Publishing

"Publisher" redirects here. For other uses, see Publisher (disambiguation).

Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free.^[1] Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include electronic publishing such as ebooks, academic journals, micropublishing, websites, blogs, video game publishing, and the like.

Printer working an early Gutenberg letterpress from the 15th century (1877 engraving).

Publishing may produce private, club, commons or public goods and may be conducted as a commercial, public, social or community activity.^[2] The commercial publishing industry ranges from large multinational conglomerates such as Bertelsmann, RELX, Pearson and Thomson Reuters^[3] to thousands of small independents. It has various divisions such as trade/retail publishing of fiction and non-fiction, educational publishing (k-12) and academic and scientific publishing.^[4] Publishing is also undertaken by governments, civil society and private companies for administrative or compliance requirements, business, research, advocacy or public interest objectives.^[5] This can include annual reports, research reports, market research, policy briefings and technical reports. Self-publishing has become very common.

"Publisher" can refer to a publishing company or organization, or to an individual who leads a publishing company, imprint, periodical or newspaper.

Stages of publishing

The publishing process covering most magazine, journal and book publishers include: (Different stages are applicable to different types of publisher)^[6]

1. Commissioning
2. Writing
3. Copy editing
4. Design
5. Copywriting
6. Typesetting
7. Proofreading
8. Correction cycles
9. Indexing
10. Final corrections
11. Web publishing
12. Prepress
13. Printing
14. Post press
15. Distribution
16. Marketing

Types of publishers

 

Eslite Bookstore in Taiwan.

Newspaper publishing

Main article: Newspaper

Newspapers are regularly scheduled publications that present recent news, typically on a type of inexpensive paper called newsprint. Most newspapers are primarily sold to subscribers, through retail newsstands or are distributed as advertising-supported free newspapers. About one-third of publishers in the United States are newspaper publishers.^[7]

Periodical publishing

Main article: Periodical publication

Nominally, periodical publishing involves publications that appear in a new edition on a regular schedule. Newspapers and magazines are both periodicals, but within the industry, the periodical publishing is frequently considered a separate branch that includes magazines and even academic journals, but not newspapers.^[7] About one-third of publishers in the United States publish periodicals (not including newspapers).^[7] The library and information science communities often refer to periodicals as serials.

Book publishing

See also: History of books

"Book publishing company" redirects here. For the publisher named Book Publishing Company, see The Farm (Tennessee).

 

Facade of Otava's publishing office in Helsinki, Finland

The global book publishing industry accounts for over $100 billion of annual revenue, or about 15% of the total media industry.^[8]

For-profit publishers of books that serve the general public are often referred to as "trade publishers." Book publishers represent less than a sixth of the publishers in the United States.^[7] Most books are published by a small number of very large book publishers, but thousands of smaller book publishers exist. Many small- and medium-sized book publishers specialize in a specific area. Additionally, thousands of authors have created publishing companies and self-published their own works. Within book publishing, the publisher of record for a book is the entity in whose name the book's ISBN is registered. The publisher of record may or may not be the actual publisher.

In 2013, Penguin (owned by Pearson) and Random House (owned by Bertelsmann) merged, narrowing the industry to a handful of big publishers as it adapted to digital media.^[9] The merger created the largest consumer book publisher in the world, with a global market share of more than 25 percent.^[10] Approximately 60%^[11] of English-language books are produced through the "Big Five" publishing houses: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan. In November 2020, ViacomCBS agreed to sell Simon & Schuster, the third largest book publisher in the United States, to Penguin Random House in a deal that will create the first mega publisher.^[9] On November 2, 2021, the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit (U.S. v. Bertelsmann SE & CO. KGaA, et al.) to block the merger on anti-trust grounds,^[12] and on October 31st, 2022, the D.C. District Court ruled in favour of the Department of Justice, filing a permanent injunction on the merger. ^[13]

Directory publishing

Directory publishing is a specialized genre within the publishing industry. These publishers produce mailing lists, telephone books, and other types of directories.^[7] With the advent of the Internet, many of these directories are now online.

