller lists in the twenty-first century.24 Even radio serializations or adaptations of books, both classic and contemporary, can still have an impact on sales.25 In addition to these media related tie-ins, a great deal of general trade publishing is built around the popularity of other activities such as sport or popular music, with ghosted autobiographies of stars in both fields often reaching bestseller lists. Both academic and trade books cover a wide range of subject matter. The distinction between them is fundamentally that of their intended readership and hence their market. In practice, this leads to different mechanisms of authorship, promotion and marketing, and even of physical format. These distinctions are reflected in bookshops. Branches of chain bookstores carry a stock which essentially consists of general trade books, both fiction and non-fiction. STM and professional books are found in some general bookshops in larger towns and cities where there is a market for them. Textbooks and academic books, however, are typically sold in shops which specialize in serving the academic market, usually to be found on or very near a college or university campus. One way of identifying general trade non-fiction is to look at what is displayed prominently in a general bookshop, or, a little more systematically, to consider the bestseller lists which are published regularly in both the trade press and the newspapers.26 There is, however, some stock which is common to almost all bookshops. This is particularly true of the very important category of reference books.27 This is, of course, a blanket term. It traditionally includes dictionaries, encyclopaedias and atlases, as well as some annuals. There are indeed few bookshops which do not carry a few of each of these. While reference books are among the most common

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currency of the retail book trade, reference book publishing is highly specialized. An authoritative reference book may be many years in the making and involve a team of scores of specialists.28 The rewards can, however, be very large. Some of the bestselling books of all time are reference books, although they rarely appear in the published lists of bestsellers. English language dictionaries, especially those intended for non-native speakers, are particularly competitive and lucrative, to the benefit of several British publishing houses.29 There was a proliferation of reference books in the second half of the twentieth 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 to zoology. At a more specialized level, there are bibliographies, abstracts and citation indexes. At the opposite end of the spectrum there are annual directories of sports, guides to popular movies and books which list the best hotels and restaurants. Although some of this is primarily for the library market, much is aimed at the student or the general public, and indeed some of the popular annuals regularly feature in the bestseller lists.30 Reference book publishing has been in the forefront of change in the industry in the last decade. As we shall see, it was in the reference field that the electronic alternatives to print first became established in book publishing. It is now widely accepted that in the long term major works of reference will be electronic, and that print-on-paper will not be a viable economic alternative.31 Almost all reference books need revisions or additions eventually; where these are both substantial and regular, electronic publication is rapidly becoming the norm. A particularly forceful example is that of Walford’s Guide to Reference Materials, one of the flagship publications of the [UK] Library Association. As its title suggests, it is itself a guide to the field of reference books. In future, it will be published electronically, and can thus be kept more current than was ever possible in the past.32 A more generally familiar example is perhaps that of Grove’s Dictionary of Music, which began publication in 1877; a much heralded revised edition was published in 1980 but libraries can now access the latest version online, which seems likely to be the way of the future.33 Children’s books are a distinctive part of the trade. Many of them are produced by publishers who specialize in them, or by imprints in conglomerates which are dedicated to them, such as Penguin’s Puffin

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Books. Books for children differ greatly among themselves, not least in the age-range at which they are aimed. This varies from simple books for those learning to read to complex fiction intended for teenagers. At the younger end, a good children’s book is wellillustrated, colourful, written in simple language and printed in large type. Beyond that, however, the same rules apply as apply to adult books: fiction must have an engaging story and be about interesting people; non-fiction must be accurate, well-presented and have some intellectual content. The trade attaches great importance to children’s books, 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 the trade, children’s publishing has flourished since the 1980s. In that decade, it bucked the general trend of slow or declining sales, and in the 1990s it has shared to the full in the success of British retail bookselling. In the United States, as we have seen, it was among the few bright 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 suffered badly in the 1980s, although in Britain is has recovered since 1997, and in the United States parental purchasing seems to have been an effective counterbalance to the decline of library spending in the 1990s.35 As in all areas of publishing, there has been a growing emphasis on corporate issues, not least on the need to make substantial profits, and on tie-ins with other media. To some extent, however, at least in the United States, the success of publishing for children seems to be particularly beneficial to smaller and independent publishers. The top 15 per cent of American publishers showed a decline of some 8 per cent in children’s book sales in 1996 against an growth of 11 per cent in the sector as a whole.36 It seems possible that the larger houses have been less able to react quickly to rapidly changing tastes, and not least to the need to make a shift towards multimedia products which are particularly attractive in this market.37 Encouraging children to make the transition from being given books to buying them is crucial for the trade. In the last 30 years or so, a distinctive market has developed for what the trade now calls young adult books, that is titles (especially fiction) designed to appeal to a teenage market. They deal with serious and relevant themes, among which drugs and sex are probably the most prominent, and are written

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and illustrated in a style which is consciously contemporary.38 In nonfiction, the move to project-based work and student-centred learning at a comparatively early age has also created a market for well-written and appropriate books which fall somewhere between the traditional textbook and the book aimed at the school library. Publishers have made mistakes in trying to develop the young adult genre,39 and there is continuing evidence of both a decline in reading among teenagers and an emphasis on quantity rather than quality in publishing for them.40 Even so, the young adult sector continues to attract publishers as 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-covered books have a history of at least 200 years, the modern paperback is generally reckoned to date from the foundation of Penguin Books in 1936. The truly innovative aspect of Penguins was actually not their physical form, nor even their low price, but the fact that they were sold in many outlets other than bookshops.41 The immediate success of Penguins led to many imitations on both sides of the Atlantic. By the mid-1950s, the modern mass market paperback was well established, although it was still essentially used for reprints of books previously published in hardback. The typical sequence of events was that a book was published in hardback, then reprinted in paperback some six to 12 months later when the hardback had been reviewed and the edition more or less sold out. This has gradually changed. By the 1980s, many publishers saw hardback fiction as little more than a trial run for the paperback; hardbacks were more likely to be reviewed in the prestigious newspapers, and would therefore draw attention to the title. But it was assumed that hardback sales would be almost entirely to libraries, and that sales to the general public would be of the paperback a few months later. The interval between hardback and paperback gradually diminished. Despite a revival in sales of hardback fiction in the UK in the 1990s, the paperback is now the normal medium for fiction publishing throughout 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 of paperback novels, partly because they are cheap (and can therefore be replaced at comparatively short intervals) and partly because they are seen as less formal and hence more attractive to readers. In the

68 Forms of Publishing United States, the total sales of adult, juvenile and mass market paperbacks in 2000 were worth US$4213 million; adult and juvenile hardbacks stood at US$3888 million.42 Comparable data for the United Kingdom is not readily available, but in 1999 sales of the top 100 bestselling paperbacks had a total retail value of £1376 million.43 Books are not the only products of the publishing industry. The most commercially important of the others are magazines and newspapers. Their common characteristic is that they are published at regular 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. Systematic categorization of periodical publications (a phrase which usefully encompasses all of this output) is not easy, but an empirical approach allows us to offer a pragmatic analysis.44 Consumer magazines are to be found in newsagents shops, on airport and railway station bookstalls, and in some bookshops. The variety of subjects and titles is huge, although the categories adopted by the larger chain newsagents and bookshops give some insight in the trade’s perception of this aspect of the business. Historically, magazines for women have been among the bestsellers; indeed some of them still are. Magazines are even more closely linked to fashion and to popular taste than are books. The traditional women’s magazines, and their contemporary equivalents aimed at a younger market, fade almost imperceptibly into ‘lifestyle’ magazines which deal with such matters as home improvement, gardening and cookery. Like some books in these fields, some magazine titles are associated with particular television programmes or personalities. Contemporary magazines aimed specifically at men have a more recent origin, which can be traced to the publication of GQ in 1988. They proliferated in the 1990s, and are now an important sector of the market. Magazines for both men and women are not homogenous categories; they vary greatly in style, content and target audience. In seeking their audience among one or other gender, however, they typify the magazine market’s search for niches and sub-niches. The evidence for this lies everywhere on the newsagents’ shelves. Special interest magazines cover almost every conceivable human activity. Among the most prominent are those which relate to hobbies, some of which (most obviously computing) fade into professional and

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business activities. There are magazines for train spotters, stamp collectors, bird watchers and photographers. There are magazines for teenagers, for old people, for ethnic minorities, for adherents of particular religions and for sexual minorities. There are magazines which tread along the boundary of the legally acceptable in terms of language and (especially) images. There are also magazines of the utmost seriousness, such as the great American news magazines, Time and Newsweek, their European equivalents such as Der Speigel, and the different but equally influential and authoritative British weeklies such as The Economist, The New Statesman and The Spectator. Literary magazines also abound; some are small and privately circulated, but such journals as The Literary Review or The Times Literary Supplement are found in most branches of the chain newsagents. In short, the magazine industry is at least as diverse as the book publishing industry, and is far larger in terms of the number of items sold and the number of people who buy and read them. Amongst all of these magazines, however, the most widely purchased category is actually those which provide listings of television programmes. Sky TV Guide, What’s on TV, Radio Times and TV Times are among the handful of magazines which are read by more than 5 per cent of the British population. Sky TV Guide, with a 12 per cent readership, heads the list. The others which break the 5 per cent barrier include only two typically consumer titles: FHM (8 per cent) and Woman’s Own (6 per cent).45 We must, however, distinguish between copies circulated and copies sold; many of the most widely circulated magazines are either free of charge or sent automatically to members of particular organizations. This was true of nine of the top 10 most widely circulated British magazines in 2000; the list was headed by the AA Magazine, sent to all 4.4 million members of that organization.46 Seven of the others were free magazines from chain stores (five of them supermarkets); and two others were for subscribers to a service (Sky Television) or an organization (The National Trust). The only priced magazine was What’s on TV, a weekly which sold an average of 1.7 million copies. Only four other magazines actually sold more than one million copies.47 Around 500 000 was typical for the most popular women’s magazines. One or two lifestyle magazines were around the 400 000 mark, although 300 000 or less was more typical. Special interest magazines – even for the most popular interests – rarely exceeded 100 000. An exception was the best selling computer magazine (PC

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World, 128 000). The bestselling sports magazine was Horse and Hound, 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 many millions to a few thousands are the magazine publishing equivalent of general trade books, and they share the slightly fuzzy borderline between academic and general which we noted in such fields as history.49 The equivalent of STM and professional books are to be found in the academic journals of which there are tens of thousands of titles, almost all of them unknown to the general public and indeed to most academics outside their particular field. They are the lifeblood of the research community, commercially of great importance, and undergoing revolutionary change. No study of publishing can ignore them. Some academic journals are published by commercial publishers, as we shall see,50 but many are published by learned societies either directly or through university presses or other publishing houses. 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 communication system. Perhaps the best known of these is the British periodical Nature, a weekly published by Macmillan, as it has been since its foundation in 1869; it is the traditional place for British scientists to put the first notice of their discoveries, and is regularly reported by the mainstream printed and broadcast media. The American equivalent, 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 each other. They are typically based on original research, or contain a significant and authoritative reinterpretation of existing knowledge. In due course, a small number of these papers will become key works in their respective fields. A few contain results which will be incorporated into the next generation of textbooks. Rather more will be widely read within the discipline – including perhaps by undergraduates – for a few years before they are superseded. The vast majority will be read only by a handful of fellow specialists. Academics set great store by all of this. Indeed, their career progression, particularly in the sciences, is almost wholly dependent on journal publication.52 Many measures have been developed which attempt to quantify the impact of such work, including indexes of the number of times a paper is cited in

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subsequent publications, analyses of how papers are selected for publication, and the circulation figures of the journals themselves. All of these are interesting, and all are fraught with problems. As publications, the distinguishing characteristic of almost all commercially published academic journals is that they have tiny circulations and extremely high prices. In the sciences, medicine and law, subscriptions in excess of US$10 000 are not unknown.53 Price increases are running at an annual rate of about 10 per cent, and have done so for a decade or more.54 The trend to higher prices has been exacerbated by the proliferation of journals. As scientists have become ever more specialized, new journals have been created for new specialisms, sometimes catering to only a few hundred people around the world. When such journals are published by commercial publishers, prices are inevitably extremely high. To some extent, the prices of mainstream scientific journals have been held at more reasonable levels because many of them are published by learned societies. In effect, this subsidises the publication, since membership is a professional 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 – most importantly – to libraries, on payment of a subscription. Although it is organizations like the Royal Society of Chemistry or the Institute of Physics which are normally quoted in this context, there are similar bodies in the humanities of which the largest in the Modern Languages Association in the United States, whose journal is has long been a cornerstone of the academic publication system in literary and linguistic studies.55 Standing between the commercial publishers and the learned societies, and sharing some characteristics of both, are the university presses, although they have had their own problems in recent years and their journals are often almost as expensive as those which are purely commercial enterprises.56 Finally, there are a few examples of not-for-profit companies and co-operatives where the scientists 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 appointment and promotion, and in the United Kingdom the use of publications as a means of evaluating and subsequently funding university departments, has forced academics to publish more. This has included the

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development of the infamous practice of ‘salami slicing’ whereby a piece of research which deserves publication will be presented in two or three papers rather than one to increase the apparent output of the authors. At the same time, librarians have submitted to pressure from academics and researchers to subscribe to the journals, and to the indexes and abstracts which give access to them. A vicious circle has been created, from which there is no very obvious escape until the parties involved can work together more closely. As we shall see, the development of electronic journals may offer precisely this opportunity.58 Newspapers are somewhat more easily categorized than either popular magazines or learned journals. They are almost invariably either daily or weekly. In Britain, ‘daily’ newspapers are actually published on Monday to Saturday inclusive; the Sunday papers are weeklies.59 In other countries, practice varies, some following the British pattern, and other following the American practice of sevenday-a-week newspapers. There are both national and local or regional newspapers; in Britain the distinction is clear, but this is less true in the United States. Apart from the comparatively recent USA Today, there are no national newspapers in the United States in the British sense, although some of the major city newspapers are available in many other major cities, and carry weight nationally and indeed internationally.60 In Britain, as in most European countries, local or regional newspapers are precisely that, being dominated by local news, and circulating almost entirely in their area of origin. This may be a large city, a small town, or a region or subregion. British local newspapers are 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 and international publishing industry. The groups which now dominate the British national press are major players in the wider world of book and magazine publishing. Some of them also have extensive holdings in regional and local newspaper publishing as well. Traditionally, however, titles have been allowed a large degree of editorial independence, especially in determining what, if any, political allegiance they will adopt. There have indeed been examples of newspapers from the same 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, except perhaps on some local issues.

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Newspapers can be categorized by content as well as by periodicity or market. In Britain in the last 30 years this has also come to be associated 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 both domestic and foreign politics seriously. Circulations vary from the one million or so of The Daily Telegraph, to less than a quarter of that for The 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 other end of the scale just 1 per cent read The Independent and The Financial Times. In the mid-market, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail had 13 per cent and 12 per cent readerships respectively.63 The British national newspapers which are not broadsheets are sometimes characterized as tabloids. They have a page size which is approximately half of that of the broadsheets, make much more use of photographs and other graphic material, and have more emphasis on features and sport than on what broadsheet journalists would regard as ‘hard’ news. There are, however, real differences between the tabloids themselves. At least two of them are targeted at a conservative middle-class market, and there is considerable evidence for them sharing some of their readers with some of the broadsheets. These are The Daily Mail and The Daily Express; the nearest equivalent on the political left is The Daily Mirror. These papers are quite different from those which are increasingly referred to as the red tops, typified by The Sun on weekdays, and its Sunday stablemate The News of the World.64 They carry comparatively little hard news, and a great deal of gossip and scandal about celebrities from the media and from the world of sport. They rely heavily on photographs to fill their large numbers of pages, and are a major outlet for the photographers (paparazzi) who specialize in unofficial pictures of the rich and famous. Although they still regard themselves as influential,65 there is some evidence that what influence they had has declined. Certainly readership 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; by 1998/99, 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 the national dailies have been brought together. They suggest a number of characteristics of the British newspaper industry. One of the most important is illustrated by the 21 per cent who read The Sun, but are clearly also readers of other papers. Multiple readership (and perhaps purchase) is a significant factor in the industry. For some papers, circulation figures are boosted by mass sales which do not necessarily lead to reading. These include sales to hotel chains, train operating companies and airlines which provide large numbers of complementary newspapers to their customers; The Daily Telegraph, and The Financial Times are probably particular beneficiaries of this practice. The study of the publication, content and influence of newspapers is a major subject in its own right. In the context of publishing, especially in Britain, its significance lies in its integration into the industry as a whole. The conglomerates encompass newspapers as well as magazine and book publishing. Although they are usually run as separate businesses, all these aspects of publishing sustain each other within the group. They contribute to profits, and hence to the commercial stability of the company, especially if its share price is quoted on the Stock Exchange. They share some of the same retail outlets, and hence support 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 (no. of copies)

The Sun Daily Mail The Mirror Daily Telegraph Daily Express The Times Financial Times Guardian Independent Star (Sources: see notes 46, 62)

3 2 2 1

498 974 415 943 179 105 018 088 974 158 718 536 486 366 399 295 224 832 96 999

Readership (percentage of population) 21 12 13 5 5 4 1 2 1 3

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problems: competition from new media, the declining popularity of reading among younger people, and an ageing readership. They have to be taken into account in any study of the British publishing industry.

The sources of published material Everything which is published has been written by someone. This is true of an official report, an anonymous paragraph of parochial news in a local newspaper, a scientific paper or a book of poems. In common understanding, however, we recognize some writers as ‘authors’, and put them in a rather different category; the interactions between authors and publishers is one of the key relationships in the industry, which we shall consider in more detail in Chapter Four. Other writers have a very different status from that of the single author writing a work of imaginative literature or a general trade book. Some do not deal 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 different publications. Yet others are not writing in a personal capacity, but as employees of an organization or corporate body. Some items are written by committees or less formal groups of people, and cannot be attributed to an individual in any meaningful way. Indeed, it may be undesirable to make such an attribution. All of these models make a contribution to the output of published works. In this section, we shall try to analyse in greater detail the sources of publications, so that in Chapter Four we can study the process by which works are actually put into the public domain by publishers. The most familiar model is, of course, the single author, although it is 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 familiarity of the single author model, it is by no means as predominant as might be thought. In Table 3.2, various modes of authorship are set against their typical products. The listing of products, however, is by no means exhaustive. To take some obvious examples from the first two lines, there are single-authored textbooks, and some general trade non-fiction with two authors. There are also some very complicated

76 Forms of Publishing relationships which are disguised by this simplified overview. For example, the individual papers in a scientific journal are typically multi-authored; to that extent, therefore, they have some common characteristics with multi-authored items published in book form. Newspapers and consumer magazines, presented here as edited products of different kinds (as they are) also have some important common features in terms of authorship. For example, some writers are fulltime 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 occasional or regular basis. In other words, we are now focusing not on the form of the publication, but on the creation of the work itself. The relationships implicit in Table 3.2 are complex. Between the author 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 this is far from simple. We shall explore this further from the author’s perspective in Chapter Four.69 Here we shall consider the origins of

Table 3.2 Authors and their products Mode of authorship Single author Two or more named authors Multiple named authors with a named editor Multiple named authors with a named editor and named editorial advisors

Typical product Fiction, Poetry, General trade non-fiction STM book, School or college textbook Conference proceedings, Collection of essays, Consumer magazine Scientific or scholarly journal

Multiple named and anonymous authors with an anonymous editor

Newspaper

Anonymous text with introduction or endorsement by a named person

Company report, Government publications

Anonymous text

Official documents

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publications in terms of the individuals and organizations which are responsible for them, and of their intended purpose. Even the book written by a single author is, like almost everything in publishing, less simple than it may seem. Some books are written and then simply submitted to one or more publishers. Some publishers quite explicitly say that they do not consider such material. Others at least claim to look at it, although the reading is typically cursory and there is general agreement that only a tiny percentage of unsolicited material is seriously considered for publication.70 The acceptance, or even the serious reading, of unsolicited submissions declined rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century; by the early 1980s a significant percentage of American editors was reported as having accepted no such material in a particular year.71 Fiction – especially first novels – and poetry are probably the only categories of book which have even a moderate chance of reaching print by this route. Unsolicited material which reaches print is found more often in learned and scientific journals than on the shelves of bookshops. The career structure of the academic world, especially in the United States and Britain, is critically dependent on publication, and might even be argued to have encouraged unnecessary publication.72 Papers are typically written by those engaged in a research project and then submitted to an appropriate journal where they are considered by the editor and by independent referees.73 More often than not, a book is commissioned; for non-fiction this is almost universal, and even for fiction is becoming more common.74 There is a fundamental difference between writing a book speculatively and writing one to commission; in the latter case, there are well-defined parameters of length, subject matter, level and timescale. In other words, it is an activity in which a professional editor expects a degree of professionalism from the author. The relationship between them is normally regulated by a formal contract.75 It is also increasingly the case that there is an intermediary between the authors and the publisher in the person of a literary agent who represents the author. Although agents have existed since the late nineteenth century, their role has been enhanced by recent changes in the publishing industry. The great multinational corporations which now dominate trade publishing in the English-speaking world can seem formidable indeed to the individual author, especially if he or she is a novice, and this can lead to unhealthy tensions arising in part from authors’

78 Forms of Publishing ignorance of how publishing works.76 Agents can help to redress the balance; a growing number of authors (and not only of fiction) make use of them in order to maximize the financial benefits they gain from their writing.77 Publishers have not always been enamoured of agents (William Heinemann refused to have them in his office), and there is still evidence of strained relationships as they take on more and more of the advisory role which once rested with the publisher’s editor.78 It is through the commissioning process that complex multiauthored books can be brought into existence. The most simple case is little more than an extension of the practice of commissioning an individual author. Two or more authors are contracted to write a book for which they have equal responsibility. How that works is largely for them to determine, often to the point of designating one of their number to deal with the publisher. Commissioning an author to edit or compile a multi-authored book is far more complicated, and effectively delegates some of the commissioning process. A volume consisting of 10 or 12 chapters, each by a different specialist, has become a typical product of academic publishing in the last 20 years. The normal practice is that this is commissioned by the publisher from the volume editor, part of whose job is to find the authors of the individuals chapters and effectively to commission them on behalf of the publishing house. The editor is then the only person who deals with both the publisher and the authors; he or she has effectively taken on part of the role of the publisher’s editor. Some works are even more complex; encyclopaedias and other reference books, for example, are almost invariably multi-authored, sometimes anonymously and sometimes with signed contributions. In the academic world, this can lead to complications when individual contributors need to claim credit for their own contributions.79 Although all printed matter has been written by someone, much of it is not attributed to an individual. Perhaps the most familiar example of this is in newspapers, where many stories are simply attributed to press agencies, to ‘our correspondent’ (although this is less common now than 20 or 30 years ago) or simply to no-one (which means that it was written by someone on the staff, usually a junior or trainee reporter). Other items are anonymous in the sense that an organization rather than a named individual or group of individuals accepts responsibility for what is written.80 This does not mean that no-one is named. The annual report of a company or a public body may well

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have a foreword over the name of the head of the organization. This is even true of some government policy documents which have a preface by (or at least signed by) the relevant minister. The bulk of the text, however, is a genuinely collaborative effort, drafted by many people in different parts of the organization, brought together by a small team or perhaps by a single individual, and approved by the Board or its equivalent before publication. In this way, it becomes the corporate responsibility of the organization, which then owns the copyright. It is quite possible that none of the ‘authors’ can identify more than a few phrases of which he or she was the originator. The work was, of course, done as an employee rather than as an individual; no payment is received beyond the usual salary, and no rights accrue to the ‘authors’. There are publications in which no names appear at all. Perhaps the largest 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 publications’, because they represent the views of the organization, not of any one individual within it.81 Official publications, and publications by semi-official bodies,82 are not without significance in the commercial world of publishing and bookselling. Some of them sell very well indeed, and are available through bookshops; a familiar British example is The Highway Code, published by HMSO and a consistent bestseller.83 Although most official publications are of interest only to specialized libraries, some are sold through normal channels, and bring in revenue which helps to sustain the trade in general books.

The formats of published material Published works originate in many different contexts. To understand the publishing industry, and the process of communication which it facilitates, it is necessary to take an inclusive view. A large general bookshop may carry about 20 000 titles at any one time, most of them in a small number of copies. A major bookselling chain may have up to 50 000 in its shops and warehouses. These are large numbers,84 but they have to be set alongside the book production statistics which we considered in Chapter Two. Beyond the general trade books, both fiction 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 markets and the audiences through entirely different channels. They come from different places, and travel along different routes. There are, of course, a few common characteristics between all printed items. The most important lies in the very medium itself. The paper and print industries are large-scale industrial activities. Only a small percentage of this is accounted for by book printing, which is concentrated in a few specialized firms. Rather more can be ascribed to the printing of newspapers and magazines, but the bulk of the printing industry is actually concerned with promotional materials and packaging. Regardless of the sources of the material, however, and regardless of the channels through which it reaches the end-user, all published material does pass through a printing press, and most passes through some sort of binding machine. In that way, the hidden industry of official publications, report literature and the like helps to support the visible industry of commercial publishing. In the Western world, print on paper has been the normal form of publishing for over 500 years, and for all practical purposes its only form for over 300. During that time, while there have been changes in the technologies of typesetting, printing and binding, the fundamental form of the book has not changed. A book printed in 1501 is recognizably the same object as a book printed in 2001, despite the differences of typography and design. The visual and physical conventions of the book have changed, but the fundamental mechanical and economic principles have not. Since about 1980, however, the printed book has been subjected to a serious challenge on its own ground for the first time. New media have, of course, been developed over many decades; the cinema, radio and television each in turn have become competitors to books in the leisure market and, to a lesser extent, in the educational market as well. None, however, challenged the core functions and characteristics of printed books on their own territory: continuous and complex narrative, both instantaneous and long-term accessibility, ease of use, comparatively low costs of production and purchase, and so on. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, it was precisely that challenge which emerged. First in the educational world, and then more generally, digital media in various formats were brought onto the market. From CD-ROM in the 1980s to open publication on the World Wide Web in the late 1990s, we can trace a revolution in the storage and communication of information which

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does indeed present a real threat at the very heart of the publishing industry. No survey of the forms of publishing would be complete without examining both print and the alternatives to print as they are used 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, need to examine the economics of the production processes, for these are central to the industry. The economics of print production have been well understood within 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 fundamental principles of mass production: more equals cheaper. This equation depends on the fact that certain costs are fixed regardless of the number of identical products which flow off the production line. Each item generates some additional cost (for materials and storage), but the fixed costs can be spread across all the items which are produced. Figure 3.1 presents a simple analysis of the elements which constitute the costs of production, sales and distribution of a printed publication.

