![The Caxton Celebration - William Caxton showing specimens of his printing to King Edward IV and his Queen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/The_Caxton_Celebration_-_William_Caxton_showing_specimens_of_his_printing_to_King_Edward_IV_and_his_Queen.jpg)
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...
s,
newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...
s, and
magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include
electronic publishing such as
ebooks
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
,
academic journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...
s,
micropublishing
Micropublishing is used in three senses:
*Publishing on microforms as pioneered by Eugene Power.
*The book publishing industry sometimes uses this term in discussing publishing companies below a certain revenue level.
*It is also used to descri ...
,
websites
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wiki ...
,
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
s,
video game publishing, and the like.
Publishing may produce private, club, commons or public goods and may be conducted as a commercial, public, social or community activity. The commercial publishing industry ranges from large multinational conglomerates such as
Bertelsmann,
RELX,
Pearson Pearson may refer to:
Organizations Education
*Lester B. Pearson College, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
*Pearson College (UK), London, owned by Pearson PLC
*Lester B. Pearson High School (disambiguation)
Companies
*Pearson PLC, a UK-based int ...
and
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre.
Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corpora ...
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. Publishing is also undertaken by governments, civil society and private companies for administrative or compliance requirements, business, research, advocacy or public interest objectives. This can include
annual reports,
research reports,
market research
Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Mar ...
, policy briefings and
technical report
A technical report (also scientific report) is a document that describes the process, progress, or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research problem. It might also include recommendations and c ...
s.
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.
History
Publishing became possible with the
invention of writing
The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by systems of markings and how these markings were used for various purposes in different societies, thereby transforming social organization. Writing systems are the foundati ...
, 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
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuation m ...
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
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
A hand mold is a simple mold used for low quantity work. It is used in the injection molding and the printing industry.
It is made by a hand injection molding machine. It is a simple machine which contains a barrel, handle, nozzle, mold and heater ...
. 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."
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.
Historically, publishing has been handled by
publishers
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
, although some authors self-published. The
establishment of the World Wide Web in 1989 soon propelled the
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
into a dominant medium of publishing.
Wikis
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
and
Blogs soon developed, followed by
online book
An online book is a resource in book-like form that is only available to read on the Internet. It differs from the common idea of an e-book, which is usually available for users to download and read locally on a computer, smartphone or on an e-re ...
s,
online newspapers
An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical.
Going online created more opportunities for newspa ...
, and
online magazine
An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer mag ...
s.
Since its start, the World Wide Web has been facilitating the
technological convergence
Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media ...
of commercial and self-published content, as well as the convergence of publishing and producing into
online production through the development of
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...
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.
''Salon'' described the situation as "lack of diversity behind the scenes in book world". 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. 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.
Stages of publishing
The publishing process includes creation, acquisition,
copy editing, production,
printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...
(and its
electronic equivalents),
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
, and
distribution. With books,
binding follows upon the printing process. It involves folding the printed sheets, "securing them together, affixing boards or sides to it, and covering the whole with leather or other materials".
Types of publishers
![ChungyoEslite fullsize](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/ChungyoEslite_fullsize.png)
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.
*
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.
*
Vanity press
A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where anyone can pay to have a book published.. The term "vanity press" is often used pejoratively, implying that an author who uses such a service is pub ...
es 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.
*
Hybrid publisher
A hybrid press is a publishing house which can be broadly defined by its source of revenue. The revenue source of a traditional publisher is through the sale of books (and other related materials) that they publish, while the revenue of hybrid pu ...
s 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.
Derided in the
1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as "a purely commercial affair" that cared more about profits than about literary quality, 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
RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; ...
and
Pearson PLC having global publishing operations.
Some businesses maximize their profit margins through
vertical integration
In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the suppl ...
; 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
A distributor is an enclosed rotating switch used in spark-ignition internal combustion engines that have mechanically timed ignition. The distributor's main function is to route high voltage current from the ignition coil to the spark plug ...
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%)
are eliminated,
Print on demand
Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents, packaging or materials) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While oth ...
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.
Industry sub-divisions
Newspaper publishing
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.
Periodical publishing
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 journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...
s, but not newspapers.
About one-third of publishers in the United States publish periodicals (not including newspapers).
The library and information science communities often refer to periodicals as
serials.
Book publishing
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The global book publishing industry accounts for over $100 billion of annual revenue, or about 15% of the total media industry.
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.
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
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition an ...
is registered. The publisher of record may or may not be the actual publisher.
In 2013,
Penguin (owned by Pearson) and
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
(owned by
Bertelsmann) merged, narrowing the industry to a handful of big publishers as it adapted to digital media.
The merger created the largest consumer book publisher in the world, with a global market share of more than 25 percent. Approximately 60% of English-language books are produced through the "Big Five" publishing houses:
Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House.
On April 2, 2020, Bertelsmann announced the completion of its purchase ...
,
Hachette,
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...
,
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pu ...
, 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.
On November 2, 2021, the
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
filed a lawsuit (U.S. v. Bertelsmann SE & CO. KGaA, et al.) to block the merger on anti-trust grounds, 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.
Directory publishing
Directory publishing is a specialized genre within the publishing industry. These publishers produce mailing lists,
telephone book
A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that ...
s, and other types of directories.
With the advent of the Internet, many of these directories are now online.
Tie-in publishing
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
The Black Library is a division of Games Workshop (formerly a part of BL Publishing) which is devoted to publishing List of Black Library novels, novels and audiobooks (and has previously produced art books, background books, and graphic novels) ...
(
Warhammer) and Wizards of the Coast (
Dragonlance
''Dragonlance'' is a shared universe created by Laura Hickman, Laura and Tracy Hickman, and expanded by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis under the direction of TSR, Inc. into a series of fantasy novels. The Hickmans conceived ''Dragonlance'' whil ...
,
Forgotten Realms
''Forgotten Realms'' is a campaign setting for the '' Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers alike as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as ...
, 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.
[Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed.), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas", 1990, British Museum publications, .]
Recent developments
Accessible publishing
Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and book design whereby books and other texts are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace the reading process. It is particularly relevant for people who are blind, visu ...
uses the digitization of books to mark-up books into
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
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, eye tracking problems and
macular degeneration
Macular degeneration, also known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD or ARMD), is a medical condition which may result in blurred or no vision in the center of the visual field. Early on there are often no symptoms. Over time, however, som ...
, as well as
Braille
Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille disp ...
,
DAISY,
audiobook
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
s and
e-books
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
.
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.
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
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that it ...
online to sell more books by engaging with their readers online.
Standardization
Refer to the
ISO
ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization.
ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance
* Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007
* Iso ...
divisions of ICS 01.140.40 and 35.240.30 for further information.
Legal issues
Publication is the distribution of copies or
content
Content or contents may refer to:
Media
* Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers
** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...
to the
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...
.
The
Berne Convention
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, was an international assembly held in 1886 in the Swiss city of Bern by ten European countries with the goal to agree on a set of leg ...
requires that this can only be done with the consent of the copyright holder, which is initially always the author.
In the
Universal Copyright Convention
The Universal Copyright Convention (UCC), adopted in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1952, is one of the two principal international conventions protecting copyright; the other is the Berne Convention.
The UCC was developed by the United Nations Educati ...
, "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."
Privishing
Privishing (''priv''ate publ''ishing'', 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. 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
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
,
or good business practice (e.g., not printing more books than the publisher believes will sell in a reasonable length of time).
See also
References
External links
International Publishers' organisation
{{Authority control
Mass media industry