Textbook publishing

A textbook is an educational book or an e-book containing knowledge about a particular subject that is used by people studying certain subjects.^[14] Textbook publishing continues to be needed due to the global need for education.^[15]

Web Publishing

All the world’s knowledge up to recently has been put in books. For accessibility and global reach this content can be repurposed to the web. The British Library for example holds more than 170 million items, they add 3 million items each year, dating back through history.^[16] Content like this, with consent can be published online by e-books, audiobooks, CMS based websites, online learning platforms, videos or mobile/tablet apps. Online, Writers and Copy Editors are known as Content Writers and Content Editors although their roles vary from their print based alternatives.

Tie-in publishing

Main article: Tie-in

Technically, radio, television, cinemas, VCDs and DVDs, music systems, games, computer hardware and mobile telephony publish information to their audiences. Indeed, the marketing of a major film often includes a novelization, a graphic novel or comic version, the soundtrack album, a game, model, toys and endless promotional publications.

Some of the major publishers have entire divisions devoted to a single franchise, e.g., Ballantine Del Rey Lucasbooks has the exclusive rights to Star Wars in the United States; Random House UK (Bertelsmann)/Century LucasBooks holds the same rights in the United Kingdom. The game industry self-publishes through BL Publishing/Black Library (Warhammer) and Wizards of the Coast (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, etc.). The BBC has its publishing division that does very well with long-running series such as Doctor Who. These multimedia works are cross-marketed aggressively and sales frequently outperform the average stand-alone published work, making them a focus of corporate interest.^[17]

Book publishing sub-divisions

There are four major types of publishers in book publishing:

• Commercial publishers are more rigid and selective as to which books, they publish. If accepted, authors pay no costs to publish in exchange for selling rights to their work. They receive in-house editing, design, printing, marketing and distribution services, and are paid royalties on sales.^[18]
• Self-publishers: Authors use self-publishing houses to publish their books and retain full rights to their works. Self-publishing houses are more open than traditional publishing houses, allowing emerging and established authors to publish their work. A number of modern or self-publishing houses offer enhanced services (e.g. editing, design) and authors may choose which one to use. Authors shoulder pre-publishing expenses and in return retain all the rights to their works, keep total control, and are paid royalties on sales.^[19]
• Vanity presses portray themselves as traditional publishers but are, in fact, just a self-publishing service. Unlike genuine self-publishing services, the author is often obliged to use some or all of their additional services, and the press will often take rights to the work as part of their contract.^[20]
• Hybrid publishers operate with a different revenue model than traditional publishing, while keeping the rest of the practices of publishing the same. There have been attempts to bridge this gap using hybrid models. No one model has been fully proven at this stage.^[21]

Derided in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica as "a purely commercial affair" that cared more about profits than about literary quality,^[22] publishing is like any business, with a need for the expenses not to exceed the income. Publishing is now a major industry with the largest companies Reed Elsevier and Pearson PLC having global publishing operations.

Some businesses maximize their profit margins through vertical integration; book publishing is not one of them. Although newspaper and magazine companies still often own printing presses and binderies, book publishers rarely do. Similarly, the trade usually sells the finished products through a distributor who stores and distributes the publisher's wares for a percentage fee or sells on a sale or return basis.

The advent of the Internet has provided the electronic way of book distribution without the need of physical printing, physical delivery and storage of books.

Within the electronic book path, the publishing house's role remains almost identical. The process of preparing a book for e-book publication is exactly the same as print publication, with only minor variations in the process to account for the different mediums of publishing. While some costs, such as the discount given to retailers (normally around 45%)^[23] are eliminated, additional costs connected to ebooks apply (especially in the conversion process), raising the production costs to a similar level.^{[citation needed]}

Print on demand is rapidly becoming an established alternative to traditional publishing.

Book clubs are almost entirely direct-to-retail, and niche publishers pursue a mixed strategy to sell through all available outlets — their output is insignificant to the major booksellers, so lost revenue poses no threat to the traditional symbiotic relationships between the four activities of printing, publishing, distribution, and retail.

Recent developments

Accessible publishing uses the digitization of books to mark-up books into XML and then produces multiple formats from this to sell to customers, often targeting those with difficulty reading. Formats include a variety larger print sizes, specialized print formats for dyslexia,^[24] eye tracking problems and macular degeneration, as well as Braille, DAISY, audiobooks and e-books.^[25]

Green publishing means adapting the publishing process to minimise environmental impact. One example of this is the concept of on-demand printing, using digital or print-on-demand technology. This cuts down the need to ship books since they are manufactured close to the customer on a just-in-time basis.^[26]

A further development is the growth of on-line publishing where no physical books are produced. The ebook is created by the author and uploaded to a website from where it can be downloaded and read by anyone.