FIXED COSTS Editorial Design Typesetting Proof-reading Marketing NON-FIXED COSTS Paper Printing Binding Storage Distribution Sales Royalties Figure 3.1 Costs in Publishing

82 Forms of Publishing The difference between fixed and non-fixed costs is one of the basic elements in the economics of publishing. The second is that new books do not generate revenue until almost all of these costs, in both categories, have been incurred. In this, book publishing differs significantly from most other mass production industries. A comparison with the archetypal example – the motor car – will illustrate the point. The car manufacturer’s equivalent of the publishers’ fixed costs in Figure 3.1 are such things as the mechanical and aesthetic design of the vehicle, the retooling of the production line, the launch of a new model and so on. All of these are incurred before a revenue stream is created. After the launch of the car, however, the production line continues to produce identical cars, sometimes for many years, and there is a similarly continuous stream of sales, generating revenue which supports the continued production of the model. The non-fixed costs (such as the raw materials for manufacturing the car, the salaries of the workers who make it, distribution costs, and so on) can thus be offset against simultaneous revenue from identical cars which had been produced at earlier 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 the publisher is in accurately estimating the number of copies that can be sold. The print run for most general trade books hardbacks is probably about 5000 copies; for some scholarly monographs, it may be as little as 500. For a few titles expected to sell exceptionally well, it can rise to more than 10 000. For paperbacks, the figures are of course much larger, with some mass market paperbacks being printed in batches of 100 000 or more. Whether the print run is 100, 1000, 10 000 or 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 and binding), the direct costs of production, much of the initial distribution costs (to the warehouse), and almost all of the direct costs of promotion and sales (such as advertising). The consequences are illustrated in Table 3.3. The data in Table 3.3 is for illustrative purposes only, but serves to emphasize the inverse relationship between the cost per copy and the number of copies printed. On this basis, the minimum revenue which the publisher must generate to cover the fixed costs only of 1000 copies is more than 60 units of currency; if 10 000 copies are printed and can be sold, the figure falls to more than 6. In practice, of course, the

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Table 3.3 Fixed costs and copy costs Activity

Editorial Design Typesetting Proof-reading Marketing TOTAL

Cost (units of currency) 20 000 2500 15 000 2 500 20 000 60 000

Copy cost – Copy cost – 1000 copies 10000 copies (units of currency) (units of currency) 20 2.5 15 2.5 20 60

2 0.25 1.5 0.25 2 6

calculation is both more complicated and less precise, for a number of other considerations must be factored in. Among the issues to be taken into account are such questions as whether the number of copies sold will increase if the price is kept lower, and therefore whether printing 2000 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 specialized book will need only limited specialized advertising, and the marketing costs will thus be reduced, perhaps to not much more than the cost of listing the work in a catalogue and sending out a comparatively small number of complementary copies for review. Typesetting and proof-reading costs can be reduced by insisting that authors submit camera-ready copy on disks, and so on. Whatever is done, however, the fundamental equation remains: the more copies that are printed, the smaller the cost per copy.85 We must bear this principle in mind as we consider the formats in which printed matter appears. The most basic, and most familiar, variation is between hardback and paperback. The hardback is the most traditional 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 conventional view in the book trade was that no book would be successful if it did not appear first in a hardback edition. This assumption was partly economic and partly a matter of prestige and prejudice. It is certainly

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true that it is possible to make a decent profit from sales of a print run of 2000 hardbacks. It is also true that hardbacks are – or were until recently – more likely to be the subject of serious reviews than paperbacks. Gradually, however, from the late 1970s onwards, hardbacks came to be seen by some publishers as a means of market testing a new title or author. The paperback rights became a significant element in the revenues of both the hardback publisher and the author.86 In the early 1980s, it was still axiomatic that original publication of fiction or general trade non-fiction in paperback was likely to fail.87 By the end of that decade, it was estimated that only between 60 and 70 per cent of all new titles were published in hardback, and the proportion of original publishing in paperback was increasing rapidly.88 At the same time, librarians were increasingly turning to paperbacks, partly for reasons of cost, but partly because it was felt that they were more attractive to clients. It has recently been argued that full-price hardback publication of fiction is realistic only for established authors. Although that may be contestable (not least by observation in bookshops), the argument illustrates the dramatic change in perceptions over a comparatively short period of time.89 Even the social and cultural prejudice in favour of the hardback has largely vanished. Paperbacks are regularly reviewed in the broadsheet newspapers (and not only in ghettoized ‘New paperbacks’ columns), and are often the most striking feature of both window displays and in-store promotions in high street bookshops. It can be cogently argued that the paperback is now the dominant format of consumer book publishing in both Britain and the United States.90 Again, the lists of bestsellers provides valuable data. In a typical week, The Bookseller recorded just seven hardbacks in its top 100 titles.91 Of these, only three were novels.92 The domination of the fiction market by paperbacks is a long-established phenomenon. Indeed, it is sufficiently long established to have its own norms and conventions, not least for its physical format. So-called A format – the small familiar size which has barely changed since the 1930s93 – is used for ‘mass market’ paperbacks, which are expected to sell in excess of 10 000 copies from each print run. For more up-market books, the larger 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 has come to dominate. The most successful general trade non-fiction is also expected to flourish in paperback, and tertiary level textbooks will probably only penetrate the student market in paperback form. The

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appeal of the paperback to the consumer is, of course, cost. Yet only a small part of the difference between hardback and paperback prices derives from the difference in materials used. Indeed for B format books, the paper is typically the same as that of the hardback, and the sheets may even be from the same print run. The real difference is the unit cost, because of the larger numbers printed and sold. In a typical week, the top-selling mass market paperback had sold 21 639 copies in three weeks, and the top ‘Original fiction’ had sold 7242 in the same period.95 This was significantly exceeded by the top nonfiction paperback, which sold 9531 in its first week.96 By contrast, with a single exception, no hardback fiction title had sold more than 2506 copies, 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 costs between £12.99 and £20.00, the most expensive non-fiction paperback was £11.99 and mass market fiction was typically priced at £6.99. In other words, paperbacks are about half the price of the hardback editions of comparable titles. The predominance of the paperback in the consumer and student markets has had major consequences for the trade as a whole, not least for the booksellers, as we shall see in Chapter Five.98 It is seen as being user-friendly and giving value for money, and is the ideal format for books to compete with other consumer goods in a unstable and changing market.99 In the academic market, and in STM and professional publishing, the paperback also has its place. Again, there is an economic driver. It is many years since even the wealthiest and most ambitious of libraries could maintain comprehensive collections.100 One of the ways in which they have responded to increasing prices and decreasing budgets is by buying B format paperbacks. The comparative impermanence of paperbacks is less important than it might superficially seem to be. In fields in which textbooks are regularly updated, 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 of out-of-date books, especially when a new edition appears, the paperback has found an important niche in a field in which it was almost unknown until the last decade of the twentieth century. The economics of print-on-paper publishing are seen at their most dramatic 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 is different. A newspaper has a shelf-life of a few hours; a weekly and a monthly, a few days and two or three weeks respectively. Scholarly journals, published typically at quarterly intervals, theoretically have a longer life, but in practice are usually sold on subscription before they are even printed. Newspapers, most weeklies, and some monthlies are heavily dependent on advertising revenues as a means of keeping down their costs and hence being able to have a low cover price to stimulate sales. Although academic journals attract some advertising (typically of books 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 that prices are high. Libraries – which are the principle market for scholarly journals – are increasingly reluctant to pay such prices, and indeed often unable to do so. The pressure for change has become intense. It is not surprising that it is in the field of academic journals that print-on-paper publishing came to be most seriously challenged in the 1990s. No consideration of formats would now be complete without a consideration of electronic publishing. This takes many forms, and indeed is sufficiently new for the definition still to be somewhat 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 form of digital data (text, graphics, video, sound or a combination of some or all of them), which can also be accessed in other ways. Once a digital file has been created, the issues are those of storage and delivery. The delivery of published material over the Internet, usually using the World Wide Web, is now common, particularly for academic journal literature. Electronic journals are normally delivered in this way, with the subscriber receiving the chosen item at a PC-based workstation where it can be downloaded for local storage and future use, or printed, or both. Electronic books have developed more recently, and suitable reading devices are only now beginning to be marketed.101 Since the mid-1980s there has been much speculation, and not a little fear, about the potential impact of electronic digital communications on publishing. Only in the mid-1990s, however, with the advent of the

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World Wide Web and the near universal use of electronic communications in the academic world, did some of the ideas begin to become commercially as well as technically viable. The use of computers to assist in the editing of books and journals began in the early 1980s.102 By the mid-1990s there were well-developed models for the parallel production of printed and electronic version of journals and how they might be delivered to libraries, although there were still problems in finding library staff with appropriate skills.103 The technical success of such experiments led some to argue that there were no fundamental changes in the publishing process, and that print and electronic publication would continue to be complimentary and parallel, with publishers continuing to play the role to which they had been accustomed.104 Other commentators took the view that electronic publishing was simply about document delivery, and nothing to do with publishing at all.105 Practice has been different from both experimentation and prediction. Parallel publishing of academic journals survives, and seems likely to do so for some time; it has been argued to be best suited to the needs of the academic market.106 Similarly, parallel publishing is becoming common for reference books, and some publishers are digitising their backlists.107 Some publishers are working on electronic textbooks for student use,108 and there is experimental work in exploiting the interactive potential of electronic books in literary fiction.109 In other fields, print is already being abandoned; one major publisher of business information proposes to move entirely to electronic output, and other will surely follow.110 The common feature of all of these partial and complete shifts to electronic publishing is that the underlying economics are different. Typically, what is sold is not an object (such as a book or journal) but the right of access to a database. This may be in the form of a licence to a subscriber for unlimited access, or it may be that charges are made on a pay-per-access basis. It remains the case that a minimum number of subscriptions is needed to make publication viable, but it has been argued that by eliminating the production and distribution of a printed product, fees can be kept at a modest level far below the inflated prices which now characterize many printed journals.111 Many important changes in publishing culture have already followed 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 an impact on the relationship between authors, editors, publishers, librarians and readers. The relationships between the key players in the publishing process is becoming radically different. In the next Chapter we shall consider these relationships in the contexts of the various forms of publishing on which we have focused in this Chapter.

Notes and references 1 A handful of publishers and imprints deal largely in titles which are in public domain, but they are few and comparatively small. 2 The need for the creation of a backlist, and its function as the basis of the firm’s long-term economic stability, was one of the fundamental dogmas of 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, the founder of The New York Review of Books, and one of the most distinguished 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 in some of the works of Norman Mailer, for example, has also blended fact and fiction. But for our purposes such works are at the margins, whatever their 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 categories: Fiction; School textbooks; Children’s books; Science/Technology/ Medicine; Academic and professional; Non-fiction. These are sufficiently precise to enable classification for statistical purposes. I have adopted a slightly different approach here, but its relationship to the LISU (and book trade) model will be obvious. 13 On this point, see Martin Stoll and Mark Bide, Customised Publishing in UK Higher Education, London: Book Industry Communications (BNB Research Fund Report, 83), 1996. See also below, pp. 176–78.

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14 See Jacinto E. Suarez, ‘College textbook publishing: patterns of corporate diversification and the rationalisation of the publishing process’, Sci Comm, 16:1, 1994, pp. 58–89. 15 According to Patricia H. Thornton, in a paper entitled ‘Concentrated markets in the cultural industries: are economies of scale an entry barrier to new firms in the higher education market?’, delivered to the annual conference of the American Sociological Association in 1999, 92 per cent of 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–current situation. 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 a shift 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 of Wales both before and after her death. 23 The obvious British example is that of cookery books whose publication and sales hugely increased in the late 1990s as TV channels competed to promote 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 as Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (London: BBC and John Murray, 1969); Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (London: BBC, 1973); and Alistair Cooke, Alistair Cooke’s America (London: BBC, 1973). Recent British examples include books by Simon Schama and David Starkey, deriving from their respective television series. 25 Caroline Sylge, ‘The listening game’, The Bookseller, 4909, 4 February 2000, pp. 28–30. 26 In the UK, such lists are found in The Bookseller and (among other newspapers) The Sunday Times. The American equivalents will be found in Publishers’ Weekly and most of the major newspapers, including The New York Times whose bestseller list is very influential in the trade. For a formal analysis, albeit now some years out of date in its examples, see John Feather 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 three months (www.thebookseller.com on 3 December 2001). 31 For some informed reflections on this theme, see David Stoker, ‘The new DNB 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 supplement in 1963. A second edition (3 vols.) was published 1966–70, and a third (also 3 vols.) 1973–77. Thereafter, its bibliographical history becomes increasingly complicated. By the time that the decision was taken that the future was electronic, there had been three further revisions of volumes 1 and 3, and four of volume 2. The intolerable complexity and cost of keeping reference books current in print is well illustrated by this example. 33 The publisher was (and is) Macmillan. See www.macmillan.com. The online 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 practicalities 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 a year. Where to go from here?’, Logos, 7:1, 1996, pp. 12–17. The 500 million are 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 UK children’s publishing house: adapting to change for the multimedia market’, Elec Lib, 18:4, 2000, pp. 269–78; and Hans–Heino Ewers, ‘Changing functions of children’s literature: new book genres and literary functions’, Bookbird, 38:1, 2000, pp. 6–11. 38 Marc Aronson, ‘The YA phenomenon in America: books that match teenage 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 always better’, SLJ, 46:4, 2000, pp. 42–3.

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41 42 43 44

45 46

47

48

49 50 51

52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Most famously at Woolworth’s, for which see Morpurgo, pp. 92–3. See above, p. 38 (Table 2.5). Fishwick, p. 29 (Table C3). Librarians have developed complicated definitions of what is and is not a periodical publication, largely for purposes of cataloguing. These definitions are not unimportant, but do not concern us here. I shall follow the trade practice of regarding annuals as a distinct category from other periodicals. Hence, I am confining this section to periodicals published at less than annual intervals. See Social Trends, 30, 2000, p. 214 (Table 13.9). This and other data used below on magazine and newspaper circulation, is from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and can be found on its Website at www.abc.org.uk/cgi–bin/cookie/abc.pl These were Radio Times and Cable Guide (both TV listing magazines, weekly and monthly respectively); Take a Break (women’s); Saga Magazine (retired people); and Reader’s Digest. This is not the place for a more extended study based on these statistical series (which go back for more than 50 years). But such a study is highly desirable. See above, pp. 63–64. See below, pp. 171–76. For a general study, out of date in detail but still useful for general principles, see Gillian Page, Robert Campbell and Jack Meadows, Journal Publishing: Principles and practice. London: Butterwortrhs, 1987, pp. 1–12. There is a vast literature on the scientific communication system. The classic account is Fritz Machlup and Kenneth Leeson, Information Through the Printed Word: The dissemination of scholarly, scientific and intellectual knowledge, New York: Praeger, 4 vols., 1978–80. Perhaps the most notorious is Chemical Abstracts. The 2001 subscription to the printed version was US$25 000. Creaser et al., p. 182 (Table 6.1b, summary). PMLA has a circulation of 36 000, and 2001 subscription price of US$118. See Naomi B. Pascal, ‘Between academe and the marketplace: university presses for the twenty-first century’, Logos, 7:1, 1996, pp. 113–19. See, for example, Sklaer. See below, pp. 171–76. There is, of course, much common ownership of dailies and weeklies, and some common titles. The most obvious are such pairings as The Daily Express and The Sunday Express, The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, and The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. The Times and The Sunday Times, although they are both part of News Corporation, are

92

60

61 62 63

64 65

66 67 68 69 70

71

72

Forms of Publishing operated independently of each other, although, like The Guardian (daily) and The Observer (Sunday) which also belong to the same company, they print on the same presses. The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times are obvious examples. For a wide-ranging study of the American press, see Robert G. Picard and Jeffrey H. Brody, The Newspaper Publishing Industry, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. Brian McNair, News and Journalism in the UK, London: Routledge, 2nd ed., 1996, pp. 45–7. Again, the data is from ABC; see above, note 46. 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. A context is provided by the fact that 59 per cent of men read a daily newspaper, but the total of the percentage reading each named title is 80 per cent. 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 male population reads more than one newspaper. The equivalent for women is about 10 per cent. Female readership of all titles is less than male readership. The difference in the case of The Sun (cited above) is the most marked. The only others with more than a 1 per cent difference are The Daily 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). Both of which are part of News Corporation, owner of The Times. Exemplified in the notorious headline ‘It was the Sun wot won it’ after The Sun had supported the victorious Conservatives in the 1992 British general election campaign which Labour had been widely expected to win. Social Trends, 30, 2000, p. 213 (Table 13.8) For a recent example, see below, p. 100. See above, pp. 2–3. See below, pp. 99–116. 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 paragraph or 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. Lewis A. Coser, Charles Kadushin and Walter W. Powell, Books: The culture and commerce of publishing, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 131. See, for example, Dennis P. Carrigan, ‘Publish or perish: the troubled state of scholarly publishing’, JSP, 22:3, 1991, pp. 131–42. See also above, pp. 71–72.

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73 For refereeing, see Jane Smith, ‘Refereeing’, LP, 3:1, 1990, pp. 19–25. See also 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 James Hepburn, 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 explored by librarians in developing rules for attributing works to ‘corporate’ authors in library catalogues. The literature is somewhat impenetrable to the outsider, but the principles are reasonably accessible in Michael Gorman, ‘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 an introduction, see Eve Johansson, ‘The definition of official publications’, IFLA J, 8:4, 1982, pp. 393–5. For an international example, see Patrice Piguet, ‘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–Governmental Organizations), familiar internationally as NGOs (Non–Governmental Organizations). 83 The most recent edition was fifth in the paperback bestseller list in November 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 a general 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 14 July 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 paper sizes. 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 literature’, PRQ, 10:2, 1994, pp. 29–35. 101 In a rapidly developing field, any general text will age with comparable rapidity. But there is a useful general introduction in Harry Collier, The Electronic Publishing Maze: Strategies in the electronic publishing industry, Tetbury: Infonortics, 1998. See also below, pp. 164–78, for a fuller 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 the publisher 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’, Elec Libr, 15:2, 1997, pp. 125–31. 105 For an extreme version of this, see Irving Louis Horowitz, ‘The assured future of specialized publishers in the electronic world’, Logos, 6:3, 1995, pp. 158–61. 106 Sely Gomes and Jack Meadows, ‘Perceptions of electronic journals in British universities’, JSP, 29:3, 1998, pp. 29–33. 107 See above, p. 65; for conversion, see, among many examples, ‘ABC–Clio launches e–books’, ATL, 30:3, 2001, pp. 7–8. 108 See, for example, netLibrary, ‘Houghton Mifflin launch textbook initiative’, ATL, 30:1, 2001, pp. 9–10. 109 A. Stern, ‘Interactive fiction: the story is just beginning’, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 13:6, 1998, pp. 16–18.

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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 evaluation of 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 be allowed to disguise the fact that everything which is published, in whatever format or medium, is the product of one or more human minds. Copyright, and the broader domain of intellectual property, developed in recognition of this simple proposition.1 Even the most mundane of writings has an intellectual origin, and without writing or other forms of creation there can be no published work. It seems to follow therefore that the process of publishing begins with the author. Certainly, there is an originator of the material, and a process through which it is disseminated to its intended recipients. The essence of publishing, however, is that the material is put into public domain;2 the chain of communication from originator to recipient must therefore 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 existence of a system which links the source and the receiver. Shannon and Weaver envisaged a telephone network; their model is equally applicable 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 of the media and formats in which information is put into the public domain.

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SOURCE

→

TRANSMITTER

→

RECIPIENT

Figure 4.1 Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication

In its simplest form, the Shannon and Weaver model can be represented as is shown in Figure 4.1. An essential element of the model, however, is the postulated existence of ‘noise’ during the process of transmission. This might be technical such as interference with telecommunications systems or broadcast signals, or it might be human intervention which leads to error or misunderstanding. In this Chapter, we shall focus on the process of publishing. The Shannon and Weaver model is a conceptually useful starting point for the analysis. The ‘source’ becomes the author; the ‘transmitter’ is the publisher; and the ‘recipient’ is the reader. This can then be expressed in a very simple diagrammatic form (Figure 4.2).

AUTHOR

→

PUBLISHER

→

READER

Figure 4.2 From author to reader: the simplified version

This diagram is not inaccurate, in the sense that the published material begins with an author and that some form of publishing process takes place before it can reach the reader. The process, however, has been simplified here to the point at which the representation is misleading except as a very crude basic model. Three key issues arise in 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 manifestations from creative to financial;

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•

the process of getting the material to the recipient, a process which in the book trade involves marketing, sales, retailing and all the activities 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 other written work’.6 But who, we might ask, is the author of these dictionaries? One of them is unquestionably a book, and the other exists in book form as well as the in the form of the CD-ROM which was actually consulted on this occasion. Certainly they are written works, and yet no names appear on their title pages, and even if we have a list of those involved in their compilation there is no indication of who was responsible for writing any particular definition. It was not always so. When Samuel Johnson compiled his dictionary in the mid-eighteenth century, it was indubitably his work. Or was it? He had a team of what we 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 person involved in its compilation or composition.7 The classic dictionary definition of ‘author’ seems inadequate even to describe one of the key books in which it began to take shape. If the dictionary definition is not a very adequate definition of how a dictionary is written, let us consider an apparently more straightforward case. A novelist surely conforms to the paradigm of the ‘person who composes a book’. Certainly, the novelist devises the plot and the characters and composes the words through which they are expressed and described. Before the work reaches print, however, it will have passed through a number of hands and minds and may well have been substantially modified. With few exceptions, novelists employ agents to represent them to publishers. The agent has many roles. He or she is an advisor, a friend, a negotiator, a public relations guru and the provider of a shoulder to cry on. In their advisory capacity, agents do far more than merely direct a new work to an appropriate publisher.

100 The Publishing Process They work with the author, offering suggestions which even in creative fiction may include modifications to the book.8 Even before it reaches the publisher’s desk, therefore, a novel is more often than not the product 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 increasingly common practice of acknowledging help with his or her work is a public statement that few novelists are solely responsible for what appears in their names. A good example is the highly acclaimed Ghostwritten, the first published novel by David Mitchell.9 The Acknowledgements list a number of copyright works that have been quoted, but the author then thanks 11 named individuals. It is not clear what their roles were, but they presumably advised him on various points or read some or all of the work in draft. The fact that Mitchell discussed his work with others, and perhaps picked their brains on some of the esoteric matters which characterize the book, does not in any way diminish his role as creator. But it does challenge the classical concept of the ‘author’. That challenge is not new. Indeed, post-modern literary criticism is centrally concerned with what one of its founding fathers called ‘the death of the author’.10 In terms of intellectual history, the post-modern critics deny the romantic concept of the author as a sole creator. They argue that the creative act is incomplete until the work has been read, and that the reader then becomes a co-creator with the writer, because each reader will interpret the writer’s work in his or her own way. In effect, the argument is that writing has no meaning until it is read. This is a fascinating proposition in more than purely intellectual terms. It is logically powerful, and comes closer to the reality of the world of publishing than some of its supporters (and indeed some publishers) might have imagined or perhaps even desired. If even a novel is no longer the product of one man’s imagination and knowledge, how much more is that true of the non-fiction which dominates the output of the world’s publishers? We can consider this in the context of some of the forms of published output which we discussed in Chapter Three. We have already seen that a book by a single named author – even a work of imaginative fiction of the highest order – is not necessarily the product of that author alone. It is subject to the influences of family, friends, an agent, or an editor. Specific suggestions may be accepted or rejected,

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but they have had an impact on the creation of the work. When the book is a work of non-fiction, the role of the author becomes even more ambiguous. A work of non-fiction, however much original data or interpretation it may contain, rests on earlier work. The author may accept or reject that work, challenge it, reinterpret it, or absorb it in some way; but it cannot be ignored. Even the most specialized of academic monographs, based perhaps on scientific experiments or on archival research, builds on a long tradition of scholarship understanding and interpretation, and a common body of knowledge in its field. Indeed, the more specialized the work which is the subject of the monograph, the more the author becomes dependent on a prior knowledge of the context of the subject which is assumed to be shared by the reader. Many books are overtly the work of more than one person. This is not so far from the model of the single author as might appear to be the case. Most collaborating authors in fact divide the work of composition between them, and then read and revise each other’s work. The difference between this and the book whose single author accepted the advice 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 responsibility that we can begin to understand the most practical definition of ‘author’ in the context of publishing. It is neatly exemplified by a very common form of academic publication: the volume in which each chapter is written by a different contributor (or contributors), but the work is edited by a one or more named persons. The roles of the editor(s) and the contributors are fairly clearly defined. The editor12 determines the content of the book, identifies contributors and invites them to contribute. When their contributions are submitted, the editor reads them, probably assesses their quality in some way and does some preliminary work on preparing them for the press. The latter might include, for example, ensuring that they conform to the style of presentation and referencing which has been agreed for the whole volume. The editor will also determine the order in which they contributions appear in the book, and will perhaps have oversight of such matters 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 or she is assumed to bear responsibility for the book as a whole. The contributors, however, are individually responsible for what they have written, in terms of accuracy, the interpretation put on facts, theories

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which might be propounded, and so on. The contributor will also usually carry any legal responsibility which might arise (from libel, or breach of copyright, for example) in his or her chapter. A more elaborate example of the same phenomenon, but essentially identical in principle, is the reference book to which many authors contribute, but each under his or her own name. Unlike the dictionaries with which we started, some encyclopaedias, for example, attribute specific entries to named individuals. Editorial control will normally be strict, especially in limiting the length of the contribution, in ensuring its accuracy, and in moulding it into the style of the work as a whole; but overall responsibility for content remains with the named authors. The same principle applies to contributions to periodicals whether they are learned journals or tabloid newspapers; named authors can be assumed to carry the responsibility for what appears in their name, although the editor controls what is actually selected for publication. We shall return to the role of the editor in this process later in this Chapter.13 So far, none of the models we have explored really deals with the problem of the dictionary, in which no specific definition is attributed to 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 is named on the title page. Opposite the title page, however, appears the name of the ‘General Consultant’ and 16 ‘Special Consultants’, all of whom are academic specialists in different varieties of world English (Indian, Scottish, and so on). On a subsequent page, there is a list of the Editorial Staff, headed by the Managing Editor, some of whom clearly have purely technical roles (Computer Staff) or are involved in activities other than compilation and authorship (Market House Editors). There are nine ‘Content Editors’, nine ‘Science Contributors’, various contributors on etymology and pronunciation, and 14 ‘General Contributors’. At the head of the latter list is the ‘Chief Defining Editor’, 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 from aeronautics 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 of more than a hundred people who share the responsibility for the

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Collins Softback English Dictionary. ‘Author’, at least in the sense in which the Dictionary itself defines it, has become a meaningless term. There is no way of taking any sentence or phrase in the book and saying ‘this was written by X’. Nor is there any point in doing so. The value of the work lies in the very fact that so many contributors worked together, each bringing his or her own knowledge and skills to the task in hand. It is their joint effort, and that of the publisher who organized and financed the whole enterprise, which makes the book what it is. We might say that the team collectively confers on this books its ‘authority’, a word which, not coincidentally, comes from the same Latin root as the word ‘author’ itself. This is a complex, but far from unique, example of a work compiled by a team, and is therefore the product of their collective abilities. Despite the complexity, however, we can at least identify who has been involved; 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 collective origin in which no names will be found. In some cases we would not expect to find them. Who edits the telephone directory? Who writes a company’s annual report? Who is the author of the weather forecast in a newspaper? Some might dismiss these questions as being meaningless or of no interest. But we should not be too dismissive. Someone does this work; texts do not write themselves, even if the text consists of names, abbreviated addresses and telephone numbers, and the ordering 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 questions are of interest to those who publish these works. For a publisher, we might argue that an author is the person who undertakes to write or compile, or organize and manage the writing and compilation, of the work which will be published, and receives an appropriate payment. In analysing the process of publishing, it is convenient therefore to distinguish between a ‘writer’ and ‘author’. The definition of ‘writer’ is more generic than that of ‘author’; it is simply ‘a person who writes or has written something’, or ‘the person who has written something specified’.16 This is not wordplay; it is genuinely helpful in trying to understand this critical first phase of the publishing process in which the work to be published is created. We now have a slightly different model (Figure 4.3).

104 The Publishing Process

WRITER(S)

→

AUTHOR

→

PUBLISHER

Figure 4.3 Composing for publication

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

WRITERS

→

AUTHOR

→

AUTHOR’S FRIENDS/COLLEAGUES/ASSISTANTS

→

AGENT → PUBLISHER

Figure 4.4 The author and others

We should not try to push this sort of modelling further than it will go, but Figure 4.4 does usefully illustrate some of the possible relationship between those engaged in writing a book. Indeed, this version of the model can be applied to almost any form of composition in which a single named individual eventually takes public responsibility for what is written. It applies, for example, to each signed contribution to 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 the whole book together before it goes to the publisher. The model is applicable to any medium, and to any form of output whether written or graphic. It continues to be valid if ‘author’ means two or more people who share joint and equal responsibility. Above all, Figure 4.4 illustrates the complexities which underlie the creation of the material which publishers publish.

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Authors and publishers Composing material for publication is a complex process. It is always creative to some degree, and can be intellectually challenging. It calls for the exercise of skills some of which are common to all published material; these include the ability to write clearly and appropriately, and an understanding of how to present material to attract the intended audience. There are some formal skills which authors have to master, such as the proper use of grammar, syntax and vocabulary, and some purely technical skills such as the use of a word processor or typewriter. Creative, intellectual, formal and technical skills are needed in different proportions for different kinds of writing, but they are all always needed. Again we can illustrate this from various forms of publishing. The novelist is a creative writer, inventing plots and characters, although not immune to outside influences, or indeed to the realities of the external world. Biographies, memoirs and letters of writers of past generations suggest that they work in very different ways – a fixed number 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. Some write as an outlet for their artistic creativity; some to convey or promote a particular view of society, politics or religion; some simply for money. For most writers, motives are probably mixed, and we should not assume that commercial motivation precludes artistic achievement; that would be to dismiss the work of novelists from Daniel Defoe to Martin Amis. At the other end of the spectrum, let us consider a paper written for a scientific journal to report the results of research. It will typically have several authors, one of whom, by convention, will be the ‘lead author’ who was primarily responsible for the design and implementation of the research whose outcome is being reported. Collaborators may include colleagues from the lead author’s own laboratory or university, some of whom may have been specially employed using money from the resources which funded the research. When the paper is written, there is need for great technical skill. It must be clear and unambiguous in presentation. It may need tables, graphs, charts and illustrations, and include such specialized forms of ‘writing’ as mathematical formulae; there may be quotations in foreign languages, or esoteric specialized vocabulary, and so on. In writing the paper, it is likely that

106 The Publishing Process 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. At this stage, there is little or no scope for ‘creativity’. The report is factual, and the conclusions have already been agreed as part of the scientific work which underlies the paper. There is, however, a creative element; that came at a much earlier stage when the research topic was identified, the project designed, the work conducted and the conclusions drawn from the data which was assembled. The motive for publication is not commercial, or at least not directly so. Despite the fact that the journal publisher will make a profit (and sometimes a handsome one), the authors are unlikely to be rewarded with anything more than a handful of reprints. That does not mean, however, that there are no intangible rewards; scientific and academic careers are built on publications, and the material rewards are then real enough even though they do not take the form of royalty cheques for particular papers.17 The mixture of motives for writing for publication is an important element in understanding the relationship between author and publisher. 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 usually large corporations. Moreover, some of then largest corporations are involved in some of the most esoteric forms of publishing. Many scholarly and scientific journals, for example, are published by houses which are part of multinational conglomerates. Therefore, while the authors and writers can always be identified, the publisher tends to be impersonal. In practice, authors deal with individuals within the publishing company, or individuals who represent it. This individual is – 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, but so far we have not offered a definition. We can no longer avoid this. There are three principal contexts in which the word is used in publishing: •

the editor of a newspaper or magazine, who has ultimate responsibility for what is published there;

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• •

the publisher’s editor, who commissions and selects material for publication and is responsible for managing the publishing process; the editor whose task it is to prepare the author’s work for printing or electronic replication.

There are many variations on this basic theme, but this tripartite model is a good starting point.18 We have already touched on the role of the newspaper or magazine editor in Chapter Three.19 He or she has overall control of the contents and presentation. In some cases, the editor is also responsible for developing the publication’s own views on particular topics. This is most familiar, perhaps, in the Editorial which is found in almost all newspapers. It is anonymous, and is taken to be the voice of the newspaper itself. In practice, it may be the view of a strong-minded editor, an equally strong-minded proprietor, or a team of senior reporters working with the editor. Particularly in the case of major newspapers, which seek to exert political influence, the development of the editorial ‘line’ is a key activity. There is, however, much more to the editor’s job. He or she will typically determine which stories are printed and how prominent they are; the choice of a front-page lead (and the headline used for it) can be as influential as the editorial itself in shaping public opinion and indeed in selling papers. The editor will normally be involved in the appointment (and dismissal) of reporters and other staff. 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 to be appropriate. Some of this may be delegated to others (and on major dailies usually is), but it is the editor who carries the ultimate professional responsibility and legal liability for what appears in print. To a lesser extent, all of this is also true of the magazine editor.20 The context, however, is less frenetic especially in the case of a monthly. Articles are normally commissioned from freelances or written by staff writers at the editor’s request. The editor and his or her senior colleagues determine what is to be commissioned and published, and how 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 as it is of a consumer magazine. In either case, the editor normally works with help and advice; in learned journals, this has been formalized into an important part of the publishing system. The editor of a learned

108 The Publishing Process journal typically has an Editorial Board of experts in the field as retained advisors, and will normally call on other academics to act as referees. Their role is to read each paper as it is submitted and to form a judgement on whether or not it is worthy of publication.21 The publisher’s editor is very different from the editor of a newspaper or magazine. In contemporary publishing houses, the editor has a key role which might be described in other industries as product development.22 At the heart of the task is the planning of the list, that is the titles which the firm publishes. In this, there are, of course, many constraints on 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 policies which are established and agreed at the highest levels in the company, but the senior editors are typically involved in that decision-making process.23 Despite all the changes which have characterized the industry, editors are still the key to the development of a publishing house, for without 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; some arise within the publishing house itself. But from the perspective of the author and the agent, the editor is the publisher. Indeed, much of what is described as ‘publishing’ in the classic accounts of the industry by mid-twentieth century writers is actually the work which is done by editors.25 In small publishing houses, the selection process is typically in the hands of the owner (who is more often than not the founder). But in the large companies which characterize the international publishing industry, the activity is devolved to employees who – whatever 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 for commissioning titles, recruiting authors and so on. Their responsibilities 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 to some extent with authors. Contractual arrangements with authors are their responsibility, and so is the decision about whether or not to proceed with a particular publication. Their freedom of action varies between companies, but they typically have considerable authority to

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act on its behalf. In many companies, the final decision to commission a title or to accept one proposed for publication resides with the senior editors, often working with the marketing department. Publishers which have a major presence in more than one market (in Britain and the United States, for example) may consult colleagues overseas about the suitability of a particular title. For British publishers seeking to sell in the vast American market this is particularly important, and can have a significant influence on decisions. Nevertheless, it is the senior editors who are the key players in this process, as the essential links between 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 development 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 the decision-making body, or even after final acceptance. It is then the assistant editor (under a variety of job titles) who deals with the author on routine matters until the book is delivered. After delivery, it is the assistant editor who takes responsibility for managing the process of publication up to the point at which the printed copies are ready for delivery to the warehouse.27 The third editorial function is that of the copy-editor who prepares the author’s submission for the press. This task may seem more mundane than that of others who are designated ‘editor’, but it is no less essential. The copy-editor checks for consistency of style and presentation, corrects the author’s grammar and spelling (both of which are necessary more often than might be supposed!), imposes ‘house’ style on such matters as bibliographic references, use of upper case, the title-page, page layouts and so on.28 The results of this are invisible to the reader if the task is done properly, but good copyediting is essential to well-presented professional products.29 The copy-editor may also be responsible for preparing the index. He or she works to the instructions of the editor, although in small houses there may be direct dealings with the author when there are queries to be resolved during the editing process. There are many variations on the basic functions described in this section, and there have been many important changes in recent years. These changes are sometimes presented as if they were only a consequence of the growth of the conglomerates, but there has also been an important technological dimension. Certainly, it has often been

110 The Publishing Process argued that one of the immediate consequences of the growth of the conglomerates is that publishing houses have become less distinctive.30 It is a view that can be challenged. The conglomerates are precisely that: the results of joining together many smaller companies. Within them, however, distinctive imprints with their own editorial policies have often been retained. Acquisitions are sometimes made precisely because the conglomerate is seeking to enter a particular market. Indeed, there is some evidence that there are strong public perceptions of the ‘brand’ of individual imprints, and that publishers are now more systematically exploiting this.31 It is the task of the editors to ensure that this distinctiveness is maintained. It remains as true as it always has been that the internal culture of a publishing house will ultimately determine the nature and quality of its product, and that ownership is only one element in this culture.32 The business environment of publishing undoubtedly became harsher, or as some might say more realistic, during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Many of those raised in the more expansive traditions of the mid-twentieth century found this disagreeable, and expressed themselves forcefully.33 Others responded in contemporary management-speak which found little sympathy among many of their employees and authors.34 Yet even within the conglomerates, traditional high-quality literary publishing can survive.35 In practice, the financial pressures on editors are reflected in pressures on authors to deliver more promptly, and on some cutting of corners in quality control at the editing and proof reading stages. Technology has both helped and hindered the process. It has helped because the management of a business has become easier with the availability of more and better information to managers. More specifically, it has enabled some publishers to shift onto their authors some of their own traditional 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 are effectively eliminated, and at least some of the editorial functions are subtly shifted from editor to author. Partly as a counterbalance, agents have taken on more of the role traditionally associated with editors, not only in helping the author in a literary sense, but also in negotiating some of the business deals for subsidiary rights.36 Another way of expressing this is to say that the editors have lost a part of their key role as project managers.37

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In practice, the relationship between authors and editors can never consist entirely of impersonal business dealings. The author is always in contact with an individual within the publishing house, and both sides accept that there are necessary constraints in what they would ideally like to do. For the author for whom such constraints are unacceptable, there are other routes to publication. Nearly 20 per cent of book sales in the United States do not originate in the conglomerates.38 Small publishers (and that may mean houses producing anything up to 50 titles a year, or one a week) help to maintain diversity as they always have.39 Of course, the small publishers are also under pressure, none more so that the university presses with their commitment to the highest standards of scholarship. They are operating in the very difficult academic library market, and, to the distaste of at least some of their authors and audience, have had to change accordingly.40 Financial pressures on publishers are reflected in a multitude of ways. Some titles which might once have been accepted are perhaps being rejected, or titles which might once have appealed to mainstream commercial houses are now being published only by small nichemarket publishers or university presses. Even in the specialist academic and STM publishing houses, authors and editors are expected to be more businesslike, to adhere to scheduled delivery times, word limits and so on. Technical and typographical standards have sometimes been allowed to slip even among traditional academic publishers.41 Yet despite all this, there was something of a boom in general publishing at the turn of the new century. While there is more than one point of view on the impact of the chain bookstores in both Britain and the United States, there is certainly evidence that some bookshops have flourished since the mid-1990s. It seems that the trade is buoyant, even if the style of bookselling and the products available have changed.42 In the early 1990s, a sociologist suggested that publishing seemed very unresponsive to the marketplace;43 if that were true then, it would surely not be the case a decade later. All of these changes have had an impact on the relationships between authors and their publishers. Yet it remains the case that they are mutually dependent. Without authors, there are no books to publish; but without publishers, authors write in vain. It is precisely because the author-editor-publisher relationship is so personal that it is difficult to make valid generalizations about it. It can be confrontational, because

112 The Publishing Process although they have mutual interests, the author and the editor do have different motives, and there are inevitable conflicts in both literary and business matters.44

Business relationships: contracts and rights The business relationship between an author and a publisher is regulated by a contract. The basic premise of the contract is that the author is offering intellectual property which he or she has created.45 The precise terms of the contract vary, but there are some standard features in almost all such contracts.46 The contract invariably specifies the following: • • • • • •

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 to the publisher; • the obligation of the publisher to publish the work, if the author meets his or her contractual obligations; • a guarantee by the author that the work does not infringe the law relating to copyright, libel or obscenity; • details about responsibly for illustrations, proof-reading and similar matters. This, of course, is a model for a single-authored book, and assumes that the work is not yet finished; indeed, such a contract is normally issued when the book is commissioned. In practice, however, with appropriate modifications a similar contract would be issued in the rare event of an unsolicited work being accepted after completion. For more complex publications, there are inevitably more complicated contracts. In the case of a multi-authored work, each author has

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his or her own contract, which would normally specify the division of the payments. For edited works with contributors, the editor and each contributor has his or her own contract. The editor’s is the most elaborate, specifying exactly what is expected, while the contributors have a contract which covers the same ground as that for a single authored book, perhaps in a simplified form. Some contracts are almost always exceedingly simple; a contributor to a scholarly journal, for example, is normally asked to do little more than a sign a guarantee about copyright and libel, and grant the journal the right to publish the article. In book publishing, for both author and publisher, the implications of the contract are critical. The main requirement of the author is to deliver on time, and to do so in a form which has been agreed. This means the right book at the right level and length, and in the physical form (disk, typescript, etc.) required by the publisher. In return, the publisher undertakes to produce the work in a specified or minimum number 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 a percentage of the publisher’s income from the sales of the book.47 There are other parts of the arrangement which vary more between different contracts. There are three in particular in which the role of the 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 of contract and on delivery of the work, are set against the subsequent earnings of the book. For a handful of popular novelists, these advances are notoriously high; for most authors they are little more than a gesture. Even so, the publisher is taking a risk; advances are not returnable if the book does not earn as much as has been paid. The royalty itself can also be a subject of discussion. Traditionally, 10 per cent of the publisher’s gross income has been the norm, but there are many variations on the basic theme. Some authors attract a higher royalty; some have a royalty calculated on the recommended retail price rather than the trade price and so on. The principle, however, remains the same: the author’s income increases in direct proportion to the number of copies sold. The royalty system developed in the late

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nineteenth century under pressure from authors precisely because it was seen as a fair system of reward. It still is.48 The second aspect of the contract in which an agent or an author should normally take a special interest is that of formats and territories. 49 The copyright in a work can be divided in any way in which the contracting parties choose. They may agree that the publisher is acquiring worldwide rights to the book in all formats. For many STM, professional, academic and reference books this is normal. For general trade books, both fiction and non-fiction, there are more variations. For the writer of fiction, the key issue is probably that of the paperback rights, since it is in paperback that the largest number of copies of a successful title will be sold. These rights can of course be sold to the publisher of the hardback edition; the royalty will typically be less than the hardback royalty, but the assumption is that far greater numbers will be sold. In some cases, the hardback publisher will conduct an auction of the paperback rights among potential publishers, and accept the largest of the bids.50 Other contracts reserve the paperback rights to the author, which in practice means that his or her agent will conduct the auction rather than the hardback publisher. This is one of the areas in which it is said that agents are becoming more active players, and certainly authors’ expectation of what their agents can achieve, and their publishers concede, is becoming greater.51 Territorial rights are a particularly important issue for the British and American authors and publishers who jointly dominate the global market for English-language books. The most important aspect is actually that of rights in each other’s countries. The development of the multinational conglomerates has had a significant impact here. Thirty years ago, it was not unusual for a British book to be subsequently published in the United States and vice versa, with contractual obligations to limit the sales of the American edition to the USA and Canada, and the British edition to the British Commonwealth, with some provision for other territories. This system broke down in the 1970s, partly because of legal pressures, but also because the increasingly close links between British and American publishing were making it unsustainable.52 The American rights to British books are still sometimes dealt with separately, and so, less frequently, are the British rights to American titles. But the market has become both more fragmented and more global. Indeed, British and American editions of the same title may compete with each other in some markets, especially

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in Asia. At the same time, authors and agents may occasionally seek to sell 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 once a British-dominated global market is fragmenting as indigenous publishers move in, sometimes with pirated editions of British or American publications, but more often with legitimate locally created titles.53 Of course not all foreign editions are in the original language; translation rights are also a marketable commodity, although negotiating their use on the ground may be highly complex.54 For a handful of books and authors, subsidiary rights are a major source of income. These include the rights to make movie, video and television versions of the book (usually, of course, a novel), and the rights in marketing consumer goods related to such outputs. At least one author, the thriller writer Tom Clancy, has franchized his own name for use in computer games!55 The sums of money which can be generated 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 income not only from the hardback, paperback and translation rights in the books 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 for US$70 million (£49 million).56 These are, of course, exceptional cases, but the income which they generate for the publishing industry has some trickle-down benefits for everyone involved. Not the least impressive 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 and rights payments are not usually, of course, matters of public record; they are private financial transactions between authors and their agents and publishers. It is not, however, difficult to make a few informed guesses. If we take the average print run of most general trade books to be 5000 copies, and the retail price about £15.00, with a trade price of £8.00, the author’s income from the hardback edition can be no more 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 who produces one book a year can, at most, hope to earn a sum which is

116 The Publishing Process below the UK national average household income.59 Some authors can expect no payments; this is the normal practice with articles in academic journals, for example. A few are even foolish enough to pay to see 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 of income for some authors. Given the calculations in the last paragraph, it is hardly surprising that many have other occupations. These are typically in journalism, broadcasting or the academic world. Moreover, in some circumstances, authors can earn more from their books than is suggested by sales figures alone. Rowling’s case is exceptional but not unique. For many authors, Public Lending Right has become another element in their income. PLR was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1981, after a long campaign by the Society of Authors, and much opposition, not least from librarians.61 The basis of the calculation is that for each loan of a book from a public library, an author receives a small payment. The money comes from a fund of £9 million renewed annually by the government, and there is a maximum individual payment of £6000. In 2000, nearly 18 000 authors were rewarded 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 no myth that the great majority of writers of books are not well rewarded for their efforts.

From author to bookseller In this Chapter, we have considered an aspect of the theory of communication, and some of the issues which arise out of authorship and the relations between authors, agent, editors and publishing companies. We are now in a position to bring these matters together, as we consider the processes involved in putting the author’s creation onto the shelves of a bookshop, newsagent or library, and thence into the hands of a reader. The transactions which take place between the various parties are in effect the first stage in a process which can be 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, and linked it with the reader, Shannon and Weaver’s recipient. As we have seen, however, the first stage of this process is complex and involves a

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AUTHOR

→

PUBLISHER

→

DISTRIBUTOR

→

READER

Figure 4.5 From Author to Reader: a less simplified version

great deal of what Shannon and Weaver called ‘noise’.62 We shall now explore 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 in the context of the relationships between authors and publishers. We must now re-examine some of this from a slightly different angle, as a process of managing the creation and marketing of a book. For this purpose, we will first use as a model the case of a book with a single author commissioned by the publisher. We shall assume that the author is required to submit the work on disk. This will probably be about 12 to 18 months after the signature of the contract. Publishers like to solidify the plans for their lists about 18 months to two years in advance, for reasons which will become clear when we turn to issues of marketing and promotion. When the disk arrives on the editor’s desk, the first task is to read the text, or to have it read by someone else. A book commissioned from an established author is likely to be subjected to comparatively light scrutiny at this stage. Fiction will normally have passed through the hands of an agent, and non-fiction will have been commissioned from an author who is known to have expertise and competence. Even an agent may give only a cursory reading to a book by a wellestablished client.63 Any reading inside the publishing house is likely to be done by the editor or the assistant editor. A closer reading is likely for a first-time author, or for a more technical book, even one which has been commissioned. The contract always specifies that the work must be acceptable to the publisher, and this stage offers the last chance to reject it or to ask for significant changes. Academic and STM publishers, and especially the university presses, often send works out

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to specialist readers on a freelance basis. The process is comparable to that of refereeing for scholarly journals, and has the same purpose of establishing the merits of the work and shares conventions such as protecting the anonymity of the referees. Following this reading there may be matters which need to be discussed with the author. If a book has been formally refereed by independent readers, any serious issues which they have raised will certainly be referred back at this stage. Minor issues, however, will be held back for the time being, while the work goes to the copy-editor. Publishers traditionally employed their own copy-editors, but a shift towards the use of freelances has been noticeable since the 1980s.64 On the whole, this has been a welcome development, and seems to have worked well.65 Whoever does the work, the copy-editing process is likely to generate queries, some of which may have to be sent back to the author if they involve issues of accuracy, consistency or clarity of style. Some discussion may follow, but a sensible author will follow the advice of a competent copy-editor. At the same time, the book will be designed. Book design is a major craft in its own right, with its own traditions and skills.66 Design, like copy-editing, is increasingly a freelance activity. Indeed, there were independent designers throughout the twentieth century, many of whom were distinguished illustrators or typographers with established artistic reputations. As with freelance copy-editing, the system works well provided that the people involved feel themselves to be part of the team.67 The designer selects a format, develops the page layout and chooses an appropriate type. He or she is also responsible for such matters as the relationship between the illustrations and text, the design of the binding and the dust jacket of a hardback or the cover of a paperback, the form and presentation of the title-page, and so on. In many cases, these matters are determined by convention. In general terms, books are about the same size (which is in turn determined by the standard dimensions of printing paper), according to their subject matter, 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 the publisher, who is, of course, the paymaster. Books in a series, for example, will need hardly any individual design work, since they will simply conform to an established style. Even a one-off title, such as a

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straightforward novel, will often follow the publisher’s own conventions for the genre. It is only for complex or unique books that there is normally a full design process. Once the text has been edited and designed, it is ready to go into production. It is at this stage that both time and money are saved by having the work submitted on disk. The files which were submitted are amended to take account of the copy-editor’s work, suggestions by readers and other changes agreed by the author or required by the publisher. They are then reformatted to meet the design specification, and are ready for what is still called ‘typesetting’ although no type is involved.69 At this stage, a few proof copies are made. Proof-reading is not eliminated by the submission of electronic copy, but it is far less onerous than it used to be. Best practice is that the proofs are read both on behalf of the publisher (again often freelance work) and by the author. At this stage the editor or the author can complete any contents lists, cross references, indexes and other features of the book which need to refer to page numbers. It is also a last opportunity (always sought by authors, and usually forbidden by publishers!) to make final minor alterations to the text. Once the proofs have been passed and corrections made, the edited and formatted text is, in effect, printed out onto photographic negatives from which printing plates are made. It is from these plates that the book is printed. In due course the sheets are bound, and the dust jacket, if there is one, is added. The edition is then ready for the warehouse and the bookshops. The representation of this process in Figure 4.6 quite clearly illustrates the central role of the editor as project manager.

AUTHOR

→

→ EDITOR

TYPESETTER

→

→

冧

COPY-EDITOR AUTHOR DESIGNER

PRINTER

Figure 4.6 From Editor to Warehouse

→

BINDER

冧

→ EDITOR

→

WAREHOUSE

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While this has been in progress, other work has been going on to ensure that the books spend as little time as possible in the warehouse. The reason for this is simple: so far the publisher has incurred substantial costs, but has received no income.70 To maximize the profits, the book must move into the bookshops as quickly as possible once production is completed. The editorial team, and indeed the author, are all involved in this work, but there are also specialists whose jobs focus on promotion, marketing and sales. In a large publishing house, the marketing department is involved with every title from its inception. Indeed, the senior marketing people will work with the editors in deciding what titles to commission or which to accept. Their judgement is a commercial one. The key question for them to answer is whether they can sell the book in a way which will make it profitable. This answer cannot be derived from a simple formula. There is a complex mix of factors, including some of the most fundamental policy issues of the company. It is possible to publish a scholarly monograph in 750 copies and make a profit; but it is not possible to do this in the context of a company which normally publishes fiction in print-runs of 10 000 and expects to sell paperback and subsidiary rights. This is one reason why distinctive imprints have been retained within many of the conglomerates. It is only partly a matter of image; there is also a valid business case for recognising the differences between different sorts of profitable publishing, and organising 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 can be generated. Therefore it is essential to sell large numbers quickly. This can only be achieved by beginning the marketing and promotional activities at a very early stage in the book’s production cycle. Moreover, the promotion of the book must be properly targeted. The promotion of trade books which will be bought by the general public in bookshops is a very different matter from promoting academic or STM books, or indeed mass market paperbacks. For the general trade books, they key players are the retail booksellers, and it is they who are the target of the publishers’ marketing machine. This does not, of course, mean that the general public is neglected, but public advertising and promotion takes place at a much later stage. A typical issue of the British trade journal, The Bookseller, will illustrate the point.