An increasing number of authors are using niche marketing online to sell more books by engaging with their readers online.^[27]

Standardization

Refer to the ISO divisions of ICS 01.140.40 and 35.240.30 for further information.^[28][29]

Legal issues

 

World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva

Main article: Publication

Publication is the distribution of copies or content to the public.^[30][31] The Berne Convention requires that this can only be done with the consent of the copyright holder, which is initially always the author.^[30] In the Universal Copyright Convention, "publication" is defined in article VI as "the reproduction in tangible form and the general distribution to the public of copies of a work from which it can be read or otherwise visually perceived."^[31]

Privishing

Privishing (private publishing, but not to be confused with self-publishing) is a modern term for publishing a book but printing so few copies or with such lack of marketing, advertising or sales support that it effectively does not reach the public.^[32] The book, while nominally published, is almost impossible to obtain through normal channels such as bookshops, often cannot be ordered specially, and has a notable lack of support from its publisher, including refusal to reprint the title. A book that is privished may be referred to as "killed". Depending on the motivation, privishing may constitute breach of contract, censorship,^[33] or good business practice (e.g., not printing more books than the publisher believes will sell in a reasonable length of time).

History

Publishing became possible with the invention of writing, and became more practical upon the introduction of printing. Prior to printing, distributed works were copied manually, by scribes. Due to printing, publishing progressed hand-in-hand with the development of books.

The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware circa 1045, but there are no known surviving examples of his work. The Korean civil servant Choe Yun-ui, who lived during the Goryeo Dynasty, invented the first metal moveable type in 1234–1250 AD ^[34]

Around 1450, in what is commonly regarded as an independent invention, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available.

Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula. "A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in A.D. 330."^[35]

Eventually, printing enabled other forms of publishing besides books. The history of modern newspaper publishing started in Germany in 1609, with publishing of magazines following in 1663.

Missionaries brought printing presses to sub-Saharan Africa in the mid-18th century.^[36]

Historically, publishing has been handled by publishers, although some authors self-published.^[37] The establishment of the World Wide Web in 1989 soon propelled the website into a dominant medium of publishing. Wikis and Blogs soon developed, followed by online books, online newspapers, and online magazines.

Since its start, the World Wide Web has been facilitating the technological convergence of commercial and self-published content, as well as the convergence of publishing and producing into online production through the development of multimedia content.

A U.S.-based study in 2016 that surveyed 34 publishers found that the publishing industry in the US in general is overwhelmingly represented by straight, able bodied, white females.^[38] Salon described the situation as "lack of diversity behind the scenes in book world".^[39] A survey in 2020 by the same group found there has been no statistical significant change in the lack of diversity since the 2016 survey four years earlier.^[40] Lack of diversity in the American publishing industry has been an issue for years. Within the industry, there was the least amount of diversity in higher level editorial positions.^[41]

See also: List of women printers and publishers before 1800

See also: History of printing in East Asia

See also

General:

• Accessible publishing
• Concentration of media ownership
• Editions
• Global spread of the printing press
• Lists of publishing companies
• List of book distributors
• Mass media
• Media proprietor
• Open access publishing
• Open publishing
• Publication
• Self-publishing
• Serials, periodicals and journals
• Small press
• Zines

Publishing on specific contexts:

• Academic publishing
• Books published per country per year
• List of best-selling books
• Document management system
• Scientific literature

Publishing tools:

• Desktop publishing
• Electronic publishing
• Mobile publishing
• Web publishing tools