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On 27 October 2000,71 one feature was headed ‘Book trade begins build-up to Christmas’. It is, however, the advertisements rather than the editorial matter in this feature which is of interest for our present purpose. Perhaps the most remarkable is from Random House. A sixpage colour insert begins ‘Who’s going to be pulling at you heartstrings . . .’, a phrase which occupies the whole of the first page. The answer is what are described (not unreasonably, it might be thought) as ‘strange bedfellows’, although they are also claimed as ‘perfect promotional partners’. The books are Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, the sequel to his notorious (and hugely successful) Silence of the Lambs, and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a reprint of Louis de Bernière’s already bestselling novel. What is the link? Films of both were due to be released! The publisher offers promotional material for use in bookshops (special racks, posters, dump bins and the like), and for de Bernières a printed version of the film script, as well as the books themselves. Both films were actually due for release in February 2001, some four months after this advertisement appeared. Random House needed to grab the attention of the trade. In doing so, they were also showing their own commitment to promoting the books in conjunction with the ‘free’ publicity which would be generated by the film. The intention was to make sure that the booksellers then committed themselves well in advance both to providing shop space and to taking copies. The lead time is typical, and the planning of the publicity campaign probably preceded the appearance of the advertisement by at least six months. Set beside all this, the Christmas market is all but neglected. The promotion of the 2000 Christmas books had taken place in the summer. There is a handful of advertisements which refer to Christmas. Chambers were offering ‘gift ideas’, but these were not specifically seasonal, and the titles (mainly dictionaries) would have been suitable gifts for any time of any year. A four-page Advertisement Feature offered some two dozen ‘Books for Christmas’, largely it would seem for the benefit of booksellers who had not stocked up in good time. For the trade, last-minute shopping is done in late October, not mid-December! The books advertised varied in subject matter from pop music to natural history, including the inevitable cookery books or rather books by famous cooks. Like the Random House feature, all of this was aimed at the trade. The style is actually rather dull and sober, but it conspicuously includes the vital information

122 The Publishing Process about trade prices, ordering and distribution arrangements, and reassurance about rapid delivery times. More specialized books are marketed very differently. Although they are promoted to bookshops, the process is more selective; the promotion targets shops which have an appropriate clientele or are in appropriate location. There is more direct advertising to potential endusers. New textbooks, for example, are promoted directly to teachers in schools, colleges and universities; if the title appears on a reading list, local bookshops (which typically work closely with institutions) will then order copies. STM books and research monographs are often promoted through advertising in professional and scholarly journals, and through direct mailings aimed at librarians. The same is true of new journals. Sending out copies slightly in advance of publication, especially for review or to key people in the media, is another important element in promoting many titles. For general books, this may 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 key individuals in the field who may influence their institutional libraries and 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 the reviews appear, and that stocks can be replenished quickly if it sells well. Most titles, even bestsellers, have a comparatively short shelf life. Few live for more than about six months in hardback or a month or so in paperback. Indeed, the publishers themselves want a rapid turnover, so that there is room in shops for the next batch of titles. A typical week illustrates the point. Of 100 bestselling titles 57 had been in the list for four months (20 weeks) or less, and only 13 for a year or more. There were two new titles, nine were in the same positions as the previous week; of the remaining 89, 44 had improved their positions and 45 were falling. The overall picture is of a short shelf-life and rapid turnover.72 The question of distribution has always been a difficult one in the British book trade, but its efficiency is essential if both publishers and booksellers are to benefit from successful general trade titles. Large publishers have their own warehousing facilities and distribution

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arrangements; smaller houses tend to outsource this potentially expensive operation to get some economies of scale.73 The specialist book distributors are themselves operating in a difficult and competitive market, with a recent history of instability.74 Electronic systems for ordering the management of distribution of books have been in use for 20 years or so. Even in the late 1990s, there were still those in the trade who were not using them, unconvinced by their effectiveness or reluctant 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. The model, of course, disguises the complexities of the process. The parties involved include companies engaged in warehousing and transportation, as well as the bookshop. An Internet Service Provider, the head office of a bookselling chain and other players may also be part of the process, depending on the ordering methods used. A good deal of paperwork is generated in the form of orders, delivery notes and invoices, even when parts of the transaction are electronic. From the bookseller’s point of view, perhaps the most important element is that the average delay between despatch of order and receipt of books is between four and seven days. Distribution is a key element in the management of bookshops, to which we shall return.76

BOOKSELLER

→

order → DISTRIBUTOR BOOKSELLER

→

books

→

Figure 4.7 A simple model of distribution

Conclusion In this Chapter, we have described and analysed how a book is transformed from the author’s creation into the publisher’s product. The publishing process is the essential link in the chain of communication from author to reader. The model which we have suggested can be replicated in all its essentials for any published object, whether it is printed or electronic, book or journal, intended for the mass market

124 The Publishing Process

Commissioning Acceptance Copy editing

EDITORIAL Design Production

MARKETING

DISTRIBUTION

Figure 4.8 The publishing process

Promotion Advertising Sales

Warehousing Orders

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or the most esoteric of specialist monographs. No published document can reach its reader without going through these processes, even if they are abbreviated or some stages are omitted. The business context may be that of a multimillion pound international publishing house or a small community of scholars communicating papers to each other across the Internet. Profit may be the driving force, or it may be irrelevant. 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 – are represented in Figure 4.8. Within each, there is a series of other activities, which are here shown as they are understood in general trade publishing. But they are much more widely applicable as a model of the process which we have been describing. In due course, we shall add a business model to this process model, but before we can do that, we must examine the next stage of the transmission of the author’s work to the reader. Sir Stanley Unwin quoted a translation of a poem by the German author Felix Dahn which nicely captures a publisher’s view of this final, and crucial, stage: ‘To write books is easy . . . To print books is a little more difficult . . . To read books is more difficult still . . . But the most difficult task of all that a mortal man can embark upon is to sell a book’.77 It is that task which we shall examine in Chapter Five.

Notes and references 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 nothing about ‘text’ in the sense in which a critic would understand the word.

126 The Publishing Process 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

29

30 31

32

For convenience, I shall assume that there is a single editor. See below, pp. 106–12. See above, p. 99 and n. 6. There are also some acknowledgements to named individuals in the Preface. COD and Collins Softback respectively. Terttu Luukkonen, ‘Is scientists’ publishing behaviour reward-seeking?’, Scientometrics, 24:2, 1992, pp. 297–319. See Beth Luey, ‘Editors’, in: Altbach and Hoshino, pp. 89–96. See above, pp. 76–79. See John Morrish, Magazine Editing, London: Routledge, 1996. Smith, ‘Refereeing’. For an editor’s view of editing, see Dan Franklin, ‘The role of the editor’, in: Owen, 1996, pp. 133–40. For a pessimistic view of the ‘disenfranchisement’ of editors in this process, see Curtis, pp. 53–9. See Richard Abel ‘The publisher, the editor and the role of critical rationalism’, Logos, 10:1, 1999, pp. 35–40. Abel takes a rather traditional view of the editor, and of the cultural role of the publishing house; but the essence of his argument applies to editors in any successful house, whether success is defined culturally or commercially. Unwin is perhaps the most obvious example. For a more formal analysis, see Coser, Kadushin and Powell, pp. 89–91. See below, p. 119 for an attempt at a more formal model of this relationship. See below, pp. 117–20. For a detailed account, see Judith Butcher, Copy-editing: The Cambridge handbook for editors, authors and publishers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed., 1992. When it is not well done, it is only too obvious. In one recently published and highly acclaimed biography from a major publisher, there are ‘expatriots’ [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 translated into English as if it were one of his other books. All of this is within about 10 pages, and is not untypical of the book as a whole! See, for example, de Bellaigue, ‘Seven sisters’. Jo Royle, Louise Cooper and Rosemary Stockdale, ‘The use of branding by trade publishers: an investigation into marketing the book as brand name product’, PRQ, 15:4, 1999–2000, pp. 3–13; Jo Royle, Louise Cooper and Rosemary Stockdale, ‘Do brands sell books? British researchers find some positive evidence’, Logos, 10:4, 1999, pp. 220–2. 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.

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33 Epstein seems likely to become a classic statement of this position. For an agent’s perspective on the same issues, see the very entertaining (and enlightening) 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 had been heavily criticized. His argument – that a publishing company must set high standards, have strong leadership, let professional staff get on with their jobs and create employee loyalty – is wholly logical. But the slightly modified business school jargon in which it was expressed is likely to have deterred 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 still here’, in: Owen, 1996, p. 112. 37 Cohen. 38 1994 data, quoted in Martin P. Levin, ‘The positive role of large corporations 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 still valid. See also Curtis, pp. 48–50. 40 See B.G. Jones, ‘Changing author relationships and competitive strategies of 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 respected academic 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 February 1995, pp. 24–6, 33. For a view from the end of the decade, see John Mitchinson, ‘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 book publishing’, MCS, 15:2, 1993, pp. 203–16. 44 E. Dimendberg, ‘Five movie scenes from the author/acquisitions editor relationships’, 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 opposition to the sale of rights in radio talks to the BBC, reported on the

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48 49 50

51 52 53

54

55 56

57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64

Society’s Website at www.writers.org.uk/society/Pages/warnfrm.html (consulted on 27 July 2001). See also Feather, History, pp. 178–9. This is why the Society of Authors supports it. See also above, pp. 50–51. This ‘auction’ is normally conducted by telephone, and is not a simultaneous competitive bidding process. In fact, it amounts to a series of parallel negotiations with two or more potential buyers, which the trade has come to call by this typically dramatic name. On the former point, see Sissons; on the latter, see Clark, ‘Great expectations’. Curwen, pp. 75–6; see also above, pp. 21–22. 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 the fittest’, The Bookseller, 4702, 2 February 1996, pp. 26–7. See also above, p. 19. See, for example, S. Taylor and T. V. Cassidy, ‘China: the once and future market’, PW, 245:30, 1998, supplement, which deals with perhaps the most difficult case of all. A large number of British and American academic and STM books are legitimately translated into Japanese, but there appears to be little published commentary on this. J. Zealski, D. Maryles and K. Jones, ‘Tom Clancy: exploring the worlds of a mega-selling author’, PW, 245:28, 1998, pp. 41–51. 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, see dailynews.yahoo.com/ (9 July 2001) and Times.co.uk (10 July 2001). See search.nytimes.com/ (29 March 2001). Calculated as 10 per cent of £8.00 multiplied by 5000. 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. The aptly named ‘vanity’ publishers put books into print at the expense of the author, but make little or no effort to sell them. 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 Brigid Brophy, A Guide to Public Lending Right, Aldershot: Gower, 1983, pp. 105–30. See above, pp. 103–04, and Figures 4.3 and 4.4. Curtis, p. 70. 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 assume that it was an in-house function; see for example Dessauer, p. 26.

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65 See Szbolcs Kemény, ‘Subcontracting in the publishing industry’, Logos, 7:4, 1996, pp. 289–92; and Meryl Lanning, ‘Working with freelances – and enjoying 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 also below, 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.com 73 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 Andrew Stone, ‘Book distribution profits disappear’, The Bookseller, 4913, 3 March 2000, p. 5. 75 See Sydney Davies, ‘Looking into the mirror’, The Bookseller, 4817, 17 April 1998, pp. 20–2; this is a commentary on a KPMG study which emphasized the importance of developing electronic networks for sales and 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; this is true even of the small number for whom profit is not the primary motive for being in the trade. Similarly, if an author wants his or her work to be read, it has to pass through a series of commercial transactions which will put it into the hands of the reader. There are many channels and outlets for the sales of books, journals, newspapers and other published products, and many routes through which they reach their readers. They all, however, have one common characteristic: there is an exchange of money. In this Chapter, we shall examine some aspects 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 are concerned, publishers assume that sales to the general public will be through bookshops. As we have seen, their own marketing is therefore aimed at the retail side of the trade, the bookshops.1 Paperbacks are far more widely available than hardbacks, for they are to be found in many outlets which cannot really be called bookshops at all. Much of this trade is handled by wholesalers, so that influencing their buyers is critical to the success of a title. Similarly, consumer magazines are sold in a wide range of outlets from small newsagents to the branches of national chain stores to be found in almost every high street and shopping mall.

132 Selling Books Many STM, academic and professional books follow the same route as consumer hardbacks, although there is some advertising and promotion which is directed towards individuals. Sales through bookshops, and direct sales to individuals, are however only one part of the bookselling trade. Libraries of all kinds, but especially public libraries and libraries in schools, colleges and universities, command a major share of the market, and their vagaries of funding can have a significant impact on the trade, as we shall see.2 There is, of course, some overlap between books bought by individuals and books bought by libraries, although at the more specialized end of the market libraries are the major customers. This is particularly true of the market for academic journals. Those which are published by societies are of course distributed to members, but library subscriptions are of great importance even to them. For commercial learned journals library subscriptions typically represent virtually the whole of their income. Complex networks of agencies and activities exist to facilitate this side of the trade. Promotion is aimed at generating library subscriptions, although this may mean promoting the product to those who will influence the decision to subscribe rather than those who will actually commit the funds, that is, academics rather than librarians. The importance of institutional sales is even more marked with electronic journals, even though the delivery system to the end-user may bypass the library in the traditional institutional sense.3 The development of the Internet is already beginning to have a significant impact on retail bookselling. Quite apart from its use as a promotional medium, there are Internet booksellers which sell direct to the general public, and are therefore competing with the retail bookshops. We shall examine this in due course, along with other aspects of more traditional direct sales to readers such as book clubs.4 To make sense of this complex set of activities, we shall approach the bookselling side of the industry from various directions. The key issues 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 commercial context of the communication process from author to reader.

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Selling consumer books In both Britain and the United States, consumer books are sold in many different kinds of outlet, not all of which would be primarily described as bookshops. There is no standard classification of these outlets in the British book trade, but something along these lines is commonly 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 retail book trade in Britain since the mid-1980s, and are indeed argued to have led a revolution in bookselling. Their large and well-stocked shops in prominent locations in high streets and shopping malls, usually staffed by competent and well-educated people, have been a significant factor in increasing the sales of consumer books. This new style 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 cent of the British book market, measured by value of sales.6 Similar chains in the United States had about the same market share for hardback books in the early 1990s.7 Because the purchasing power of the chains is so great, they can command excellent terms from the publishers at the upper end of the normal range of 35 to 40 per cent discount on the recommended retail price.8 The chain bookshops have obvious advantages over their rivals. On the other hand, while they have a strong corporate image, they do not lack individuality. Although the process of buying is typically centralized, shop managers are encouraged to order titles for stock using their knowledge of the local market, and to develop that market as they see fit. Individual branches of the chains thus 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, but not everyone takes a favourable view of that influence. They were

134 Selling Books blamed by some for the alleged collapse of the consumer book market in Britain in the mid-1990s,9 although in retrospect it is far from clear that there was anything worse than a blip in sales. There was a view that the chains were opening new shops at a time when the problem was not the lack of bookshops but the lack of customers, and that the new shops were therefore damaging the already perilous condition of those that already existed.10 The response from the chains was only partly by refuting the views of the traditionalists;11 even more effective was their continuing expansion and manifest success. The traditional outlets of the book trade are usually called independent bookshops. The assumption is that they are owned and run by an individual or a family, have a single site and, at least by implication, that they offer a high standard of service to their customers. This is indeed true of some of them, but such an operation has obvious problems in the face of competition from large national chains. The market share of the independents is unclear. One study suggests that in Britain it was around 16 per cent of sales by value in 1999.12 It is not clear to what extent this can be compared with a figure of 28 per cent of value in 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 a decline in the independent sector. The definition of the independent sector, however, includes the so-called bargain bookshops which sell cheap editions and publishers’ remainders. Some of these are not truly independent at all, but are part of small chains which operate in a number of towns, often with close relationships to wholesale remainder merchants.15 There are no data to enable us to determine whether it is the quality end or the cheap end of the independent market which has suffered a decline. There can be little doubt, however, that the chain bookshops are now the predominant players in consumer book retailing. In the United States, in the late 1990s, the chains controlled 54 per cent of all retail bookshops.16 In Britain, in 1998, 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 independent probably carries about 20 000 titles; a branch of a chain bookshop would normally have twice that number. Both, of course, carry hardbacks 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

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British book trade is the so-called CTN sector, shops which are primarily outlets for confectionery, tobacco and newspapers. Shops of this kind exist in almost every part of every town in Britain, and many carry a small stock of mass market paperbacks, often with only one copy of each of 50 or so titles. Commentators have always considered that CTNs were important to the mass market paperback trade.18 It is not clear to what extent this is still true in the mid-1990s, when it seems to have represented only about 4 per cent of the total value of retail book sales.19 One thing is certain: for the CTNs, books are a small part of 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 are profits to be made. It is certainly true that the depth of market penetration achieved by paperback publishers depends on sales through many outlets which are not recognizable as bookshops. Twenty years ago, this was largely through the CTNs. Now, we have to look beyond them with their small shops serving a limited locality and with a small customer base. First we should consider the supermarkets. Supermarkets, often in outof-town locations, have been among the leaders of the British retailing revolution since the mid-1980s. They now dominate the retail food industry, and have made significant inroads, both directly and through subsidiaries, into lucrative sectors such as gardening, do-it-yourself, household goods, clothing and furniture. They began selling books in 1985, when a specialist children’s book publisher, Sebastian Walker, signed a deal with Sainsbury’s.20 The traditionalists in the book trade were shocked, but could do nothing to prevent it. Indeed, it was a shrewd move, for most children’s books are bought by adults not children, but children accompany adults on supermarket shopping expeditions. This, of course, includes many families who do not normally go into bookshops; because of this, the supermarkets were able to bring children’s books to the attention of many who might otherwise not have considered buying them. Moreover, this happened in a shop which families visited regularly. Within a decade it was estimated that 10 per cent of all children’s book sales were through the supermarkets.21 By 1999, 5 per cent by value of all book sales were going through the same channel. The latter was a growth from virtually nothing in 1990, and a meagre 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 outlets and trades. By far the most important are the chain newsagents, which are not bookshops like Waterstones or Books Etc., but are certainly not CTNs. The market leader is W. H. Smith, which is itself virtually a British institution. From its modest late eighteenth-century origins as a London newsagent, Smith’s expanded with the railway network in the 1840s and 1850s until it came to dominate a large part of the British book trade. By the middle of the twentieth century, it held sway in newspaper and magazine wholesaling, retail bookselling (especially at railway stations, but also in what the company called its ‘town’ shops), and magazines sales. After World War II there was further expansion into book clubs, paperback wholesaling and other activities.23 All this took place in the context of shops which also sold stationery, fancy goods and gifts, and, increasingly, records and later tapes and compact discs. After difficulties and major reorganizations, Smiths emerged in the early 1990s as a strong omnipresent high street and mall-based chain, selling fast-moving hardbacks and paperbacks. There is nothing else quite like it, not least because it is familiar, safe and – above all – in prime sites. These sites still include most major railway stations, and now, of course airports and some bus stations as well.24 W. H. Smith is unique, but it is by no means the only unclassifiable shop selling books in most towns. Books can be found in petrol stations, food shops, florists, hobby shops of all kinds, and indeed almost any shop which sells goods to affluent people with identifiable interests. How much is all this worth? One estimate is that it may constitute some 10 per cent of the value of the retail book trade, a calculation which excludes W. H. Smith.25 At the heart of the retail trade in consumer books in Britain are the bookshops, both the chains and the independents. Between them, they probably account for just over half of the total value of the trade, if we include the bookselling activities of W. H. Smith. But the other shops – whether traditional outlets like the CTNs, or relatively new entrants like the supermarkets – provide an invaluable route into parts of the market which the bookshops do not reach. The revolution in British bookselling, paralleled in the United States and indeed elsewhere,26 has many aspects. The chain bookshops have provided new and stylish outlets for good books in almost every town in the country. The bargain bookshops have provided cheap books which perhaps develop the habit of bookbuying. Supermarkets and other psychologically safe

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environments offer books to people who may find ‘real’ bookshops intimidating, and have the advantage of attracting many customers who expect to spend large sums of money on each visit. The result is growth. But these developments also explain why the same phenomenon can be seen so differently by different people. What Waterstone sees as success, Norrie sees as the last nail in the coffin of the quality independent bookshop; both are right, and yet both are also wrong, for more people are buying books and there are more and sometimes better places to buy them.27 For both publishers and bookbuyers, that is 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, by definition, not manifested in shops of any kind: bookselling by direct mail, 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 are committed to buying a minimum number of books each year from a monthly selection. Most clubs have a ‘book of the month’, which is supplied unless the member rejects it. There are also supplementary titles (many of which are previous books of the month) which can be bought at any time. There are variations on these rules between clubs; some, for example, insist on a larger minimum number of purchases during the first six or 12 months of membership. The clubs recruit members through newspaper advertisements, usually in glossy weekend supplements. Most have an introductory offer of a number of books (four to six is typical) at ludicrously low prices. These are loss leaders intended to stimulate business. The traditional independent booksellers always regarded the clubs with suspicion. For many years, the British clubs had to operate within almost impossibly restrictive rules imposed by the Booksellers Association and the Publishers’ Association. The rules were designed to protect the retail bookshops by not exposing them to price competition.28 The clubs gradually increased their market share in the 1980s and 1990s, reaching perhaps something close to 15 per cent by 2000, when the largest British book club operation, BCA, had 20 clubs with

138 Selling Books about two million members.29 The clubs are successful because of the convenience which they offer to their members. By reducing the range of choice, they overcome one of the deterrents to using a bookshop. They are able to offer books at significantly lower prices than the same titles cost in the shops; hardbacks are typically offered at about the normal price of the equivalent paperback, and trade paperbacks at about half of their normal price. But they also bring benefits to the trade in general. The clubs buy books from publishers in large quantities. They can command high discounts, perhaps up to 70 per cent,30 but they actually allow publishers to increase the number of copies printed and hence to reduce the unit cost. Some of the savings inherent in 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 effect of stimulating the ownership of hardback books among those who might not otherwise buy them, and thus generally promoting book buying and perhaps reading to the benefit of the trade as a whole. Certainly there is little evidence that retail sales of hardbacks were damaged by the clubs; indeed, their growth coincided with a period of increase in book sales across the board. The titles offered by the book clubs are typical mid-market consumer books, both fiction and non-fiction. Some of the more specialized clubs (such as the History Book Club, for example) venture into the more popular end of academic publishing, and most of the clubs offer some major reference books, often as their loss leaders at greatly reduced prices.31 In a sense, book clubs are a particular manifestation of a generic phenomenon of direct selling from producer (in this case the publisher) to end-user. Direct mail marketing was not highly regarded in the British book trade until comparatively recently. It tended to be dismissed as being an expensive activity with low returns.32 At best it was seen as a marginal method of selling luxury books 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 computers to maintain mailing lists. Such lists have become a highly valuable commodity in their own right, especially when they are lists of influential or prosperous people, or people with a common interest. Membership lists 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 by their owners,34 with publishers among the customers. A list of members of a learned society, for example, can be used to promote a new title in its specialist field. So can lists of members of hobby groups or people with a shared interest in anything from a particular football club to birdwatching. For specialist publishers of hobby-related and leisure interest books, direct mail through relevant organizations’ mailing lists is an invaluable marketing tool. Academic, STM and professional publishers also set a good deal of store by direct mailings. They hope to stimulate both actual sales and recommendations to institutional libraries, and there is some evidence of success. The very low figure of 0.8 per cent response to direct mail advertising almost certainly underestimates 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 One effect of the growth of direct mail bookselling has been that the bookshops have found themselves competing directly with the publishers for retail customers. Competition has always been a thorny subject in the British book trade. Bookshops compete with each other, with other outlets and with book clubs and indeed with direct sales by publishers. But until recently they could do so only by offering better or different services to their customers. Unlike almost every other retailer in Britain, booksellers could not compete on prices. We must consider the whole question of book pricing and price competition before we can consider some other aspects of bookselling, and in particular the wholesale trade and 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 British book trade operated within the self-imposed constraint of the Net Book Agreement (NBA).37 The details of the NBA need not detain us, but it is necessary to understand in outline how it operated because the 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 the Agreement, the minimum retail price of a book could be set by the publisher. The bookseller agreed to abide by this, and in return was offered a discount on the retail (or ‘net’) price which allowed him or

140 Selling Books her a margin of profit. The discounted (or ‘trade’) price was typically about 30 per cent, although the discounts crept upwards from the mid1960s onwards. Publishers were not obliged to set a net price, although in practice virtually all British publishers did so, the only significant exceptions being for school textbooks which were normally sold in bulk to schools and education authorities. The sanction against booksellers who infringed the NBA was that publishers would no longer supply on trade terms, that is, with a significant discount. The legality of the NBA was first challenged in the mid-1960s under the terms of the Resale Price Maintenance Act of 1964. The case against it was heard in the Restrictive Practices Court, which famously found in its favour. The judge accepted the book trade’s arguments almost without question, most notably the central proposition that ‘books are different.’38 The gist of the trade’s case was that without the protection of the Agreement, retail bookshops would be financially insecure, and would be unwilling to hold a range of stock. In turn, the publishers would be less willing to publish books likely to have a limited, albeit viable, number of sales. Cultural, literary and scholarly publishing would suffer a serious decline, and there would be a disbenefit to the public. 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 to change in order to accommodate itself to changed circumstances. For a further 20 years, the NBA continued almost without question. In the 1980s, as free market economics came to dominate British political and business life, new challenges arose. At the theoretical level, economists questioned the last remaining examples of price controls, of which the NBA was probably the most insidious.39 The Monopolies and Mergers Commission re-examined the NBA, and the Commission of the European Communities began to take an interest in it as an inhibition to the free trade which was the foundation stone of the Community’s policies. It seemed likely by the mid-1990s that 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 Pentos Group of bookshops, which included Dillons and others, simply announced that his company intended to offer books at a discount. For a while the outcome was in the balance, but when W. H. Smith announced 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 first time in almost a century, British retail bookshops were competing on the price of their products.40 The consequence was immediately visible in the bookshops. The chain bookshops, in particular, developed a number of promotional ploys which were to become familiar to their customers over the next few years. Publishers continued to recommend a retail price (RRP) (as all producers are allowed to do), but shops were regularly offering books at reduced prices, typically £2.00 less that the recommended price. Another form of offer was that of three books (usually midmarket paperbacks) for the price of two. There was some direct competition between shops. The bestselling title of the first Christmas season after the end of the NBA was a book by the television cook, Delia Smith, which was heavily and competitively discounted, to the point 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. The number of independent bookshops in membership of the Booksellers’ Association declined by about 200 (from just under 1900) between October 1995 and August 2001.43 From the mid-1990s, however, the chains have grown impressively. Since 1998, the three major chain bookshops in Britain have significantly increased their retail selling space, 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 1990s was another indicator of underlying strength.45 This is reflected in the annual increases of 3 per cent (in real terms) of the sales of consumer books in the UK between 1995 and 1999.46 The relative decline of the Table 5.1 Retail space for bookselling 1998–99 Category Chain bookshops W. H. Smith (Source: see note 44)

Space in ft2 1998

Space in ft2 1999

1 559,000 1 300,000

1 898 000 2 900 000

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independent bookshops is, no doubt, a professional and personal misfortune for their owners and employees, but the general public has far better and easier access to bookshops than was the case as recently as the mid-1990s. The trade as a whole is clearly flourishing without the comfort blanket of the Net Book Agreement. The truth is that the British retail book trade has had to learn new tricks. Successful booksellers (both chains and independents) have developed new promotional methods, and adopted many of the techniques of marketing which have long been familiar other retailers. In the mid-1990s, some of the more far-sighted observers saw that this would be the only way to survive. The retail music trade was seen as one model.47 Others recommended both specific techniques (many of which have been adopted, such as the 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 offers), as well as more traditional generic promotions of books as products.48 Price competition, however, has changed the financial relationship between publishers and booksellers. When the Net Book Agreement was in force, there was a comparatively simple method of calculating discounts and effectively sharing the profits between producer and retailer. Typically, the retailer paid 70 per cent of the net price when buying books from the publisher, a discount of 30 per cent; it was estimated that this yielded a typical profit margin for the retailer of 5 per cent on each book sold. In turn, the publisher’s costs and overheads were typically just over 60 per cent of the net price, yielding a profit margin to the publisher of slightly less than 10 per cent on each copy sold at the trade price.49 The net price was determined by the publisher by taking the costs of publication and production, and then calculating the net price that would be necessary to yield these profit margins. Without a system of producer-determined retail prices, however, there has been fundamental change. Discounts on recommended prices have crept upwards to 35 to 40 per cent, but they are negotiable. The chains sometimes get as little as 25 per cent for books which they intend to sell at less than the recommended price, in order to generate larger numbers of sales and hence a larger gross income for everyone in the supply chain. The essence of the matter is that the publisher must determine how much revenue a title needs to produce in order the make a profit, and to recommend a retail price and agree discounts on it in a way which facilitates that. It is a more complicated world. A hypothetical example will illustrate the pricing dilemmas which now 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 trade price of £7.50), it is £45 000. Why then should the publisher offer the more favourable discount? The answer lies in trying to increase the total number of copies sold. If 50 000 are printed the copy cost will fall to about £1.00, but if the £10.00 RRP is retained, sales at a 25 per cent 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 bookseller will make a profit of £0.50 per copy. Provided that the bookseller sells more 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, the 50 000 will be sold to many different kinds of bookshops, some of which will sell at RRP and some of which will sell at a reduced price. But the principle embodied in this example illustrates how the chains can afford to buy books at less favourable discounts when they sell large numbers of copies which would not otherwise be sold at all. The chains generate significant cash flow, still make a profit on every copy Table 5.2 The impact of discounts on profit margins 10 000 Copies (£)

50 000 Copies (£)

Copy cost RRP RRP minus 20% Publisher’s costs

3 10 8 30 000

1 10 8 50 000

Publishers income 40% discount on RRP (Trade price = £6.00) 25% discount on RRP (Trade price = £7.50)

60 000

300 000

75 000

375 000

30 000 45 000

250 000 325 000

4 0.5

4 0.5

Publisher’s profit 40% discount on RRP 25% discount on RRP Bookseller’s margin RRP @ 40% discount RRP minus 20% @ 20% discount

144 Selling Books sold and attract additional customers into their shops. Thus both publishers and chain bookshops benefit; it is the smaller retailer who cannot sell large numbers of copies, and therefore has to sell at full price in order to generate adequate cash flow, who suffers. This is the economics which underlies the comparative decline of the independent booksellers. From the publisher’s perspective, the key issue lies is getting the right relationship between costs, RRP and trade discounts. For many mid-market books, publishers will take the risk of assuming that a lower trade price, and hence a smaller income per copy sold, will increases 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 sacrifices potential 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 not take 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 profit from the title, so that the RRP will have to be increased and this will have an impact on retail sales, especially in the chain bookshops. As in any business, the setting of prices at a level which both generates profit and 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 transactions which put a book into a bookshop are the publisher and the bookseller. This is never entirely true, since even in the most straightforward publisher-to-bookseller sale there is a third party in the form of a provider of the transportation which physically coveys the book from the one to the other. There is also, however, a number of other possible parties involved in the chain of supply. The most common of these are wholesalers. For much of the second half of the twentieth century, wholesalers were notable by their absence in much of the British 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 costs were too great.50 As a result, the British book trade from the mid-1940s onwards developed a distribution system which assumed a direct chain of supply from publisher to bookseller. To describe what emerged as a ‘system’ might however have seemed rather optimistic to many of those who participated in it. In practice the supply chain was, at best, of variable quality. By the late 1970s, there were about 35 000 shops selling books, of which rather less than 3000 were ‘real’ bookshops with a reasonable stock of books and reasonably competent staff. The elite of the book trade were the 500 or so members of the Charter Group of the Booksellers’ Association, who undertook to maintain certain standards of stock, display and service.51 At the same time there were some 2000 British publishers, although even then there was concentration of trade publishing in about 20 houses. The result of this was often chaotic. Publishers received orders from hundreds of booksellers every day. Booksellers were sending orders to scores of publishers. Some orders were for a single copy of a title from the backlist. Others were for dozens of copies of a newly published book. There was a certain complacency about this in the trade,52 and the few external analysts sometimes seemed so amazed by what they found that they glossed over the consequences.53 There were a few exceptions, notably Philip Unwin, who admitted that there was sometimes up to a month’s delay by publishers in filling booksellers’ orders.54 Yet the whole issue was so contentious that The Bookseller conducted regular surveys, highlighted offenders and continually campaigned for greater efficiency. The truth was that inefficiency of supply was intrinsic to the very structure of the post-war British book trade. Once again, the protective shield of the NBA worked against the interests of customers and the more adventurous booksellers. By the 1970s, there were a few wholesalers, but they dealt almost entirely in paperbacks and were generally no more efficient than the trade publishers in meeting orders.55 Gradually, there was an improvement, as technology developed which allowed faster communications and better documentation of orders. The development of the Standard Book 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 to produce invoices. A system called Teleordering, which now seems

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crude but which was advanced for its time, was launched in 1979, and there was a period of improvement in the 1980s. Bar codes began to appear on book jackets and paperback covers, so that Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) equipment could be used to monitor sales and stock levels. With the greater efficiency facilitated by technology, the wholesalers began to develop a new role for themselves in the trade.56 This new role is primarily in relation to the smaller, typically independent, bookshops, for which well-managed wholesalers can actually provide a very efficient source of supply. They have the capital to invest in systems as well as stock, and can offer very efficient services with a turnaround time of one working day for any order over a modest minimum (typically £100).57 For smaller bookshops, the use of wholesalers has now become not only an economic option, but also a means of ensuring that they can compete with the chains on service even if they cannot always do so on price.58 At the same time, small publishers (who have to deal with the chains as well as with independents) can also save on costs by buying in their warehousing and distribution services from wholesalers and others.59 Specialist academic publishers have tended the follow the same pattern on both sides of the Atlantic.60 Some of the large trade publishers still have their own warehousing and distribution arrangements, but many of them are now either using wholesalers or distributors, or indeed offering wholesaling and distribution services to others.61 Many different pressures have forced the trade in this direction. They include the need for investment in complex and expensive information systems; the desire of the major publishers to sell in bulk to recoup their costs as quickly as possible and hence to be able to offer more competitive prices; the need for the chain bookshops to keep down their costs for the same reason; and the particular dilemma of the independent bookshops and small and specialist publishers in competing against the chains and the conglomerates. Whatever the reasons, the distribution of books in Britain at the beginning of the twenty-first century is probably both more 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. Recommendations made by external consultants as long ago as 1998 have still not been implemented.62 Wholesaling and distribution have been transformed by the end of the Net Book Agreement just as much as retail 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 only factor which has driven the changes in the British book trade at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Indeed, the NBA was essentially a parochial matter of concern to trade publishers and retail booksellers in Britain. At the global level at which the British book industry is a major player, the impact of information technology was far more important. We have touched on aspects of this at various points throughout this and previous chapters. For example, the use of word processing by authors has made fundamental changes in the relationship between them and their editors in publishing houses.63 Some aspects of reference book publishing and scholarly journal publishing have been changed radically by publication in digital formats rather than on paper.64 Printing – the most basic technical process of book production – has been similarly transformed.65 In some respects, information technology has simply made things easier or more efficient rather than fundamentally different. The author, for example, still keyboards his or her work; life is easier because corrections and revisions are easier with a word processor than they were with a mechanical typewriter, and more efficient because time is saved in typesetting and (from the author’s point of view) proof-reading. Similarly, books are, as objects, what they were 10 years ago or indeed 500 years ago; it is merely the production processes and some of the materials which have been altered, not the product. But in some respects the changes have been more fundamental. In Chapter Six, we shall pursue in more detail such matters as the development of electronic books and journals and the economic and cultural implications for authors, publishers and readers. In retail bookselling, the impact of information technology, and in particular the development of e-commerce, has been at several levels: it has facilitated existing activities and created new activities, and much which lies in between. We have already seen that information technology has helped to make book distribution more efficient. We now need to examine more closely 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 online bookselling companies, of which the first and most prominent was Amazon.com. This is an American company which started in July

148 Selling Books 1995, and claims to have had some 29 million customers in 160 countries since then. It sells a wide range of products, including music CDs, DVDs, and computer software as well as books, and has even begun to move into household goods and other things far removed from the book trade.66 Separate operations have been established under the Amazon umbrella in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan. The British arm began as an independent company, Bookpages, in 1996, but was taken over by Amazon in 1998. By March 2001, it had attracted three million customers, and was able to offer 1.2 million British titles and 250 000 from the United States. The company had its own distribution depot in central England, and claimed to be the third largest bookseller in the UK, a claim which was almost certainly fully justified.67 A German subsidiary was established in 1998, and by mid2001 was offering one million titles, 650 000 of them in English, of which 500 000 were US publications.68 The French site was a later development, but in its first year of operation (2000–2001) it was able to offer 200 000 books in French and 700 000 in English.69 Amazon exemplifies the globalization and diversification of the book trade, and re-enforces the conclusions reached in our discussion of English as an international publishing language.70 It is, of course, not the only online bookseller. Some well-established bookshops have also 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 the American chain Barnes and Noble.71 Even the book clubs are beginning to develop an Internet presence to protect their market share.72 Booksellers and publishers, like most other companies, have established a presence on the World Wide Web. In a survey conducted in 1998, it was found that 36 per cent of publishers with Websites provided online ordering facilities, often at quite a high level of sophistication, and that 80 per cent of booksellers did so.73 It is argued that some publishers have held back from developing online ordering systems for individual customers because they do not want to alienate the bookshops. This may be so. On the other hand, it seems at least as likely that this is actually an extension of their traditional reluctance to deal with individuals because their systems are geared to dealing with retail and wholesale booksellers. Whatever the reason, it is clear that a Web presence has now become essential to achieving direct sales of books to consumers, and it seems likely that such sales are increasing.74

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Whether the development of online bookselling will damage the traditional retail methods and outlets is still a question for the future. Already, however, evidence is emerging that it may already be doing so in some places. In Australia, for example, where mail order bookselling has always been important and there are few good bookshops outside three or four major cities, the global online bookshops are having a deleterious impact on such stockholding bookshops as do exist.75 As we have suggested, direct selling has traditionally been seen as a fringe activity in the British domestic book trade, but against the competition of the online booksellers this attitude is no longer a viable option even in the UK.76 Certainly no bookshop can offer the range of stock offered by Amazon, which effectively is able to supply, within a matter of days, any British or American title in print, and many books from other countries as well. Conventional booksellers who develop an online outlet can only compete with this if they establish a similar scale of operations. At least for the time being, it seems that Amazon as first in field is the dominant player, and that the conventional booksellers can only regard their Internet operations as a supplement to their shop-based and traditional mail-order sales. In May 2000, a speaker at the Booksellers’ Association conference estimated that between 3 and 5 per cent of sales at that time were through the Internet, but suggested that this could rise to 12 to 14 per cent by 2004.77 There were those who disagreed with the forecast, and indeed its very precision makes it suspect! All past experience suggests that the use of the Internet increases very quickly in any field once it becomes established. The electronic transformation of the global retail book trade is only just beginning, and it is unlikely to be favourable to small independent bookshops.

Selling to libraries Retail sales to consumers represent only one aspect of bookselling. To the general trade publisher it is crucial. For the publisher of mass market paperbacks, it is the consumer market which is predominant. For some other publishers, however, and for the publishers of certain kinds of books and journals, the institutional market is in the forefront of their thinking. There is not, of course, a clear distinction between consumer 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 dividing lines are arguably becoming even less distinct. In both Britain and the United States, for example, there is some evidence of a shift from library buying to individual buying of children’s books both for leisure and for learning.79 At the same time, academic library purchasing is shifting from books and other printed materials to electronic products. Even among printed products there is evidence of a shift from books to journals, perhaps because the continuing above-inflation increases in journal prices continue to outstrip the inflation-related growth in library budgets.80 Selling books and journals to libraries has always been important to the book trade. It is estimated that about 7 per cent of UK publishers’ domestic sales are to public libraries, but for some categories of books this can rise to almost 100 per cent.81 In 1998/99 the total value of public library book purchasing in the UK was £91.9 million. Higher education libraries spent a further £47.4 million.82 There are some categories of books for which libraries are the only significant market; this is true of the public library market for popular fiction in hardback, and the academic library market for monographs and many STM titles. For most scholarly journals, libraries are the only significant customer. One analyst claimed that this market was worth US$40 million in the UK alone in 1998/99, representing some 80 per cent of academic library 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 as publishers and booksellers; recent developments, and especially the development of electronic journals, has made this more explicit and more 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 bulk from publishers, and offered special facilities to help public librarians to buy books. This was possible because there was partial exemption from the terms of the Net Book Agreement for participants in a scheme called the Library Licence, developed jointly by the Publishers’ Association and the Library Association in 1929.86 This allowed a bookseller to give a discount of 10 per cent on the net price of books sold to libraries. Although such licences were held by many bookshops, 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 library suppliers. The suppliers offered much more than books at discounted prices. They also provided a wide range of other services which sometimes included binding to the library’s specification, the insertion in the book of labels, marks of ownership and the other paraphernalia of library books, and so on. They offered approval and inspection services for new books, either at their own premises or in the library itself. Although the library supply branch of the trade in Britain developed because of the Net Book Agreement, it seems to have outlasted it. Indeed, the library suppliers seem to be as dominant now as they were a decade ago, and possibly to have expanded their businesses given their new ability to compete with each other on price. The services 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 as libraries which gave access to the public free of charge),88 but many other libraries actually made use of the service of the library supply companies. In effect they used them as agents; for the university libraries, with their comparatively high level of demand for foreign, and sometimes obscure, titles this was an important element in their ability to meet the needs of their users. Despite this, however, the specialist library suppliers never entirely dominated the institutional library market even at the height of their activities in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Some public libraries made it a point of principle to support local bookshops by buying some of their stock from them. This apparent altruism of this had the added advantage of giving relatively easy access to locally published material which the suppliers typically would not carry. Most independent bookshops had some library business, and some of the leading academic booksellers in London, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh dealt with university and college libraries all over the country, and indeed internationally. As in so many other aspects of bookselling, the development of the chains has had an impact on all of this. The decline of the mediumsized independent bookshop has, in effect, driven the libraries further into the hands of the suppliers. At the same time, the chains themselves, especially those which include academic bookshops, have developed slick and efficient library supply operations which can cater to the special needs of the libraries. Even comparatively esoteric titles can be carried if there is a UK market for a few dozen copies as

152 Selling Books opposed to the one or two which an independent might supply to its local university. Nevertheless, there is a problem. The decline in the real value of library budgets at a time of rising book prices has had a direct 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 to newspapers (as most do to some extent) they use normal commercial channels. A contract with a local newsagents (or more likely a branch of a chain) or postal subscriptions for weeklies or monthlies is by far the most efficient supply mechanism. So far as public libraries are concerned, this actually meets most of their needs because of the general nature of the serials which they provide for their users. For academic libraries, this is far from being the case. Scholarly journals, as we have seen, are typically published in small editions and are either distributed to members of the publishing society or sold only on subscription, or some combination of the two.90 Each issue effectively goes out of print as soon as it is published. To ensure that their needs are met in an efficient and timely way, most libraries use specialist serial subscription agents as their source of supply. The agents, some of which are actually specialized departments of major bookselling companies, buy serials from their publisher and sell them to libraries. Like library suppliers, they will, on request and at a price, service the parts as they are published, although this is probably less common than it is with books. They will also chase missing issues (always a bugbear for the serials librarian), ensure that annual indexes are supplied, and so on. Their profit comes from a combination of fees charged to libraries and discounts obtained from publishers. For the libraries, the advantage of the system is that it saves time and effort. All the library’s subscriptions (which may run into thousands in large libraries) can be channelled through one or two agents, and the invoicing and payment of subscriptions is thus consolidated into a handful of transactions. That in itself represents an immense saving against dealing with thousands of titles or hundreds of publishers, some of whom might be supplying only a single low-value title. The agent also spares the librarian the complex dealings which can arise when something goes wrong. It is the agent’s job to ensure that the library receives its entitlement, and the agency deals with publisher to ensure that this happens. This system has operated well for many years; 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 efficiency 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 on public library book buying of the combination of the decreasing value of budgets and the increasing price of books. In 1988/89, British public libraries spent £135.5 million on books; a decade later, it was calculated that the equivalent expenditure in 1988/89 pounds was £91.1 millions. Moreover book prices were not the only pressure on budgets, and as a result the percentage of total spend which went on book buying fell from 15.8 per cent in 1988/89 to 11.2 per cent in 1998/99.92 As we have already noted, in academic libraries there has been a shift of purchasing funds from journals to books; in the pre-1992 British universities in 1998/99, 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 its greatest, impact on the publishing world. Libraries began to convert their 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 cataloguing systems to be fully integrated with each other. As librarians and library users 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 which would be provided in whatever form was appropriate; it might be a book 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 the networked PCs of the early 1990s (of which universities were early adopters), and the subsequent development of the World Wide Web as the almost universal interface in the middle of that decade. The familiarity, simplicity and above all the almost universal availability of networked information brought to fruition the long-cherished dream of electronic publishing, and in particular the electronic publishing of the increasingly numerous and prohibitively expensive scholarly journals. In Chapter Six, we shall investigate this phenomenon in greater depth in the broader context of the impact of IT on the book trade in general and particularly on the publishing industry.

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Notes and references 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24

See above, pp. 120–22. See below, pp. 149–53. See below, pp. 171–76. See below, pp. 137–39. 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 recent survey of British retail bookselling is Kirsten Schlesinger, Book Retailing in Britain, London: Whitaker, 1999. Giles Clark, Inside Book Publishing, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 69; and Alison 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. See Albert N. Greco, The Book Publishing Industry, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1997, p. 220, where a figure of 23 per cent is given in Table 8.1. Clark, 2001, p. 77. On the whole subject of discounts, see below, pp. 142–44. Christopher Gasson, ‘Where did it all go wrong?’, The Bookseller, 4737, 4 October 1996, pp. 20–4. See, for example, Norrie. Waterstone, ‘In response’, is a reply to Norrie. A study by BML, quoted by Clark, 2001, p. 69. The 1994 data is quoted by Baverstock, p. 11. For the phrase, see Waterstone (note 11, above). For this aspect of the trade, which is not well reported in the literature, see Clark, 2001, pp. 74–5; Schlesinger, pp. 92–4. J. Bekken, ‘Feeding the dinosaurs: economic concentration in the retail book industry’, PRQ, 13:3, 1997–98, pp. 3–26. Clark, 2001, p. 10. Peter H. Mann, Book Publishing, Book Selling and Book Reading, London: Book Marketing Council, 1979, pp. 3–5. Baverstock, p. 11. Baverstock, p. 285. Snyman, in Owen, 1996, p. 86. 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 rapid and significant growth of the supermarkets. For an analysis, see Price Commission, Prices, Costs and Margins in Publishing, Printing and Binding, and Distribution of Books, London: HMSO (HC 527), 1979, pars. 6.38–6.42 See Charles Wilson, First with the News: The history of W. H. Smith 1792–1972, 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 German megastore: a Borsenblatt report on structural changes in the German book trade’, 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 market share 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, in this way. Oxford University Press, which publishes both of these titles, is not 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 was regarded as something of a radical in his time) is almost contemptuous of the 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 practice most people whose names appear on lists do not withhold their permission 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 development 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 account of the proceedings, which remains essential reading for those who seek a detailed insight in the psychology of the British book trade in the middle decades 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 the Publishing Industry, London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1991. 40 I have drawn heavily on the expertise of my colleague James Dearnley for matters relating to the NBA. I am grateful for his permission to make use of his PhD thesis, The Decline and Fall of the Net Book Agreement

156 Selling Books

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53

54 55 56 57 58 59

1962–1997: A study of cause and effect (Loughborough University PhD, 1997). See also James Dearnley and John Feather, ‘The UK bookselling trade without retail price maintenance: An overview of change 1995–2001’, PRQ, 17:4, 2001, pp. 16–31. Dearnley, pp. 145, 190–3. Schlesinger, p. 38. Data supplied by the Booksellers’ Association to Dr Dearnley, which he has kindly allowed me to use. Ibid. The data is derived from statistics collected by Publishing News and The Bookseller. Schlesinger, pp. 24–7. Bertoli Mitchell, Book Publishing in Britain 1999, London: Bookseller Publications, 1999, p. 34. See Bob Shingleton, ‘Just selling books?’, The Bookseller, 4687, 20 October 1995, pp. 43–4. Robert Snuggs, ‘The value of price’, The Bookseller, 4670, 23 June 1995, pp. 16–18; and ibid., 4671, 30 June 1995, pp. 41–3. 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. Feather, History, pp. 217–18. See Price Commission, par. 2.9; and Booksellers’ Association, p. 48. 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 from order to receipt. The same is true of Irene Babbidge, Beginning in Bookselling, London: André Deutsch, rev. ed., 1972, pp. 51–4. To put this in context, it should be noted that Joy was for many years the Managing Director of Hatchards, then a leading London bookshop; and Babbidge was one of the most respected independent booksellers of her generation. Curwen, p. 73, criticizes the system but, unusually for him, gives no statistical 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 consequences. In his Epilogue to Unwin, p. 232. Price Commission, par. 2.10; Curwen, p. 73. For a survey of these developments, see Clark, 2001, pp. 155–6. Baverstock, p. 15. See Michael Robb, ‘My wholesaler, my stockroom’, The Bookseller, 4682, 15 September 1995, pp. 33–4. Heffernan; for an American example of the same phenomenon, see Curtis, pp. 47–8.

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60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72

73

74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83

B. Holder, ‘Services to publishers’, LP, 10:4, 1997, pp. 355–7. Clark, 2001, p. 157. Schlesinger, pp. 34–5. The Report was by KPMG. See above, p. 110. See above, pp. 169–76. See above, p. 119; see also below, pp. 161–66. See its Website at www.amazon.com Data from www.amazon.co.uk www.amazon.de www.amazon.fr See above, pp. 16–19. 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. Book Club Associates is at www.bca.co.uk. This is only one of the clubs owned by the Bertelsmann conglomerate; see www.bertelsmann.com/divisions/directgroup Paul Kipling and T. D. Wilson, ‘Publishing, bookselling and the World Wide Web’, JOLIS, 32:3, 2000, pp. 147–53. The full report on which this paper was based can be found at www.shef.ac.uk/~is/publications/infres/ paper63.html 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. See Claudia Loebeckke, Philip Powell and Carl Gallagher, ‘Buy the book: electronic commerce in the book trade’, JIT, 14:3, 1999, pp. 295–301. See Christopher Gasson, ‘The direct approach’, The Bookseller, 4790, 10 October 1997, pp. 28–30. Nicholas Clee, ‘Prospecting at Brighton’, The Bookseller, 4911, 26 May 2000, pp. 32–4. See above, pp. 62–64. See Gates; and Marlene Johnson, ‘Children’s non-fiction publishing’, in: Bertoli Mitchell, pp. 66–7. For the data, see Simon Wratten, ‘Academic monographs’, in: Bertoli Mitchell, pp. 113–14. Baverstock, p. 226. 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]). See Anthony Watkinson, ‘Academic journal publishing’, in: Bertoli Mitchell, p. 117.

158 Selling Books 84 As always, comparisons are problematic! These data are taken from Creaser et al (note 82, above), but the definition of ‘periodical’ is difficult (see above, p. 68 and note 44), and in these statistics certainly includes newspapers, consumer magazines and perhaps annuals, as well as academic journals 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 1960s and early 1970s, but in the last two decades of its operation it was less liberally 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, intermediaries 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 publishing industry 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 and communication technologies are particularly relevant to a study of the publishing industry. Indeed, once we use the terminology of information and communication technology (ICT) rather than simply ‘computing’, that reason becomes immediately apparent. Computers can be used to assist in the management of organizations, and to monitor their financial performance. Computers can store and process statistical data about products, markets and customers. This is true for all businesses. But ICT offers tools specifically designed to be used for many of the activities associated with publishing and the book trade. Computers facilitate the composition of documents, and their storage and transmission. Networks of computers can provide access to these documents. ICT has thus come to occupy a central place in the publishing industry. In this Chapter, we shall examine this more systematically. At the outset, however, we need to distinguish between various functions 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 access to such functions as word processing and spreadsheets. Since the late 1980s, this has become a standardized piece of equipment in almost universal use throughout the world. Files created on one machine can be read without difficulty on another, because personal computing is dominated by one operating system and, very largely, by one word processing system. Microsoft, the company which owns the rights in these systems, has become one of the largest and wealthiest corporations in the history of the world. The stand-alone computer on the desk, however, is no longer the most common or the most functionally sophisticated of machines, despite its familiarity. Throughout the world, millions of PCs and other computers are linked to telecommunications networks and hence to each other through the Internet. In the 1990s, the ‘network of networks’ became a familiar feature of life throughout the developed world and indeed beyond it. It facilitates virtually instantaneous communication through electronic mail and other 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 Almost every aspect of this has had or will have a direct impact on how publishing works, because the Internet in general, and the Web in particular, is essentially a tool for the dissemination of information. And the dissemination of information – in the broadest sense – is the core business of publishing. The impact of the changes which have followed from the development of ICT and of the Internet are to be found in many different aspects of the publishing industry. Some are very specific, such as those which are changing the relationships between authors, publishers and readers. Some are creating new forms of publishing and perhaps pushing traditional formats into the background or even off the stage. There are also more generic changes which are having an impact on many businesses, as the Internet is increasingly used as a medium for trade. In this Chapter, we shall examine five key sets of issues as the framework for more systematic account of the complex and rapid developing relationship between publishing of all kinds and ICT systems. 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 ICT in a sequence of changes which began more than 20 years ago. We have already noted some of these in previous chapters,2 but we shall now examine them more systematically. Chronologically, the earliest changes were in the printing industry. Computer-driven typesetting came into experimental use in the 1960s, and by the late 1970s was becoming commonplace. The increase in its use was only partly a direct result of the development of typesetting systems. Almost as important – and inextricably linked to the change – was the growing preference for lithographic printing rather than printing from traditional metal type. The technical details need not detain us,3 but the consequences were important. Modern lithography requires first the creation of photographic negatives and then of plates from which the matter is printed; it follows therefore that anything which can be photographed can be printed. This is a grossly oversimplified account, but it emphasizes the essential truth. From the 1970s onwards, in all countries with a developed printing industry, traditional printing techniques have been displaced by lithography based on the use of photographically generated plates. Computers can clearly generate output which can be photographed. Once this principle was established, many other things followed.4 It is, of course, the essence of computing that once a file has been created it can be amended, revised and copied. In principle, therefore, no material should ever have to be re-keyboarded. The issue which then arises is at what stage the keyboarding takes place and who carries the responsibility for it. Again, there has been significant change over a comparatively short period of time. Authors began to use word processors in the early 1980s, but it was some years before the files

162 Information Technology and Publishing which they produced were compatible with the systems used for phototypesetting. By the early 1990s, however, the increasing dominance of Microsoft’s Word software, and its evolution into the norm of word processing, meant that is was practicable to devise systems which publishers and printers could use economically to manipulate authors’ texts. It is now, as we have suggested,5 common practice for authors to be contracted to submit their work on disk in one of a small number of compatible word processing packages. Some editors will then work only with the electronic file, although others still prefer to work on paper, or to use a paper copy in parallel with the electronic version. In any case, the author’s file is disturbed only when corrections are needed. This has effectively eliminated major sources of typographical errors in the processes of typesetting and proof correction. It saves time, and hence money. Indeed, it is probably a significant factor in holding down the real costs of book production. This has helped to keep book prices under control, although despite the use of more cost-effective technology retail prices have typically increased at a rate above that of general retail price inflation.6 There are also, however, other implications, not all as favourable. We have already suggested that one effect of this change has been to shift the balance of responsibility from the publisher to the author in many respects, and especially in ensuring typographical accuracy and consistency. Although good publishers still have their books professionally copy-edited, all but the most assiduous probably spend less time and effort on it than was traditionally the case. Proof-reading has certainly become a cursory activity in some publishing houses, with both authors and editors tending to assume that the bulk of the work has been done at an earlier stage or by someone else. This has obvious dangers, as well as economic benefits. The process of transition from word-processed file to the appearance of a traditional printed text has also become a less complex matter. A modern word processing package has dozens of fonts, and can generate any type size which is likely to be used in the great majority of books. It can deal with all the variations of the Latin alphabet (accented letters and so on), and it can generate both Cyrillic and Greek, and sometimes Arabic. There is software for many Asiatic scripts, including not only Chinese and Japanese, but also Pali (for certain Indic languages) and Thai. Indeed, computers have vastly eased the problem of producing books in what printers historically called