References

1. "PUBLISHING | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
2. Hess, Charlotte; Ostrom, Elinor, eds. (2011). Understanding knowledge as a commons : from theory to practice. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51603-7. OCLC 709863190.
3. "GLOBAL 50. The world ranking of the publishing industry 2019". Issuu. 28 October 2019. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
4. International Publishers Association (IPA); WIPO (2018). "The Global Publishing Industry in 2016". www.wipo.int. Creative Industries. doi:10.34667/tind.29034. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
5. Börjesson, Lisa (2016). "Research outside academia? - An analysis of resources in extra-academic report writing: Research Outside Academia? - An Analysis of Resources in Extra-Academic Report Writing". Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 53 (1): 1–10. doi:10.1002/pra2.2016.14505301036. S2CID 7212603.
6. New Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. 2016.
7. Bureau of Labor Statistics (17 December 2009). . U.S. Department of Labor. Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 28 May 2010.
8. Wischenbart, Rüdiger (2012). Publishing Statistics (PDF). IPA Global. (PDF) from the original on 19 May 2015.
9. Alter, Alexandra; Lee, Edmund (25 November 2020). "Penguin Random House to Buy Simon & Schuster". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
10. Pfanner, Eric; Chozick, Amy (29 October 2012). "Random House and Penguin Merger Creates Global Giant". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
11. Losowsky, Andrew (20 February 2013). "Indie Bookstores File Lawsuit Against Amazon". Huffington Post.
12. "U.S. V. Bertelsmann SE & CO. KGaA, et al". www.justice.gov. 2 November 2021. Retrieved 6 August 2022.
13. Alter, Alexandra; Harris, Elizabeth (31 October 2022). "Judge Blocks a Merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 December 2022.
14. Colins Dictionary 2023-01-12 at the Wayback Machine (last checked 2023-01-12)
15. The Global Publishing Industry in 2021, WIPO 2023-01-12 at the Wayback Machine (last checked 2023-01-12)
16. "The British Library". 12 January 2023. (last checked 2023-01-12)
17. Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed.), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas", 1990, British Museum publications, ISBN 0-7141-1447-2.
18. Steven, Daniel. "Self-publishing – In traditional royalty publishing". publishlawyer.com. Daniel N. Steven, LLC. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
19. Steven, Daniel. "What is self-publishing". publishlawyer.com. Daniel N. Steven, LLC. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
20. "Self-publishing vs vanity publishing. Confused?". www.writersandartists.co.uk. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
21. Klems, Brian A. (11 August 2016). "What is Hybrid Publishing? Here Are 4 Things All Writers Should Know". Writer's Digest. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
22. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Publishing" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
23. "Book Cost Analysis – Cost of Physical Book Publishing - Kindle Review – Kindle Phone Review, Kindle Fire HD Review". Kindle Review.
24. Dwight Garner (20 May 2008). "Making Reading Easier – Paper Cuts Blog". NYTimes.com.
25. . Radhowyouwant.com. Archived from the original on 29 July 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
26. Kanter, James (2 December 2008). "Reading Green On Demand". Green blogs, New York Times. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
27. Rinzler, Alan (29 July 2010). "The Magic of Niche Marketing for Authors". Forbes. Retrieved 3 July 2012.
28. International Organization for Standardization. "01.140.40: Publishing". Retrieved 14 July 2008.
29. International Organization for Standardization. "35.240.30: IT applications in information, documentation and publishing". Retrieved 14 July 2008.
30. WIPO. . Wipo.int. Archived from the original on 11 September 2012. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
31. (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 November 2012. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
32. Winkler, David (11 July 2002). . CommonDreams.org. Archived from the original on 4 August 2007.
33. Sue Curry Jansen; Brian Martin (July 2003). "Making censorship backfire". Counterpoise. 7.
34. Newman, Sophia (19 June 2019). "So, Gutenberg Didn't Actually Invent Printing As We Know It". lithub.com. Literary Hub. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
35. Clapham, Michael, "Printing" in A History of Technology, Vol 2. From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, eds,. Charles Singer et al. (Oxford 1957), p. 377. Cited from Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge University, 1980).
36. Gazemba, Stanley (13 December 2019). "African Publishing Minefields and the Woes of the African Writer". The Elephant. Retrieved 29 February 2020.
37. FitzGerald, Jamie (1 November 2013). "Notable Moments in Self-Publishing History: A Timeline". Poets & Writers. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
38. Flood, Alison (27 January 2016). "Publishing industry is overwhelmingly white and female, US study finds". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
39. Lee, Paula Young (26 January 2016). "White women of publishing: New survey shows a lack of diversity behind the scenes in book world". Salon. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
40. Flood, Alison (30 January 2020). "US publishing remains 'as white today as it was four years ago'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
41. Italie, Hillel (11 February 2020). "Missteps lead publishing industry to review diversity effort". Associated Press. Retrieved 10 November 2020.

External links

• International Publishers' organisation