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‘exotic’ scripts, and especially in Chinese with its tens of thousands of characters. Scripts, fonts and sizes, however, are only one contributor to the appearance of the printed page. Layout and design are equally important, and again it is now possible to replicate the traditional appearance of a Western printed book from matter keyboarded in a word processor. This was not always so. Publishers began to try to exploit the output of word processors (and before that of electric typewriters) at a very early stage in their development. At that stage, the output looked more like typescript than print. From the late 1960s until, in some cases, the early 1980s, there were some publishers, especially of academic monographs, who produced books directly from the copy submitted by authors with no resetting but also with no editing and virtually no design. They looked like what they were: photolithographic reproductions of the output of a typewriter or a daisy-wheel printer. All of this has now vanished. The development of desktop publishing (DTP) systems in the 1980s was the first stage in bridging the gap between the word processor and typesetter. DTP systems are PC-based, but have software which allows the operator to create both typography and layout which looks like a traditional printed book.7 The systems now used by both publishers and book production companies have effectively restored the traditional appearance of the book. Indeed, they offer a greater range of choice to the designer than 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 are compatible with the systems which will be used after the work is submitted. In practice, transfer from word processed file to computerdriven typesetter is never quite straightforward. From the publisher’s point of view, the easiest way in purely technical terms is to require the author to produce ‘camera-ready copy’ (CRC), but this leaves little room for manoeuvre, and is rarely employed except by the publishers of very short-run academic monographs. CRC is just that: the output from the author’s file can be photographed and turned into printing plates. Even without DTP systems, an aesthetically acceptable output can be achieved. It is perhaps a little more common to ask the author to encode his or her files with the tags and markers that are needed to generate fonts, spaces and so on. More often, however, the mark-up

164 Information Technology and Publishing process is done for the publishing house (often by freelances) using some 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 still beyond most authors’ expertise.8 In practice, authors’ word-processed files are normally edited and marked up by or for the publisher before the final version is generated for printing. The generation and editing of author’s text inevitably dominates any discussion of the immediate impact of ICT on print publishing, for it lies at the very heart of the process. Authors work differently, and they relate differently to their editors. It has already been suggested that there has been a consequent shift of responsibility from publisher to author in some critical matters.9 In business terms, this shift could also be seen as a shift of power from publisher to author. Precisely because authors are expected to do more than was once the case, they are more fully in control of the process of creating their books. They can even have some influence on the physical appearance of their work. Towards the end of this Chapter we shall return to this theme for one last time, as we explore how ICT has empowered authors even more directly, by offering them cheap and robust systems for producing their own books and bypassing at least some parts of the multinational publishing industry.10

Electronic publishing Electronic publishing has already featured many times in this book, as we have analysed how the modern publishing industry actually works. We shall now examine it more systematically, and try to assess its impact and significance for the industry as a whole. We must begin however – perhaps somewhat belatedly – by trying to offer a definition. 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., so that it can be accessed by a computer’.12

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These definitions differ in one important respect. The first is explicitly concerned with the electronic publication of material which might otherwise have appeared in printed form as ‘books etc.’; the latter refers more generally to ‘information’. In both cases, we must assume that the use of the words ‘publishing’ and ‘publication’ relates to their own definitions of those words and the range of commercial implications which they attach to them.13 The issue here is not just a matter of semantics. If we regard publishing as being essentially a series of commercial transactions (albeit transactions in which the object of the commerce is intellectual as well as physical property), then much, and perhaps most, of the material covered by the second definition cannot truly be described as publications. The Collins Softback definition could be argued to cover the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, where the vast bulk of material is free of charge at the point of access. Such access charges as there may be represent either capital investment 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 of information on the Web is by no means irrelevant to publishers, as we shall see,14 we cannot make much sense of electronic publishing in a commercial sense if we broaden the definition to include it. For our present purpose, therefore, we shall confine ourselves to a discussion of those aspects of electronic publishing whose products are objects of commerce 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 of traditional publishing.15 Certainly from a technological perspective this could be argued to be the case.16 A brief consideration of the outputs and format of the electronic publishing process will perhaps help to clarify the point. The most familiar physical format is the CD-ROM, an optical disk containing digital data which is read through a computer. The CD can carry anything which can be digitized: text, graphics, still or moving pictures, or sound. Any particular disk may have only one of these (such as sound in the case of the audio CD), or a combination of some or all of them (called multimedia). What appears can be anything from near-broadcast quality video to text which looks like old-fashioned typescript. The other format which we 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 the whole, however, at the present stage of development complex material which is accessed online is likely to be of somewhat lesser quality in terms of video and audio than is material accessed on a CD. Moreover, charges are normally incurred (even if not directly by the end-user) for access as well as for the material itself. It is immediately clear that by any traditional definition of publishing, much of what is commercially available on CD can be argued to be outside the domain of the publishing industry; we have already suggested that this is true of the bulk of the material on the World Wide Web and elsewhere on the Internet. Practice, however, is rapidly overtaking theory in electronic publishing. There is no doubt that many publishers came alarmingly close to missing the boat. While few would have wished to move into the music or computer games industries, the production of multimedia packages in the mid-1990s was a real challenge to what some publishers were doing. The pioneering work in developing multimedia packages outputs came from the software houses rather than the publishing houses, at least in the early years.17 Only towards the end of the 1990s did some publishers began to catch up, and make important titles available in electronic formats. Publishing on CD-ROM has now become a familiar part of the landscape, and the products are to be seen in both publishers’ catalogues and – perhaps even more significantly – in bookshops. Online publishing – which some would regard as the purest form of electronic publishing – is still largely confined to products for academic and business users. Electronic journals have already achieved a significant place in the academic world, and are coming to be accepted as one of the normal forms of publication of research.18 In the business world, where the currency and accuracy of data are critical and costs can be passed on to customers if the data is good enough, many of the traditional financial information services are now available only online. At least one major print publisher of business information 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 in some sectors is indeed an important development, to which we shall return.20 Even so, it does not necessarily and invariably represent the

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revolutionary change in the publishing process which is sometimes presented.21 Let us consider some of the key elements in that process in this context. First, there is the critical issue of the writing and selection of material for publication. From the author’s perspective there are clearly some technical differences. He or she is, by definition, obliged to prepare and submit a file in a specified digital format, but, as we have seen, this has almost become the norm for print publication as well. There are some facilities available to the author which are less readily accessible to the author of a printed work. In dealing with statistical data, for example, the author can create graphic representations as tables, charts and the like, knowing that they will be published in the precise form in which they are compiled. The same applies to the use of colour, normally available on all modern output devices, but often not used in printed scholarly journals.22 In broad terms, the author’s contribution to an electronic publication is the same as it is to a print publication, and many of the issues which were raised in Chapter Three and Chapter Four are still applicable.23 Similarly, the selection of material for publication electronically is essentially the same as for printed works. Editors will take account of subject matter, quality, commercial viability, suitability for purpose and so on. As we have seen, some electronic journals have online submission and refereeing as well as online dissemination, but the objectives are the same as with conventional journals.24 Up to the point at which the material is ready to go into public domain, electronic publishing replicates much of what happens in traditional publishing. At subsequent stages in the process there are indeed some significant differences. The output may be carefully edited for presentation as well as content, in a process equivalent to that of the design of a printed product, and in the case of a CD, although not an online publication, there is a also a production process analogous to the printing and binding of a book or journal. Advertising, sales and distribution for CDs are also parallel to what is done for books with a similar content and market. Online products are of course different in all of these matters, and it is in that sense that they can perhaps be understood as being more truly electronic publications in every respect. Drawing parallels with print publishing, and noting continuity as well as change, should not be taken as a denial of the very real ways in which electronic publishing is different. This is true even in terms of

168 Information Technology and Publishing content. The example of the author’s ability to generate graphics and to use colour is a specific instance of a general truth: that an electronically published product can take advantage of the whole capacity of a computer. Multimedia publications exemplify this. CD encyclopaedias, for example, can be supported by video and audio material, as well as graphics and photographs. The quality and depth of the product can therefore be greater than that of its print-on-paper predecessor. When we add to the mixture the facility to move from one product to another through electronic links on the Internet, we are clearly dealing with a different kind of publishing. Electronic publishing is, in the final analysis, simply one more way of putting material into public domain. The real issues, from the publisher’s perspective, are not technical but commercial and professional; they are issues of quality control, design, pricing and sales. Like all publishing, electronic publishing is centrally concerned with content and profit, and format is merely a means to an end.25 Electronic formats can, as we have suggested, give the author and the publisher greater freedom in the use, presentation and design of content, especially when the work is published online and can therefore take advantage of links across the Internet and the Web. Electronic documents, however, also have certain other characteristics which have significant implications for publishers. The most important of these is that digital documents can be copied and transmitted with little difficulty. This poses the greatest challenge that copyright law has ever had to face, and raises fundamental issues about whether intellectual property 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 commercial publishing. If publishers can no longer be certain that they are buying the sole rights in a work, this will certainly have an impact on the prices which they are prepared to pay. To exacerbate matters, the uncertainty is not one that can be addressed through contracts, and in practice it is barely susceptible to being remedied at law. This matter is of such importance for the future of publishing that we shall return to it in a more general context in Chapter Seven. Despite the potential difficulties, however, publishers are looking for, and increasingly finding, ways in which they can exploit the benefits of ICT as a carrier of content. Exploitation is not across the board. Electronic publication of fiction is still in its infancy, although a few authors and publishers have experimented with it with some success.26

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There have even been experiments with interactive fiction in which readers can play a part in the development of the plot, or choose alternative plots at various points in the story.27 Children’s publishers, especially in the young adult market where the customers are so familiar with networked computing, were among the pioneers of electronic publishing, and they are continuing to exploit it.28 The use of electronic media is argued to have changed children’s books significantly, and to have fragmented what was allegedly an homogenous genre.29 Whether or not one accepts this perhaps rather esoteric argument, it is unquestionably the case that a new approach is needed by publishers and authors if they are to be successful in developing highquality, multimedia products for the children’s and youth markets.30 It is, however, in the academic, professional and reference fields that electronic publishing has so far made its greatest impact, with educational publishing following not far behind.

The impact of electronic publishing Reference publishing in transition Reference books represent one of the great traditions of the publishing industry.31 Some titles have a history of a century or more, and have themselves become the subject of scholarly study.32 The compilation and publishing of great works of reference is, however, an expensive and time-consuming business. The market is specialized, even for general works of reference. Although there has always been a small private market for such works as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and some smaller works (such as the various derivatives of the Oxford English Dictionary) are directed at that market, the most important buyers of reference books are actually libraries. Even in libraries, reference books are treated differently. The ‘reference’ section of a typical public, university or college library consists of books which may not be borrowed.33 This is partly because many of them are very expensive, but mainly because they are considered to be works which will be consulted briefly by a large number of users, and should therefore be continuously available. Reference publishing is, as a consequence, exceptionally heavily dependent on library budgets, and particularly susceptible to changes in library provision.

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One very important development in libraries in the 1990s was the increased reliance on electronic sources of information. Almost all libraries except the very smallest now offer some sort of network access to their users. This can range from full access to the Internet to access to a local area network through which a limited number of selected databases is available. Whatever the specifics, library users have become familiar with electronic sources, and with the idea that they are part of what the library provides. This has had an inevitable impact on the publishers of reference books. The growing expectation of 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 traditional reference materials in the least traditional of formats. Some of the greatest of reference works are now available electronically, either as CDs or online. These include Grove’s Dictionary of Music,34 and the Oxford English Dictionary. All manner of problems can arise from this, not least for publishers as they feel their way towards economically viable policies on pricing for online products.35 At the same time as many key reference products are beginning to be published electronically as well as on paper, a number of major publishers are converting their entire backlists of reference and other academic titles so that they can made available online.36 There are serious questions over the economic viability of print as a medium for major works of reference in the future.37 It seems almost certain that the future of reference publishing will be largely electronic. The implications of this are significant for publishers and readers alike. Publishers will need to develop new skills and ensure that they keep abreast of the most rapidly developing technology in history. They will also need to face up to a new kind of competition. Good reference materials will always be expensive to compile, although providing electronic output can make significant inroads into costs of production and distribution. The problem is that publishers may be perceived as putting their priced products in competition with the typically free products available on the Internet. It is true that some are facing this challenge by developing their own presence on the Web and making content 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 not normally be willing to make material freely available when it has cost

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them a great deal of money to assemble it. Yet they are competing in a ‘marketplace’ in which uncharged access is currently the normal expectation. The only option left open to them is to compete on the currency and accuracy of the information and the quality of its presentation. The hope is that librarians and library users will recognize the qualitative difference which is on offer, and be prepared to pay for it. It is precisely in this sense that the publishing industry’s traditional concern 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 by the end of the present decade. It is more than likely that many scholarly journals will beat them to the finishing post, at least in scientific fields. We have already discussed a number of aspects of the publishing of academic journals,40 but some of their key features need to be reiterated before we consider the shift to electronic publication: •

•

•

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these are highly specialized publications. Even those which cover the whole of a broad-based subject (such as the English Historical Review, or the American Journal of Physics) are read almost entirely by academics and other researchers in the field, and very occasionally by undergraduate students. The more specialized journals may have a regular readership measured in scores rather than hundreds; a significant proportion of the readers are also contributors to them. This is particularly true of the most specialized; in other words, the smaller the readership, the more likely it is that most readers will be past, current or future authors of papers in the journal; many of the most specialized are issued by commercial publishers who need to make a profit. On the other hand, some journals are published by learned societies and distributed to their members (Publications of the Modern Language Association; Journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry); subscriptions are typically expensive, and have increased at a rate far 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 some cases led to shorter print runs and even higher prices; the principal market is academic and special libraries except for a handful of commercially published journals. This makes the journal publishing sector peculiarly susceptible to university and research agency budgets, which are themselves vulnerable to the vagaries of public sector funding; journal publication is essential to career progression in many academic disciplines, especially in the sciences, and an important contributor 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 journals towards electronic publishing. Perhaps the central issue has been that of the rising cost of journals at a time when titles were proliferating and library budgets were at best constant. The academic community was locked into the use of refereed journal publication not only as a means of disseminating the results of research, but also as a critical element in appointment and promotion processes within its own profession. The pressures on libraries – which bear the brunt of the financial burden – were becoming intolerable even 15 years ago, so that finding a way around the commercial publishing system for journals seemed desirable and perhaps essential. This was the impetus for many of the early experiments which explored how an electronic journal might work.41 Many of the technical problems which were encountered in the 1980s were overcome by the development of the Internet and Web-based interfaces in the mid-1990s. Moreover, academics, and especially scientists, were among the earliest adopters of network technology; indeed, the Internet was largely developed within the scientific community and the Web was specifically designed to serve scientists in the first instance.42 As long ago as 1990, electronic communication was a fact of academic life. The journal problem, however, could not be solved by technology alone. Libraries had tried to meet the demands of their users for journals which they could no longer afford to buy by using inter-library lending and document delivery systems of various kinds. Such services had indeed existed since before World War II (for the proliferation of the

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scientific journal literature has been seen as a problem since at least the 1920s!43), but their use was growing as fast as the literature itself by the 1970s. Journal articles were typically supplied as photocopies, a service made possible by the ‘fair dealing’ rules which were developed (specifically for this purpose) under the umbrella of existing copyright laws.44 Libraries saw themselves increasingly as providing access to information rather than simply being storehouses of books and journals. It was a trend which was inevitably strengthened by the introduction of online information services from the late 1970s onwards. Even as scientists were speculating on the possibilities of electronic communications, therefore, libraries were already exploiting such systems as already existed, and were developing strategies to cope with the very problem which the scientists themselves were both creating and addressing. The missing factor in the equation was the publishers. Some of the learned societies were early enthusiasts for electronic publication,45 but the commercial publishers showed greater reluctance. It was only towards the very end of the 1990s that the almost universal availability of the Internet in the academic community and the robustness of the Web finally persuaded them that electronic journals were a viable option. What was becoming clear however was that some of the many relationships in academic journal publishing would need to be re-engineered. The sense that authors, editors and readers were part of the same community would certainly have to be maintained. By contrast, the supplier-customer relationship between libraries and publishers needed to undergo significant change, as did that between libraries and end-users. In theory, an online journal can be made available to anyone with access to the Internet. In practice, it remains a product for which a charge normally has to be made. But how that happens has undergone profound change. Instead of subscribing to the journal, a library (or indeed an individual) can pay for the particular article which is wanted without having to acquire several others which may never be read. The conundrum for publishers was how to reconcile charging for access to individual articles with generating a sufficient income stream to support the publication. This could only be achieved by working closely 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 a future in which journals would be published by academics or their universities, and the traditional publishers would be cut out of the

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loop altogether. This is, of course, theoretically possible, and indeed such journals have been developed.47 But there is still a publisher; it is just that it is a different kind of organization, not driven by the need to make a profit. What has actually happened is that the journal publishers (such as Elsevier and Blackwell) who have moved into electronic publishing on a large scale have negotiated agreements with libraries to give access to their users. The immediate future certainly lies in such licensing schemes. A university, or a body acting on behalf of a group of universities (such as all the universities in a country, for example), buys access rights from the publisher. These are typically defined in terms of who may consult the material (members of the university, all registered users of a particular library, or some similar group), and the scheme for charging for use. The latter may be an annual fee or a charge per access. In either case, the role of the subscription agent is also being redefined as the provider of an online portal 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 closely together to develop the scholarly communication system in a networked environment to their mutual benefit.49 Ultimately, however, this will only be successful if the integrity of the system is also preserved. For the academics, this depends on the confidence which they can have in electronic publications both in terms of their long-term future and their control over the quality of the contents. Certainly, there is evidence that it is the libraries, trying to relieve the pressure on their budgets, which are pushing forward on this front against some continuing resistance from the more conservative elements in the scientific community.50 One solution which has been widely advocated and practised is so-called parallel publishing, in which there is both a printed and an electronic version of the same title,51 but this can only be an interim measure for it makes little economic or academic sense in the long term. The real solution lies in the creation of robust data archives in which articles can be stored indefinitely. It seems likely that the partnerships between the academic community – represented by its libraries – and publishers will be the only way to achieve a permanent resolution of this issue. There then remains the critical issue of quality control, and it is here that there are both the greatest fears and the least change. Publishers and editors have emphasized that there is no reason why electronic

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journals should not be subjected to the same quality controls as their printed predecessors. The functions of the editor, the members of the Editorial Board and the referees remain, and do not have to change simply because the output is in a different format. The changes are really technological rather than conceptual.52 The whole process of managing the editing and publication of a printed journal can be replicated for electronic journals, while achieving some efficiencies in the process which will contain costs without having an impact on quality.53 When properly conducted, electronic journals can meet all the traditional criteria for academic success in such matters as peer review, abstracting and citation.54 The problem is to persuade the user and author community that this is true, and there is evidence that they are not yet wholly convinced. Until universities accept the parity of esteem of electronic and printed journals, particularly for purposes of appointment and promotion (and in the United States for the critical issue of being granted tenure), some academics will hesitate to choose electronic publication.55 Ultimately, the issue will be resolved by a combination of cultural and economic factors; as print journals become less viable, electronic publication will become more acceptable. Of course, some printed journals will survive, at least for the time being. Most obviously those published by societies will probably continue in their present form, although gradually it can be expected that they too will be absorbed into the electronic world, if only through the appearance of parallel electronic versions. The journals with the largest circulations, those whose readership crosses the boundaries between subdisciplines and those which publish articles of interest to students, are likely to continue in printed form for longer than those which are more specialized. With their larger circulation they can often manage to maintain more reasonable levels of subscription and thus retain the very circulation which makes lower prices possible; the vicious circle of journal prices has a virtuous counterpart! It is also the case that the humanities and social sciences have been slower to develop electronic journals than have science, medicine and technology-based disciplines like computing itself. But there is now a trend towards the creation of electronic journals for the non-scientific parts of the academic community as well.56 Even some general interest magazines are beginning to appear in parallel versions, as a number of major newspapers have done for some years. The magazines include such major consumer titles as Newsweek, and political weeklies such

176 Information Technology and Publishing as the New Statesmen, as well as slightly more specialized – but still consumer oriented – magazines like Scientific American.57 The newspapers include most of the world’s major titles such as The New York Times, The Times and Le Monde.58 The electronic journal is a major element in the development of digital communications systems in the academic community, but there are others, some of which impinge on the activities of publishers. One of these – little noticed, but becoming important – has direct implications for both printed and electronic journals. One of the methods of communication used by scientists is the so-called pre-print, a separately 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) was often the only material reward which authors received for their paper. Electronic pre-prints began to be developed in early 1990s for papers which subsequently appeared in printed journals; limited circulation in this way simply overcame the inevitable delays in printed publication.59 The fact that 10 or 20 people received pre-prints did not interfere with the commercial circulation of the journal, for which subscriptions were almost invariably paid by the university or research institute library, not by individuals. Pre-prints, however, have a potentially very significant impact on the economics of electronic journal publishing. If a particular paper has a worldwide audience of say 100 readers (an optimistic estimate in some cases), and half of those have access to a pre-print, there is significant potential for loss of income if there is an access charge for the journal. Some see this is merely another aspect of parallel publishing, but it should more accurately be seen as yet another of the pressures on the journal-publishing industry which 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 agenda by the creation of a huge electronic archive of reprints and pre-prints at the US scientific research centre at Los Alamos.61

Publishing for electronic education Educational publishing is a lucrative and important branch of the industry. It has traditionally been dominated by a small number of

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companies.62 Like academic journal publishing it is subject to many pressures from within its market sector. Curriculum change, at all levels from pre-school to tertiary, has had a major impact on educational publishers who have traditionally invested heavily in a small range of titles which they can expect to exploit for many years to come. During the 1990s, however, the delivery as well as the content of curricula was beginning to change under the impact of networked computing. ICT is both a subject and a tool at every level of education. Once basic skills have been acquired (and they are now acquired very early in life in the developed countries), they can be applied as a tool for further learning in every subject. Moreover, the Internet gives access to a huge range of materials of great educational value, or which can be used for learning purposes. The use of ICT was not, however, the only change in learning delivery in the last decade of the twentieth century. There was an increased emphasis on learning rather then teaching, and on learning through project work rather than through traditional channels of knowledge transfer from teacher to student. The availability of networked information was a part of this, but only a part. Student-centred project-based learning requires access to information resources of all kinds, including printed materials; the traditional 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 it even helps to determine the agenda of the debate about education as well as being subject to the consequences that may arise from its results.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 is further compounded by young people’s attitudes to books and reading. Despite the importance of the children’s and young adult book markets,64 there is some evidence of a decline in book reading especially among teenagers.65 There is a general perception that the young adult market is in a poor condition as a result;66 a preference for multimedia and online sources, for both entertainment and information, can reasonably be assumed to underpin this phenomenon. Educational publishers have had to take account of these developments. The challenges which face the educational publishers are in many ways similar to those which face all STM, academic and professional publishers as their traditional markets become more oriented to ICT

178 Information Technology and Publishing products than they are to print. But it is exacerbated in the educational arena by the relatively easy Internet access enjoyed by an increasing number of students at schools, colleges and universities. Teachers themselves, at all levels, are able to compile digital packages of public domain material to support their students’ learning. This can often include means for monitoring student progress and even assessing formal student work. Publishers have been slow to come into this field. The development of NetLibrary in the mid-1990s was perhaps the first significant sign of a shift of attitudes. This pioneering e-book publisher developed an access and charging system similar to that used by publishers of electronic journals and began to market itself to libraries in 1996.67 In a highly significant development at the turn of the new century, NetLibrary joined forces with the long-established Houghton Mifflin, a major player in educational publishing worldwide, to launch a series of digital textbooks.68 The outcome remains to be seen. But it is not unreasonable to expect that educational publishing will be another field in which ICT will have a transformational impact over the next decade.

ICT and the business of publishing There is no almost no aspect of business practice which has been unaffected by the developments in ICT in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Even the familiar equipment of the mid-century office – the typewriter and the duplicator – have been largely displaced. At a wholly different level, instantaneous global communications systems have opened up new markets and offered new challenges. With the development of e-commerce, a small business can overcome some of its handicaps in competing with a large business, and specialist businesses which could no longer survive in a conventional environment can flourish as their market expands across the Internet. Publishing is both vulnerable to ICT and in a particularly strong position to respond positively to it. As part of the information industry, publishing can exploit all the facilities which ICT, and particularly the Internet, can offer to those whose professional concern is with the collection, organization and dissemination of information. Electronic publishing of books and journals, and the development of new kinds of multimedia packages for both leisure and education, exemplify this. Publishers can

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also benefit from the new possibilities which ICT offers to them as businesses, with greater opportunities for market research, sales and stock control, to take but three examples.69 One important consequence for the development of ICT has been that the information industry itself has become a more integrated set of activities. The common use of digital networks for both information transfer and business transactions has facilitated the development of standardized systems and encouraged their acceptance. A familiar but very significant example has been the universal adoption of the Standard Book Numbering system. The ISBN and the ISSN are now used by publishers, booksellers and librarians throughout the world as the basis of systems for ordering and monitoring stock. These unique identifiers are a perfect example of which ICT does best: handle and communicate large quantities of alphanumeric data. In another sphere, electronic journal publishing shows us how publishers, authors and librarians can work together for their mutual benefit. An important part of the scientific communication and information system is being changed, and publishers are playing a full and important part in this process. One long-term consequence will perhaps be a recognition that the commonality of interests between the various parties can lead to a greater mutual understanding and closer joint working. Digital publishing initiatives (such as EPIC70) suggest that this may be more than a pious hope. It is not only, however, in journal publishing, or even in STM, academic, professional and other specialized fields, that ICT is changing the publishing industry. Trade publishers find themselves confronted by a powerful competitor for the time and resource available for leisure. This has happened before, and the challenges posed by cinema, radio and television were each confronted in turn, and each eventually turned to the industry’s advantage. Will ICT be different? If we accept that this is a revolutionary change in human communications, then the answer must be ‘yes’. But the changes need not be negative. The more imaginative publishers are already producing multimedia packages, and electronic books and journals as well as conventional printed products. Within the umbrella of the conglomerates, there is scope for real economies of scale, not just in business operations but also in the assemblage of the kind of expertise which is needed to support such activities. Again, there is evidence that this is beginning to happen as publishers develop electronic versions of their backlists and so on.

180 Information Technology and Publishing For the small independent publisher, ICT presents a different kind of challenge. In a sense, it makes it easier for them to compete with the conglomerates. A basic presence on the Web is easy to establish and cheap to maintain. While Websites have by no means replaced conventional marketing tools and techniques, they can offer smaller firms a real possibility of more widespread marketing than was realistic in the past. Within an independent publishing house, ICT can help to run the business more efficiently by providing better and readily accessible information about both stock and accounts. Independent houses are major beneficiaries of relatively cheap and simple DTP systems for book production, and the ease with which authors can submit copy in a machine-readable form.

Authors and readers How will all of this effect the primary producers and the ultimate consumers of the publishing industry, the authors and the readers? We have already touched on this to some extent, but the question is an important one and deserves a more systematic consideration. Those who remember the days of mechanical typewriters know that the process of composing a long and complex text has become immeasurably easier. This is not simply a matter of saving time. A writer can concentrate on content when all the apparatus of word processing is there to help with the details of the presentation. The PC does not forget how paragraphs should be formatted, and it even helps to correct spelling and grammar! In a more profound sense, the electronic submission of copy by authors has put a good deal of power back into their hands. As we have already suggested,71 there has been a shift of some responsibilities from the publisher – and specifically from the editor – to the author. This has some disadvantages, in that books may be less carefully edited, but the advantages significantly outweigh them. The same trend has perhaps further increased the influence of agents, for they share with the authors the added responsibilities and opportunities which ICT offers. ICT also opens to authors whole new possibilities for putting their work in circulation. A personal Website can be little more than the electronic equivalent of vanity publishing (although it is probably cheaper and certainly more widely distributed!), but some authors are

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already experimenting with the use of Internet as a publishing medium which avoids the industry altogether. Stephen King is perhaps the most conspicuous example of this, and although his experiment was not wholly successful, he has at least demonstrated the technical possibilities, 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 part of the electronic publishing process, and will be its beneficiaries once they are convinced of its long-term viability. But, more generally, readers and their expectations are changing. Among younger readers in particular, the printed page is neither the most familiar nor perhaps the most acceptable medium of information and entertainment. There is little point in regretting this fact, and in any case it should not be exaggerated. But it remains the case that future generations will have grown up in a multimedia networked world, in which they will learn, work and relax. There is already an expectation that information is current as well as accurate. It is that expectation, and the ability of ICT to meet it, that underlies the great changes in reference and educational publishing. In Chapter Seven, we shall develop this theme further as we examine in detail how publishing is developing, and how in may develop in the future, in the networked world of the twenty-first century.

Notes and references 1 For an excellent and readable account of these developments, see John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future: The origins of the Internet, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999. For a briefer introduction, see Brian Winston, Media, Technology and Society: A history from the telegraph 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.

182 Information Technology and Publishing 8 For a more detailed account of all of this, see Peacock, pp. 110–67; and Susan 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 revolution’, 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 electronic journal. 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 of corpses’: trends and challenges for the future in the book publishing industry’, 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.htm 29 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 books which publishers would not categorize as ‘reference’, but the finer points of the distinction need not detain us here.

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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 scholarly communication’, 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 and Academic Resources Coalition, a group of American publishers, universities 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 the library’, 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 the social and professional recognition of scientists in the era of electronic publishing’, JIS, 23:6, 1997, pp. 445–50. 53 Linda Beebe and Barbara Meyers, ‘Digital workflow: managing the process electronically’, JEP, 5:4, 2000, at www.press.umich.edu/jep/0504/sheridan.html.

184 Information Technology and Publishing 54 Kent Anderson, Jack Sack, Lisa Kraus and Laura O’Keefe, ‘Publishing online only peer-reviewed biomedical literature: three years of citation author 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 you publish in electronic journals?’, JEP, 6:2, 2000, at www.press.umich.edu/jep /06-02/sweeney.html. Cheri Spier, Jonathan Palmer, Daniel Wren and Susan Hahn, ‘Faculty perceptions of electronic journals as scholarly communication: a question of prestige and legitimacy’, JASIS, 50:6, 1999, pp. 537–43. 56 Christopher L. Tomlins, ‘Just one more ‘zine? Maintaining and improving the 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.fr 59 See J. M. B. Cruz, J. A. C. Garcia and R. F. Lopez, ‘Pre-prints: communication through electronic nets. An example of bibliographic control’, in: D. J. Farace, ed., Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Grey 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 better or for worse’, CRLN, 61:5, 2000, pp. 404–7; and Arthur P. Smith, ‘The journal 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 Los Alamos 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: Library Association Publishing, 2001, pp. 137–8.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Publishing in a Networked World

Introduction Publishing is a business, a process and a system of communication. We have considered all of these aspects in previous chapters as we have analysed the size and structure of the industry, the way in which it works, and how content is transferred from author to reader. These three aspects influence and inform each other, and are interdependent. Among those involved in publishing, however, the perception of their relative importance varies considerably. For the corporate strategists of the global media conglomerates, publishing is simply one part of a business, and it is required to make its contribution to turnover and profit. The publishing division is expected to meet financial targets and to be self-sustaining. For the editor, publishing is a complex set of processes to be managed by leading a team of players all of whom have their own areas of expertise. The whole task must be accomplished profitably, but this can only be achieved if the right kind of books are published 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 approach would locate publishing in a group of overlapping activities which provide a wider context in which it can be understood (Figure 7.1).

186 Publishing in a Networked World

KNOWLEDGE GENERATION

EDUCATION

COMMUNICATION AND KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRIES

PUBLISHING

MASS MEDIA

LEISURE INDUSTRIES

CULTURAL OUTPUTS

CREATIVE ARTS

Figure 7.1 The domains of publishing

The representation in Figure 7.1 is inevitably simplified, but it does identify some of the key relationships. Publishing can be seen to be part of both the communication and knowledge industries and of the leisure industries. It is closely related to the mass media, and derives its content both from the generation of knowledge and from artistic creativity. Participants and observers may give different emphases to different parts of these connections. The literary novelist is a creative

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contributor to the leisure industries and to cultural output. The STM publisher is drawing on the fruits of knowledge generation and serving the process of education. The mass media stand in a slightly different relationship to publishing. Indeed it could be cogently argued that it is the mass media which are at the intersection of the knowledge and leisure industries, and that publishing is merely one aspect of a greater whole. For our present purposes, however, it is useful to keep publishing at the centre of the picture. The relationships which are represented in Figure 7.1 have been generically true for many decades; indeed, with a different terminology they could be argued to have been true since the invention of printing, and certainly since the middle of the nineteenth century. It is not inconsistent with this view, however, to argue that the contemporary manifestations of these activities are significantly different from their predecessors. A full understanding of the present position of publishing, and some insights into how it might develop, depends on how we understand a complex set of interconnected issues only some of 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 information; 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 a complex multifaceted process which has brought information and communications technologies together with systems which used to be almost entirely separate. Digital technologies lie at the heart of this process; they created the need for it, but are also the reason why it can be done. Among the systems and technologies which we are considering are telecommunications, broadcasting, audio and video recording and indeed publishing. To understand the convergence process and its

188 Publishing in a Networked World implications, we must start by considering briefly what activities have converged, and try to identify how they formerly differed and where the differences have been elided. The first group of issues is derived from the nature of the communication process itself. In applying the Shannon and Weaver model,1 it is useful to distinguish between different kinds of recipients. Some processes are designed to take information from a source to a single recipient, while others have multiple recipients. The archetype of the former is the person-to-person telephone call, where the caller (the source) wishes to speak to a particular individual (the recipient). Any further or additional communication can only take place if another action is initiated. This might involve a second or subsequent phone call, or making a written record of the conversation which is subsequently 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 of it. The communication itself is self-contained. Other systems are designed for multiple recipients. A communication to many people is most familiar as broadcasting. A radio or television broadcast has a single source – a broadcasting organization – but many recipients. Being public is as much of the essence of broadcasting as being private is of a telephone call. The technologies which support telephone calls and broadcasting developed independently of each other, and in their original forms were quite distinct. Telephones were based on a wired network in which individual instruments were linked to a central point, the telephone exchange. Exchanges themselves were then linked to each other, providing a potential for routing a call from any point on the network to any other. Broadcasting, on the other hand, made use of wireless technologies. The signal was sent from a transmitter into the atmosphere, and could be received by anyone who activated the appropriate equipment. In fact, the apparently clear-cut distinction between wired and wireless transmission began to break down many years ago. Cables were used for transmitting broadcast sound as long ago as the 1920s, partly to overcome the inadequacies of the wireless transmission network; from the late 1940s onwards cable television began to develop in the United States for the same reason. The cables, however, were used only for this purpose; a broadcast signal was received at a

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nodal point, and then redistributed to subscribers through the cable networks.2 Similarly, telephony made some use of wireless technology from 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 the 1970s and 1980s that voice telephony made regular use of transmission systems which included unwired links.3 There was thus some crossover between communications systems, but no convergence of the systems themselves. In considering these early examples of crossovers, however, we have introduced the second factor into the convergence equation: the distinction between physical and virtual networks, or between cable-based and wireless communications. The third key distinction between systems concerns the temporal relationship between transmission and reception. An interactive telephone call is always synchronous; caller and recipient must be simultaneously connected to the network, and through the network to each other. An asynchronous telephone call cannot be interactive. If the 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 applicable to broadcasting. The recipient can receive the transmission only at the time when it is broadcast. Nevertheless, an asynchronous element can be introduced into broadcasting. A programme which is transmitted live is, by definition, synchronous. In practice, however, most programmes are actually pre-recorded, and it is the tape of the recording which is actually transmitted when the broadcasting organization wishes. It is, however, the source – the broadcaster – which has total control of this aspect of the communication process. Convergence is essentially the evolutionary process which has brought these separate technologies together. It is, of course, the electronic computer, using integrated circuits and transistors, which has made convergence possible. The technical details need not detain us here. The point which has practical consequences is that any data which is entered into a computer in digital form can therefore be manipulated by the computer without regard to the physical format or visual appearance of the input and output. In other words, a computer identifies text, symbols, graphics, photographs, moving images and recorded sounds simply as sequences of digital code. Provided that two computers have the same software – or software which makes two

190 Publishing in a Networked World different systems compatible – data which is entered into one machine can be read in another. In the late 1960s it was demonstrated that digital data could be transmitted between computers which were linked through a hard-wired network. It was this realization, and the development of the protocols to make files and systems compatible, which lay at the heart of the early development of what became the Internet.4 The key development for the widespread adoption of the Internet was in telephony. Voice telephony is still essentially cable-based, although many long-distance, and almost all international, calls are actually routed at some point through satellites. The modern telecommunications network, however, can be used for much more than voice calls. It carries digital signals, which means that it can transmit anything which can be digitized. In effect, this means that it can be used for communications between computers as well as between people. It was this capacity of the telephone network to transmit digital data which made possible the development of the Internet without, at least initially, the installation of a new and separate network of cables. The Internet became a public service facility – albeit with a very strong and rapidly growing commercial input – during the 1980s. At the same time, satellite television also became a worldwide phenomenon. Only the transmission and reception equipment distinguished between one form of input and output and another. The signals themselves were simply bits of digital data. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the process of convergence was all but complete. Telephone lines and networks were used for sending electronic mail messages; television programmes were delivered down cables which were also used for voice communication and Internet access, while some programmes became interactive. Ironically and perhaps perversely, when wireless technology was seemingly in decline, it experienced a revival in the 1990s by massive growth in its use in the one area in which it had never previously been successful – voice telephony. The mobile phone and the networked computer – the ubiquitous symbols of the new technologies of information and communication – exemplify the outcomes of the great convergence. Two further distinctions between communications systems must be introduced at this point. First, we have to consider whether a communication is unique or repeatable. A telephone call, for example, is unique; the broadcast of a pre-recorded television programme is repeatable. Secondly, we must look at where the balance of power lies

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between the source and the recipient. In conventional broadcasting, control lies entirely with the source; the broadcasting organization determines what is transmitted, when and to whom. Interactive digital channels give the recipient slightly more control, by allowing the viewer to select camera angles, or to call up pages of information about the event being transmitted.5 Real control by the recipient, however, only comes when the end-user can determine when the communication is used rather than when it is received. An obvious example is when a recipient makes a video recording of a broadcast and watches it at a subsequent time of his or her choice. Electronic mail incorporates a similar time-shifting facility; sender and recipient do not need to be online simultaneously.6 We can now attempt a classification of communications systems using these distinctions, and try to identify whether and how conventional print publishing fits into these patterns. Printed products derive from a single source but are intended for multiple recipients. They are physical rather than virtual products, and the distribution system therefore is also physical. Production, distribution and use are asynchronous. From this brief analysis, it seems that publishing can be accommodated in the model of communication which we have briefly developed in the last few paragraphs. But is it also feasible to regard it as part of the great convergence? To answer that question we need to probe a little more deeply into the implications of convergence for end-users. Printed documents give the recipient almost complete control over the use of the product, although none at all over its manifestation. The user cannot ask for additional illustrations, for example, but he or she can read the document at any time and in any place, can read it in any sequence which is appropriate or desired, can keep it and return to it at any time, and so on. A book, newspaper or magazine, once acquired, is almost entirely under the control of the recipient; certainly the source – the author and publisher – loses all control over it as a physical object. At this theoretical level, therefore, it is possible to argue that publishing can be accommodated within a model which also describes other communications systems (Table 7.1). The convergence of technologies and media presents significant challenges 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 printed products except the need for a physical link between source and

192 Publishing in a Networked World Table 7.1 Communications systems compared FORM OF COMMUNICATION

PHONE CALL

ONE to ONE

*

TV or RADIO

E-MAIL

PRINTED ITEM

WEB SITE

*

*

*

*

* ONE to MANY

*

SYNCHRONOUS

*

ASYNCHRONOUS

*

* *

PHYSICAL LINK

* *

*

*

*

*

*

VIRTUAL LINK UNIQUE EVENT

*

REPEATABLE SOURCE DRIVEN

*

*

*

*

* *

*

RECIPIENT DRIVEN

recipient. It is that which actually creates the need for the distribution system which is arguably one of the weakest points in the publishing industry in both Britain and United States.7 In other respects, however, the profile of publishing in Table 7.1 overlaps with the profiles of both broadcasting and the World Wide Web, taken here to exemplify the Internet. Of course, Table 7.1 is a mechanistic representation of the position. It coveys nothing about the quality, availability, cost and stability of the product, or of its fitness for purpose. It does, however, forcefully illustrate that publishers have to give serious thought to how their product, for so long the privileged cultural artefact of the western world, can be adapted for survival in a very different communications environment.

The use of information media Convergence has given new power to both the originators and endusers of information to choose the forms of communication which are most convenient to them, and which best suit their needs. The choices are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A simple example is the choice between a newspaper, radio and television as a source of information about current affairs. There are many people who regularly use all

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three, making a choice which suits their own convenience at the time. A familiar pattern throughout the industrialized world is to glance at a newspaper before leaving home in the morning, listen to radio news while driving to work, and watch television news in the evening with perhaps a longer session of newspaper reading as well. The choice is dictated by circumstances and by personal preference. The media have adapted themselves to the needs of their users. Tabloid newspapers eschew details of hard news and concentrate on other things; the broadsheets devote many pages to analysis recognising that they cannot be as up to date on fact as the broadcast media. Radio news tends to be repetitive, expecting its audience to move in and out in comparatively short periods of time. Television news is built around the availability of visual images and is designed to move at a pace which will hold the viewer’s attention for half an hour or so. This pattern of competitive co-existence of the three media was established in the 30 years between the advent of mass television in Europe in the mid1950s and the deregulation of broadcasting from the mid-1980s onwards. For the newspaper publishers, the lesson which they learned was that they had to adapt to survive; titles which did not were lost.8 The relationship between the three news media offers a particular case of a general phenomenon: the need for the publishers and authors of printed products to respond to other forms of publication and communication. This response may have several characteristics. Some commentators see publishing, especially of hardbacks, retreating into niche 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 what they can do best, and those fields in which the printed book is manifestly superior to its various perceived competitors. The problem is that the domain which is unique to print seems to be diminishing. A different response is to accept that the printed book is indeed a product of diminishing interest in the marketplace, and for publishers themselves to try to replace it with more attractive media. Those who argue along these lines see the future in electronic delivery of published material, whether as CD-ROM (or some successor technology) or across the Internet. The argument here is that this is what the market wants, and therefore this is what it will have to be given if publishers are to survive. For some, this is to be welcomed as a means of facilitating innovative approaches to the process of publishing.10

194 Publishing in a Networked World An appropriate response by the publishing industry to technological change will only be properly determined by taking account of what end-users actually want. Defining user needs is, in itself, a complex issue. The users of the publishing industry’s printed products are not a single homogenous group. Some groups can, of course, be identified, and we have implicitly done so in identifying particular markets. Thus STM books or school textbooks, for example, are designed for specific sectors. Sales outside those sectors are minimal and of little commercial importance; without their core markets, these sectors could not survive. General trade books, both fiction and nonfiction, face a different problem. Their appeal, by definition, is broad based, and that fact can be exploited in promoting and marketing them; but the other side of the coin is that they face intensive competition both with each other and with other media. The patterns are very complex. Surveys of leisure reading habits have revealed comparatively few changes over quite long periods of time. The classic description of British reading habits was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It showed book reading as a majority activity among the population as a whole (although only just), more women readers than men, more younger readers than older readers, and a clear correlation between regular leisure reading and higher levels of educational attainment, higher incomes and higher social class.11 The observations made in the late 1970s remain essentially true today; such difference as there is tends to show an increase rather than a decrease in the leisure reading of books. In 1999, 58 per cent of men and 71 per cent of women reported 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)

Men Women (Source: see note 12)

1977

1987

1997

52% 57%

54% 61%

58% 71%

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The data in Table 7.2 shows those respondents to a survey who claimed that reading books was one of their home-based leisure occupations. There are unfortunately many things that we do not know about what this means in practice. A key factor which was missing from these surveys is that of age, although the alleged decline of reading among young people is not irreconcilable with the findings, since the population as a whole is getting older. Nor is anything known from the surveys about what sort of books people read, or how often they do so. Even this comparatively crude data, however, clearly illustrates that book reading is far from being the dying activity that some commentators (especially in the popular press) sometimes seem to imply. From the publishing industry’s perspective, one encouraging aspect of the analysis of reading habits is that most of these books appear to have been bought by their readers. In 1995 (the latest available data), only 19 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women in the UK borrowed books from public libraries once or more every month.13 Nevertheless, the industry has no room for complacency; the number of books bought in the United Kingdom fell from 350 million in 1998 to 330 million 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 they do confirm that book reading remains a significant leisure activity in the United Kingdom, and that the domestic market for books remains substantial. The significant increase in domestic access to other information and entertainment media (Table 7.3) has apparently not had a deleterious impact of book reading.15 Leisure reading is, however, only one aspect of the use of printed publications. As we have seen, a very significant percentage of the total output of British and American publishers is of books which are not Table 7.3 Ownership of media (percentage of UK households)

Television VCR Audio CD player Computer (Source: See note 15)

1991–92

1998–99

98% 68% 27% 21%

98% 85% 68% 34%

196 Publishing in a Networked World intended for leisure reading by the general public. They are technical, professional and educational books, and works of reference. A significant proportion of them are bought by companies, libraries and other institutions rather than by individuals; if individuals do buy them it is likely to be because they have to, rather than because of making a consumer choice in the normal sense. In practice the end-users of such books (and of course journals) may have some influence on what is bought, but ultimately have to acquiesce in what amounts to a corporate decision. Such decisions are not only about what to buy and what not to buy, but also about formats. In the academic world, and in certain professions such as law and medicine, the shift from printed to electronic products has been taking place for a decade or more, and is accelerating as the availability of material across the Internet continues to increase. In education, at every level from kindergarten to university, electronic resources are becoming more common and are partly displacing traditional textbooks. Some publishers, as we have seen, have responded to these developments by following their customers into new formats and media. Some indeed have led them. It is no accident that the pioneers of electronic publishing included companies involved in law and medicine (such as Butterworths), scientific journals (such as Elsevier) and school textbooks (such as the residual Longman element in the Pearson Group). All of these were in sectors where there were major challenges in their traditional markets driven by the changing expectations of customers. Convergence of technologies has had a significant impact on professional, academic and educational publishing, as has the crossover between technologies. For the users – whether they are learners, teachers or professional practitioners – the importance of medium and format lies in its fitness for purpose. Fitness is judged against many criteria, including convenience, cost, quality and longevity. For some products, this means that print-on-paper will continue to be the most appropriate format; for others, it means exploiting a whole suite of technologies and media. There is little doubt that in a number of key fields of publishing the age of the printed book and journal is rapidly coming to an end. As with the newspapers and the broadcast media, the process is actually one of adoption of the most appropriate system, and the adaptation of existing systems into a new role. The law provides an important example of this. In common law systems, such as those which prevail

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in the United Kingdom, the United States and much of the Commonwealth, lawyers need to know about precedent, including very recent precedent, as well as statutes. The law actually changes and develops very quickly; electronic access to the latest reports of cases has become an integral part of how lawyers work. Yet they continue to use books which contain the statutes, and summaries, explanations and interpretations of the law. As a profession, lawyers were early adopters of electronic technologies; in a decade or so, they developed working strategies which combine electronic and printed products to support their work. The law publishers have inevitably followed them. Similar patterns can be seen emerging elsewhere. Research scientists rely heavily on the Internet for personal communications, not least because access is normally free in universities and other research establishments. Towards the end of the 1990s, however, electronic journals began to displace the traditional printed journal, as we have seen. The problem of the prestige of the electronic journals compared with that of their printed counterparts is gradually being addressed by the scientific community itself. So too is the issue of archiving (so that papers continue to be accessible for the foreseeable future), and that of circulation and distribution. Printed journals have not yet ceased to exist, but the more specialized of them must now be presumed to have a limited future lifespan. We should not, however, fall into the glib assumption that all academic journals face a wholly electronic future. Indeed, one of the benefits of technological change has been that there is no longer a single viable system of communication. The user community is increasingly in command, and can determine what is most suitable for a particular purpose. 16 For the publishing industry the shift in the balance of power from producer to consumer is a trend which cannot be ignored. Indeed, when it is set against the similar shift from publisher to author,17 we can perhaps 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 of consumers as stakeholders in the industries which produce the goods and services which they buy. Publishing is not exempt from this trend. The most adventurous publishers are indeed embracing it rather than trying to protect themselves against it. The growing familiarity and ever increasing robustness of electronic technologies, and particularly of networked computing, is opening new opportunities to publishers who

198 Publishing in a Networked World position themselves among the gatekeepers of knowledge. For the endusers, or consumers, or recipients, or whatever terminology we use (perhaps even readers and book buyers!), the publisher is simply one of many participants in the process of bringing information to where it is needed, or one of many providers of entertainment and leisure activities. As a result, the familiar gatekeeper metaphor is itself becoming less attractive; the successful players in the publishing industry now see themselves removing the gates and encouraging everyone to come in. The long-term viability of publishing as a multibillion dollar global industry depends on its capacity to provide what the market wants. There is evidence that publishers are able to do this, and are even able to cater for the great diversity of demand – from contemporary poetry to financial information – which the market generates. This is being achieved, however, at the expense of some of the old certainties of the industry, not least in terms of its greatest capital asset – intellectual property – 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 new craft were seeking ways to control the very capacity for reproduction which lay at the core of the developing industry. Developing mechanisms to control the output of the printing press was, for different reasons, also dear to the hearts of political and ecclesiastical authorities in early modern Europe. The development of censorship and the gradual evolution of the idea of copyright intersect at many points in the history of publishing, and are not entirely separate even today. For publishers, the use of the law to control the reproductive technology which lay at the heart of their industry came to be essential. Since the late nineteenth century, as we have seen, international law has effectively protected the investments of publishers in their books by giving them global rights to control the reproduction, distribution and use of their contents.18 The enforcement of copyright law became steadily more difficult in the second half of the twentieth century. Photocopying was a potentially destabilising factor in the academic journal sector from the

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mid-1950s onwards, and was eventually controlled only by concessions 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 impossible to police the law. The problem was compounded by the almost universal adoption of lithographic printing from the 1960s onwards.20 Photocopying entire books is laborious and time consuming, and the product is of low quality. A lithographic reprint of a book from plates made from a copy of the original is, on the other hand, effectively indistinguishable from the original edition. The equipment which is needed is readily available, comparatively inexpensive and relatively easy to operate. Illegal copying for profit is broadly speaking under control, at least in the industrialized world. The prevalence of illegal reprinting in some other countries, however, which has sometimes been defended by arguments which embraced educational, social and economic necessity, testified both to the comparative simplicity of the task and the very real demand for cheap books. Again, the publishers were forced to make concessions; these were embodied in the Paris Amendments to the Berne Convention, which effectively recognized the validity of the ‘respectable’ case for reprinting.21 It was another decade, however, before the British and American publishers (who were the principal victims) were able to persuade all producer country governments 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 compromises which watered down the strict prohibition on copying which is fundamental to the concept of copyright. Even that limited victory had barely been achieved before a far greater threat appeared. This threat was that of electro-magnetic, and subsequently electronic, copying. The first commercially available manifestation was audio tape, which began to come on to the market in the mid-1950s, and took on its now familiar cassette form in the 1970s. Videotape was invented in the early 1950s; it left the confines of the television industry itself in the early 1980s, after which the VCR became a familiar domestic appliance.22 Cheap and largely unpreventable domestic recording presented a threat to broadcasters, the music industry and the movie industry. Commercial piracy of both movies and music became common, and the tapes were widely available throughout the world by the end of the 1980s. This was of little direct interest to the publishing industry, but it did establish a climate in which copyright laws were regularly and

200 Publishing in a Networked World successfully flouted, and in which effective law enforcement was proving to be almost impossible. Indeed, many people probably did not even realise that they were breaking the law by buying and using the pirated tapes. Technology had advanced far more quickly than the law could keep up with it, or a generally accepted public morality could be developed around it. Computing introduced another factor into the equation. Unauthorized copying of software was a bugbear of the computer industry from its very beginning, but as the technology became ubiquitous towards the end of the twentieth century, the problem grew in proportion. The development of the Internet made a difficult situation worse. All of 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 and applications packages such as games, as well as books, magazines and newspapers. In very specific terms, losses to these companies caused by piracy of any of their products tend to weaken the company as a whole. More generally, the undermining of respect for the law of copyright is re-enforced. Finally, some publishing companies are developing and selling electronic products which are directly susceptible to electronic copying, thus exposing them to direct losses. At a time when rights are seen 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, and copyright in particular, is being very seriously questioned, and that there 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 electronically or photographically, has made any sort of control quite impossible except with the active participation of the owners of the documents and the equipment. Libraries, at least in the industrialized world, have a reasonably good record of trying to control photocopying, although self-service photocopiers (which are now almost universal in libraries) effectively transfer the burden of control to the end-user’s conscience. Schools, colleges and universities are similarly aware of the need not to break the law, if only to protect themselves from prosecution. But the commercial copy shops which have proliferated 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

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the copy, but this is rarely if ever verified. Publishers have always argued that large-scale unauthorized copying damages their revenues and hence their ability to invest in new books and journals. While the force of this argument might be questioned in the case of very specialized 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 obvious example, while it is illegal for a teacher to make copies of copyright material for distribution in class (without appropriate permissions having been granted), there is nothing which prevents all the students in 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 and socially unacceptable in a democracy. The dilemma remains, and as a consequence significant investments by the publishing industry are protected only by the sometimes flimsy fabric of the user’s awareness of the law and his or her willingness not to infringe it. Unauthorized copying 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 complicated problems. Anything mounted on the Web, to take the most significant body of material, is protected by the law of copyright, unless the producer specifically puts it into public domain. Much of the material which is there is indeed put into public domain in precisely that way. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that some of the greatest advocates of the use of the Web are opposed in principle to any inhibitions on the free flow of information, 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 international law for more than a century makes this less difficult than it might otherwise be, at least in concept and theory. It remains the case, however, that the law is, for all practical purposes, unenforceable except by common consent. It is illegal to make multiple copies of a paper in an electronic journal for classroom use. But how can this be policed? The truth is that very often it cannot. The publishers’ response to the pressures on the law of copyright has been to find new ways in which they can charge for copyright material. In some ways, technological developments are actually helping to

202 Publishing in a Networked World solve the problems which they have partly created. Electronic journals themselves can be taken to exemplify this. While it is impossible to prevent either electronic copying of the file, or photocopying a printout of it, it is possible, and indeed normal, to charge for each access. In some ways, this is providing a more robust revenue stream than licence fees for photocopying of printed material, since it is impossible to use charged-for electronic journals at all without making some payment. The current trend against uncharged access to documents on the Web will re-enforce this approach. No doubt future technological developments will also help, perhaps by limiting the number of times that a particular electronic document can be consulted by the same user, or preventing its use beyond the limits of a specified local area network. Publishers will be at the centre of these developments as the Internet continues to evolve over the next few years. The protection of intellectual property is one of the foundation stones of the economics of the global publishing industry. Whatever the philosophical arguments may be for the free interchange of information, the hard fact is that publishers have invested billions of pounds and dollars in buying copyrights and developing them into useable products, and in creating and maintaining the infrastructure through which they can be promoted, distributed and sold. Although much of the industry appears not to be threatened by the apparent collapse of public acquiescence in the law of copyright, the implications are far greater than the narrow confines of the world of academic journals and educational materials. The very fact of the globalization of the industry, as we have suggested, has made its parts more than ever dependent on each other. While it may indeed be the case that every division and department of a multinational publishing company is expected to show a profit, it is also the case that the corporate profits sustain all of them precisely because it is a cost-effective way of providing the infrastructure. In the industry’s own version of chaos theory, it might be argued that every illegal photocopy is making it more difficult to publish the first 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 industry can look back on 20 years of continuous and radical change, and must

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look forward to change being a permanent condition. For half of the last millennium, publishers produced the most culturally privileged product of Western civilization. The prestige of the product derived from its association with education, intellectual enlightenment, religious belief and practice, economic and social attainments, and political success across the globe. The printed book became the symbolic artefact of European domination of much of the world. Publishers basked in some of the reflected glory of their product. Even when they were attacked (by both authors and readers) for paying their authors too little and charging their customers too much, the culturally essential service which they performed was recognized. It is no accident that the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia tried very hard in the 1960s and 1970s to establish indigenous publishing 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 longer stands at the summit of the cultural mountain. The development of other media for domestic entertainment and to support teaching and learning have displaced it from its unique pinnacle. The publishing industry has been forced to react accordingly, and has sometimes done so slowly and reluctantly. The model proposed in Figure 7.1 is an attempt to explain how the publishing industry relates to two key economic activities, both of which are growth areas throughout the industrialized world. It has taken many decades to develop the recognition that knowledge is a product, and that the communication of knowledge is a fundamental economic activity. By the end of the twentieth century, however, this was a commonplace. The problem for publishers is to find their place in the knowledge economy. The communication media which they have historically used – printed books and journals – and the associated systems of distribution and sales which they have developed, have been challenged and partly displaced. There are significant areas of knowledge communication where print is no longer able to offer the highest quality of product. This first became apparent as broadcast news began to displace the traditional, fact-laden, newspaper. The trend, however, has been massively re-enforced by the accessibility of completely current information across the Internet, and the flexibility of electronic products which allows regular updating even of significant works of reference with a long-term importance.

204 Publishing in a Networked World Reference publishing, once one of the mainstays of many houses, is moving into an electronic environment where it will continue to flourish, but will be a very different phenomenon. The move towards electronic journals is another manifestation of change. Despite the continuing reservations of some academics, and the economic and legal problems which still remain to be fully resolved, the electronic journal has become familiar to those at the leading edge of academic research in many disciplines. It offers a viable solution to the almost overwhelming cost of subscriptions to conventional journals, while at the same time giving scientists and other academics access to the research results which they need. Electronic products, whether online or using a self-standing carrier such as a CD, put publishers in a different relationship with their suppliers, agents and customers. We have explored some of this in considering the relations between publishers and authors, and between publishers and librarians. There is, however, a wider dimension which provides the context. Traditionally, the publisher was at the centre of the process of the communication of knowledge. The publisher recruited and commissioned authors or journal editors, acted as the final arbiter of the quality and acceptability of content, organized production, promotion, sales and distribution, and – above all – provided the capital to underwrite the whole process. In any classic description of publishing, the publisher as controller and capitalist (in the literal sense) predominates, and clearly stands at the very centre of the operation (Figure 7.2). Even when we analyse the process in greater detail, as we did in Chapter Four, the publisher continues to have this uniquely powerful role. It can be cogently argued that in electronic publishing, this model has been fundamentally changed, and that the publishers must now share their power with other players. This is true to some extent even in the comparatively simple cases where there is a physical product which a publisher can sell to a customer, such as a CD-ROM. Some CDs are of course sold to private individuals, just as books are. But most of them actually carry material, especially reference material, which has traditionally been largely in the domain of library rather than private purchasing. Many, of course, offer far more than any printed product ever could, including multimedia facilities and a degree of interactivity between content and user. When publishers sell these products to libraries, they actually impose certain conditions on

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AUTHOR

PRINTER

PUBLISHER

BOOKSELLER

READER

Figure 7.2 The publisher as organizer

their use. The most common is that if the library wishes to make the content of the CD accessible through more than one workstation, it will have to buy a licence to allow it to be used in this way. There may be other conditions attached, some of which bear on the publisher; for example, the publisher may agree to provide a free or reduced-cost update of the content at regular intervals. The one-off purchase of a

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reference ‘book’ then merges almost imperceptibly into a serial subscription. Whatever the details, the librarian has become more than merely a passive player in the transaction. When we consider the knowledge generation process and the distribution of new knowledge, the partial displacement of the publisher is even more apparent. New knowledge is typically created in universities and other institutions by employees whose job (or part of whose job) it is to conduct research and make its results available to the community as a whole. In the traditional model, this new knowledge was effectively handed over to a publisher for distribution and sale. The principle held good whether the output was a paper in a journal or a free-standing monograph. In the course of this book, we have repeatedly encountered instances where this model is no longer applicable, and seen some of the reasons why this should be so. Whether by the creation of electronic pre-print archives,24 or by semi-public communications on Websites, or by the use of formal peer-reviewed electronic journals,25 the research community has begun to take control of its own publication processes. Universities themselves, often through their libraries, are becoming partners in the knowledge distribution process as well as in the process of generation.26 Since universities are also among the principal users of the newly created knowledge, they are questioning the role of the publisher and in particular the financial relationship which subsists between knowledge creators, knowledge distributors and knowledge consumers. What was once a comparatively simply chain of communication through a series of commercial transactions is beginning to look more like a partnership for putting new knowledge into public domain. In the simplified model suggested in Figure 7.3, we have moved away from the traditional terminology of ‘author’, ‘publisher’ and ‘reader’. This is not wordplay. It is a deliberate indication of the fact that the roles are genuinely different in electronic communication of new knowledge. A publisher can, of course, be the knowledge distributor; indeed, that is precisely the role of publishing houses which produce electronic journals. The relationships are, however, different. This model recognizes that the creators and primary users of new knowledge have a close relationship, which may not even require the intervention of the knowledge distributor. This model applies to both formal and informal communication of knowledge. It illustrates the extent to which the traditional role of the publisher is being challenged

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KNOWLEDGE USER

KNOWLEDGE CREATOR

KNOWLEDGE DISTRIBUTOR

Figure 7.3 Publishing: an interactive model

within the knowledge creation, or research, community. There is, of course, a commercial dimension to this. Researchers typically have easy access to the Internet, while their institutional libraries are struggling to keep up with cost of journal subscriptions. There is also, however, an important intellectual dimension. The knowledge generation process is itself becoming more interactive, no longer confined by the boundaries of printed publications, with all their disadvantages of

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cost, delay and unidirectional communication. The publisher is now one partner, and arguably a comparatively minor and even dispensable partner, in the communication process, rather than the manager of it. These changes will have a fundamental conceptual and commercial impact on some of the publishing domain. Other parts will remain comparatively untouched. When we turn to the second of the major domains mapped in Figure 7.1, that of the leisure industries, the changes are equally profound but very different. The publishers of consumer books and magazines have been comparatively successful in retaining their share of the leisure market as a whole. Despite the massive increase in access to electronic media and other forms of home entertainment, the reading of books is actually growing as a leisure activity.27 More books are being produced for the leisure market than at any time in the past; even hardback fiction sales are going up. This does not mean that book publishing is unchanged. Indeed, the commercial successes of recent years have been possible partly because of changes in editorial policies and methods, and in the business structures of the publishing industry. There are those who argue that these changes have not been entirely beneficial, although, as we have seen, there is no evidence to suggest that there are significantly greater obstacles to the publication of worthwhile books than was the case in the past.28 It might be argued that we are looking at a new de facto division within the publishing industry as a whole, in which knowledge publishing and leisure publishing are becoming different in more than the content of the published objects. The knowledge distributors are being brought closer to both the creators and the users by their use of a common technology and communication system. The leisure publishers, on the other hand, still stand in their traditional relationship with their suppliers (authors) and consumers (booksellers and readers). Although this is an oversimplification, there is a significant element of truth in the distinction which is being suggested. It was always the case that there were specialized publishing houses which dealt with different kinds of books; some would publish fiction, some were renowned for their reference books, others specialized in midmarket consumer books, and so on. Many of these specializations actually remain, although under the umbrella of the conglomerates. What is now emerging, however, is a more fundamental distinction between publishers who are producing completed works to be sold in the marketplace, and publishers who are involved in a continuous

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process of knowledge generation and enhancement which is, almost by definition, never quite complete. This distinction does not entirely overlap with that between electronic and paper publishing, but it is close 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 the printed word are being taken over by other media and communication systems. Perhaps we can best reconcile this apparent paradox by considering the broad issue of fitness for purpose. Electronic journals, electronic reference materials and a vast range of information resources accessible online have been successfully developed because they meet the needs of end-users. Far from being inferior substitutes for a superior traditional product which has been priced out of the market, they are actually able to offer more services and facilities than print could ever do. They have been successful because they are better. Books and magazines, however, continue to have their own proper sphere, in leisure, education and professional practice. This may change. Within the next few years there will be genuinely portable electronic books which can offer high-quality images for informal reading whether for business or leisure. We should not, however, allow ourselves to be bemused by mere technology, and fall into the trap of confusing the tool with the task. Whatever physical form our leisure reading may take, and however it may reach us, behind it will be the creative and commercial processes which have been described in previous chapters of this book. Authors, editors and indeed publishing companies will flourish for as long as there are readers who are able to buy the books which they produce.

Notes and references 1 2 3 4 5

See above, pp. 97–98 and Figure 4.1 For these developments, see Winston, pp. 305–7. Ibid., pp. 272–3, 288–94. Naughton, pp. 118–39. 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.

210 Publishing in a Networked World 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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1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 61 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 39111

Index

Note: tables and figures are indicated by italicized page numbers academic publishing books 39, 47, 62, 64, 114, 117, 120, 132 economics 153 and electronic publishing 171–6 marketing 139, 148 multi-authoring 78 paperback format 85 unsolicited material 77 see also journals Addison Wesley 45 adult books 38, 60, 61, 66, 68 advertising and promotion 82, 83, 86, 120–2, 125, 132, 139, 167 Africa 33 languages 17, 19 publishing industry 18, 31, 203 agents authors’ 77–8, 99–100, 110, 117, 180 subscription 152, 174 Amazon.com 147–8, 149 Asia 37, 44, 53, 115 languages 16, 17, 19, 20 publishing industry 30, 31, 35, 203

Australia 18, 22, 36, 149 authors/authorship 9–10, 18, 75–9 bookseller link 116–23 collaborative 79, 101–3 commissioning 77–8, 108, 112 communication models 97–8, 98 and conglomerates 46–7 contracts, rights, income 108, 112–16 definition 99–104 and electronic publishing 161–2, 167–8, 180–1, 185 modes and products 75, 76 relationships (editors) 106–12 relationships (publishers) 75–6, 77–8, 105–6, 112–16 and websites 180–1 see also copyright; writers Berne Convention (1886) 20, 29, 49, 50, 52, 199 bestseller lists 61, 65, 84 Bible 5, 14 Bloomsbury 115

226 Index book production backlists 59, 87, 170, 179 categorizations 38, 39, 60–8 contracts and rights 84, 108, 112–16, 168 costs and economics 82–8, 83, 115–16, 162 design/designers 118–19 developments 5, 80 formats 84–5 globalization 27–8, 148 print runs 61, 62, 82–5, 115, 120, 172 processes 108–24, 125, 147 book trade in Britain/US 18–19, 20, 35–9, 145 development and history 6–14 and e-commerce 146–9, 178 globalization 28–9, 148, 202 international 20, 27–9, 30–5, 30, 33 IT effects 153 marketing 47, 120–4, 131, 167 statistics 29, 30–5, 30, 33 Bookseller, The 84, 120–1, 145 booksellers markets 85, 121–2, 132 origins 8–12 publisher relationship 46, 116–23 Booksellers’ Association 141, 149 Charter Group 145 bookselling 131–53, 141 book clubs 137–9, 148 direct 132, 138–9, 148–9 distribution 122–3, 144–6 e-commerce 132, 147–9 libraries 132, 149–53 prices and profits 137, 139–44, 143, 145, 146, 147, 150–1, 152, 162 promotions 141, 142, 167 retail 131, 132–7, 141, 147 wholesale 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, 136 independents 133, 134–5, 136, 142, 144, 146, 149 supermarkets 135, 136–7 W.H. Smith Ltd 135, 140, 141 Britain see United Kingdom British Commonwealth Rights Agreement 21–2 broadcasting, cable and satellite 43, 44 business information publishing 63, 87 Butterworths 41, 196 Canada 18, 22, 30, 33, 37, 50, 114 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (de Bernière) 121 Caxton, William (c.1422–91) 6, 15 CD-ROM publishing 80, 86, 99, 165–6, 167, 168, 203 censorship 11, 29, 198, 201 Chapman and Hall 21 children’s publishing 39, 65–6, 177 electronic 169 fiction 60–1 sales/purchases 135, 150 in Spanish 18–19 China/Chinese 19, 31, 50 Collins Softback English Dictionary 102–3, 165 communications cable and satellite 28, 43, 44, 189, 190 chains of 98, 104, 117, 119, 123–4, 123, 132, 197, 206 electronic 87, 172 global 178 networks/networking 160, 174

Index 227 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 61 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 39111

Shannon and Weaver model 97–8, 98, 116–17 skills 1–2 see also ICT; Internet; World Wide Web communications industry 186 broadcasting 188, 189, 190, 191 convergence of systems/technologies 187–92, 192 electronic mail 190, 191 media 203–4 and publishing industry 191–2 telephony 188–9 computers 159–64 software 3, 45, 160, 162, 189–90 technologies’ convergence 189–90 use in editing 87 computing studies publishing 63 Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD) 2, 3 conglomerates 111, 179 growth 109–10 and independents 28, 29, 45–8 multimedia ownership 22, 28, 74 and territorial rights 114 consumers 149–50, 180, 197–8 see also end-users contracts and rights 108, 112–16, 117 copy-editors/-editing 109, 118, 119, 162 copyright 113, 114–15, 198–202 British–American issues 20–1, 114 conventions and treaties 49–50 copying/photocopying issues 51–2, 198–202 and electronic publishing 168 fair dealing rules 51, 52, 173, 199, 201 impact on publishing industry 29 international 29, 49 legal basis 11–12, 48–53, 198–9 origins 10–11, 97

piracy problems 51, 52–3, 199–200 subsidiary rights 50–3, 114, 115 see also Berne Convention (1886); Paris Amendments (1971); Universal Copyright Convention (1956) cultures and language 5, 34 publishing 110 Western 4, 14–19 Dahn, Felix 124 Dent, J.M. 21 desktop publishing (DTP) systems 47, 163 Dickens, Charles 20, 21 dictionaries 15, 64, 65, 99, 102, 121 Doubleday Page, New York 21 Dutch language 15, 16, 17, 32 Dutton, E.J., New York 21 e-commerce 146–9, 178 editors/editing 117–18 and author relationship 106–12 definition 106–7 effects of electronic publishing 162, 167, 180, 185 roles and standards 46–7, 101–2, 106–12 educational publishing 38, 39, 43, 45, 62 and electronic publishing 176–8, 196 Egypt: Arabic publishing 31 electronic publishing 51–3, 86, 164–78, 196 academic journals 72, 86, 132, 209 backlists 87, 170, 179 books 86–7 definition 164–5 formats 165–6, 168–9 and reference books 65, 161, 169–71, 203–4, 206

228 Index Elsevier 174, 196 Encyclopaedia Britannica 169 encyclopaedias 64, 65, 78, 102 and electronic publishing 168 end-users 194, 196, 209 see also consumers; readers English language 6, 16–18, 17 English-language publishing 32, 35–9, 115, 148 Europe languages 17–18, 20 publishing statistics 31–2, 35 European Union single market 37 Everyman’s Library 21 Faber and Faber 21, 47 fiction publishing 39, 60, 67–8, 84, 117, 194, 208 and electronic publishing 168–9 Financial Times 44, 45 Fischer-Verlag 42, 43 format rights 51 France culture and language 14, 15–16, 17, 32 publishing industry 32, 35 Germany language 14, 17, 18 publishing industry 31, 35 Ghostwritten (Mitchell) 100 Gray’s Anatomy 63 Grove’s Dictionary of Music 65, 170 Gutenberg, Johannes (c.1399–1468) 5, 6 Hannibal (Harris) 121 hardbacks 38, 51, 60, 61, 67 production economics 67–8, 82–5, 115, 122, 131, 133, 193 rights issues 114, 115 sales 134–5, 136, 138, 150, 208

Harper Collins 20–1, 44 Heinemann 21, 41 Highway Code, The (HMSO) 79 Holt, Henry 41, 42–3 Holtzbrinck Group 42 Houghton Mifflin 41, 43, 178 ICT see information and communication technology imprints 28, 41, 42, 45, 110, 120 independent publishers 21, 28, 45–8, 111 and children’s publishing 66 and conglomerates 28, 29, 45–8 and ICT 180 India/Indian languages 18, 31, 34, 35, 53, 102 Indonesia 17, 19, 32, 35, 50 information delivery 87, 97, 164–5 sources and media 187, 192–8 storage and communication 80–1 technology (IT) 147, 153 information and communication technology (ICT) 159, 160, 161 convergence of systems and technologies 187–92 and educational publishing 177–8 Internet 19, 22, 54, 97, 203 academic/educational uses 172, 173, 177 and booksellers 132, 148–9 and communications 160, 190 copyright issues 201 and electronic piracy 51 and electronic publishing 165–6, 168, 178–9 and libraries 153 and publishing industry 22, 41, 160, 173, 178 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) 43

Index 229 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 61 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 39111

ISBN/ISSN (International Standard Book/Serial Number) 145, 179 IT see information technology Italy 4, 32, 33 Japan 31, 34, 37, 50, 148, 162 Johnson, Samuel 99 journals 52, 70–2, 85–6, 102, 118, 132, 147 archiving/pre-prints 176, 197, 206 and copyright issues 52, 202 economic issues 172–3, 174, 185 electronic publishing 132, 166, 171–6, 179, 197, 204, 209 parallel publishing 87, 174 promotion/marketing 122, 152 quality control 174–5 readerships 171 subscriptions/licensing schemes 132, 152, 171–2, 174 juvenile books 38, 60, 68 keyboarding 161–2 Kindler-Verlag 42 knowledge industry 3, 14, 52, 59, 186, 186 and publishing relationship 186–7, 198, 203–4, 206–9, 207 language rights 50–1 languages African 16, 17, 18, 30, 34 Arabic 31, 162 Asian and Oceanian 5, 16, 30 development 1–2 European 16–19, 17, 20, 30–4 indigenous/non-European 19, 34 Latin 2, 5–6, 14, 15–16 North American 16–17, 18–19, 30, 32

and publishing 5, 14–19 South American 5, 16, 30 and trade 14–15 vernaculars 5–6, 14–15 and word-processing packages 162–3 law publishing 63, 197 systems 196–7 see also copyright learned societies 70, 71, 139 journal publishing 171, 173 legal issues 112–16, 168 see also copyright libraries classification system 61 and copying issues 52, 200–1 and electronic sources 170, 204–6 funding and purchasing 66, 85, 132, 149–53, 152 and information services 153, 170, 173 institutional 66, 67, 111, 132, 150, 152, 153, 207 journal subscriptions 72, 86, 132, 152, 172, 207 public 66, 116, 132, 150, 151, 152, 153, 195 and reference books 169–70 suppliers 150–3 Library Association 150 Library Licence scheme 150, 151 licence rights/licensing 50–1, 52–3 literacy 2, 4–5, 35 literary publishing 45, 47, 110 Longman, Thomas 12 Longmans 40, 44, 45, 196 establishment 14–16, 20 Macmillan, Alexander 12, 13 Macmillans 41–2, 43, 70 establishment 12–14, 20–1

230 Index magazines 3, 68–70, 208 and authorship 76 editors 107–8 parallel publishing 175 sales and distribution 131, 152 Maher, Terry (Pentos Group) 140 marketing/promotion 47, 120–4, 131, 167 academic 139, 148 STM 120, 122, 132, 139 trade 120–2, 145, 146 media news 73, 74, 193, 203 ownership 22, 28, 74 and publishing relationship 186–7 Microsoft 160, 162 Milton, John 10, 11 Mitchell, David 100 multi-authored works 78–9, 101–3, 112–13 multimedia products 3, 66, 165–6, 168 multinational corporations 46, 77, 114 Murdoch, Rupert 43–4 Murray, John 12–13 music industry 51 Napster software 51 National Curriculum 62 Nature 70 Net Book Agreement (NBA) 139–44, 145, 146, 147 Library Licence 150 NetLibrary 178 networking communications 97, 153, 160, 169, 170, 172, 174, 177, 179, 181, 185–209 trade/business 5, 132, 179 New Corporation 43–4 New Statesmen 176

New World Information Order (UNESCO) 34 New York 20–1 news media 73, 74, 193, 203 newspapers 3, 42, 44–5, 68, 152, 203 and authorship 76, 78, 102 categorization 72–3 circulation/readership data 73–4, 74 editors 106, 107 and electronic publishing 175 formats 43, 73, 84, 193 production economics 86 Newsweek 175 non-fiction publishing 60, 61, 67, 117, 194 North Africa 31 official publications 79, 80 online publishing 42, 165–6, 167, 170 online selling/ordering 147–9 ownership and copyright 10–12 media (conglomerates) 22, 28, 74 media (domestic) 195 publishing 29, 40–8, 110 Oxford English Dictionary 169, 170 Oxford University Press 20, 21 paperback publishing 38, 50, 67 formats 84–5 production economics 82–4 rights 84, 114 sales and promotion 67–8, 120, 131 Paris Amendments (1971) 52, 53, 199 Pearson Longman Group 44, 45, 196 Penguin Books 40, 44, 45, 65–6, 67

Index 231 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 61 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 39111

periodical publications 68, 102 personal computers (PCs) see computers Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan) 15 Portuguese 16, 34 Printing Act (1662) 11 printing industry 8, 80 camera-ready copy (CRC) 163 developments 2, 4–10, 147, 198 lithography 161, 199 processes 81–2 professional publishing 38, 39, 63, 64, 114, 132, 139 paperback format 85 proof-reading 47, 119, 147, 162 Public Lending Right (PLR) 116 published material formats 79–88 and libraries 151 processing 98–9 sources 75–9 variety 60–75 publishers 40–8, 206–7 conglomerates 22, 28, 29, 45–8, 179, 185 and copyright issues 201–2 early 12–16 establishment 12–14, 20–2 financial pressures 111 independents 21, 28, 45–8, 111, 180 ownership 29, 40–8, 110 Third World 28 Publishers’ Association 150 publishers’ editors 108–9 publishing 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 industry British–American links/issues 21, 35–9, 114–15 business environment 110, 202–9, 205 changes and trends 197–8, 203, 204, 209 distribution and sales 67–8, 122–3, 131, 144–6, 152, 203 domains and relationships 186–7, 186, 208 economic and business issues 30–5, 161, 170, 203 and electronic publishing 161–4, 166–7, 169–78 formats 43, 79–88, 193 growth and development 35–9, 187 and ICT 178–80, 185–209 internationalization 20–2, 27–8, 148, 202 media 22, 80, 85–8 publishing process as a commercial activity 3–4 communications model 97–8, 98 costs and economics 81–8, 83, 120 definition and development 2–4, 12 effects of electronic publishing 166–9 key issues 98–9 language 14–19 legal framework 48–53 materials 60–75 production processes 80–1, 97–9, 108–10 promotion and marketing 47, 120–4, 131, 167 typesetting 110, 119, 149, 161–2 Putnams 20–1, 45

232 Index Random House 121 readers as consumers/end-users 18, 98, 180–1, 185 leisure reading habits 194–6, 194, 209 readers (publishers’) 117–18 reference publishing 64–5, 78, 114, 147 authorship and editing 102 economics 85–6 and electronic publishing 65, 161, 169–71, 203–4, 206 and Internet 170 parallel publishing 87 relationships author–publisher 75–6, 77–8, 105–16, 206 business 46, 112–16, 116–23 creative 99–104 in electronic publishing 88, 173 in publishing industry 186–7, 186, 208 religious publishing 38 report literature 78–9, 80 reprints/reprinting 49 licences 50 paperback 50, 67 unauthorized 20, 199 reproduction 29, 51 see also copying/photocopying; copyright Resale Price Maintenance Act (1964) 140 research monographs 62, 63, 122 reviews/reviewing 61, 67, 83, 84, 122 Routledge 41 Rowling, J.K. 115 royalties 113–14, 115–16 Russia 17, 32

satellite broadcasting/communications 28, 43, 44, 189, 190 Saudi Arabia 31 scholarly journals see journals Science, Technology and Medicine see STM publishing Scientific American 42, 43, 70, 176 scientific publishing see STM Shannon and Weaver model 97–8, 98, 116–17, 188 Simpkin Marshall 144–5 Society of Authors 116 South Africa 17, 18, 31, 33 South America 16–17, 31, 32 Spain/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-up Language (SGML) 164 stationers 8–9, 10 Stationers’ Company of London 8, 10, 11 statistical data 29, 79, 159, 167 international book trade 30–9 STM (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, 115 Swahili 35 technical publishing 39, 196 technology distribution management 123 Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) equipment 146

Index 233 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 61 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 39111

electronic publishing 51–3, 86–8 information 159–81 in printing 4, 6, 80, 110, 162, 198 in publishing 87, 110, 145, 146, 147, 160, 170, 172, 175, 193, 198, 200, 208, 209 Teleordering 145–6 see also information and communications technology (ICT) telecommunications 28, 41, 43, 98, 160, 165, 187, 190 television tie-ins 64, 66 terminology 8–9, 206 territorial rights 50, 114–15 textbook publishing 43, 45, 62, 64, 122, 198 electronic 87, 178 Third World countries 28, 53 trade publishing 63–4, 82, 179, 194 distribution 145, 146 promotion 120–2 translation(s) 14–15, 50 Twentieth-Century Fox 44 typesetting 110, 119, 147 effects of ICT 161–2 UNESCO Yearbook 30, 32 United Kingdom and children’s publishing 66 export markets 36–7, 37 publishing statistics 31–2, 35–9, 60–1 United States and children’s publishing 66

and international copyright laws 49 languages 16–17, 18–19, 32 publishing industry 18–19, 32, 35–9 Universal Copyright Convention (UNESCO, 1956) 29, 49, 50, 52 university presses 38, 47, 71, 111, 117–18 Unwin, Philip 145 Unwin, Sir Stanley 124 Vivendi Universal 43, 44 Walford’s Guide to Reference Materials 65 Walker, Sebastian 135 Wall Street Journal Europe 42, 43 Websites 3, 51, 206 Western culture 14–19 Wiley and Son, John 21 word processing 147, 160, 162–4, 180 World Wide Web (WWW) 47, 80, 87, 148, 153, 160 and copyright issues 201 and 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