International Book Publishing: An Encyclopedia

Philip G. Altbach, Edith S. Hoshino

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781884964169
• eBook ISBN: 9781134261338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First Published in 1996. This encyclopedia is unique in several ways. As the first international reference source on publishing, it is a pioneering venture. Our aim is to provide comprehensive discussion and analysis of key subjects relating to books and publishing worldwide. The sixty-four essays included here feature not only factual and statistical information about the topic, but also analysis and evaluation of those facts and figures. The chapters are significantly more comprehensive than those typically found in an encyclopedia.

Topics in Publishing

Book Marketing in the United States

Five hardcover novels published in the United States sold over a million copies in 1991; fifty-seven sold over 100,000.¹ But not a single first novel was among these successes.² "Apparently, the typical first or midlist novel is published with virtually no promotion to help it, even if the editors believe it's wonderful," complains consultant Colin L. Jones. "Everyone sits back and prays for—gulp—good word of mouth. That's a funny way to run a business totally dependent on new products."³ Funny—or tragic, depending on one's point of view. Yet the condition is symptomatic of the strange, confusing, and frequently irrational manner in which some American publishers approach their markets. To examine these markets and the means and methods publishers employ to reach them is the objective of this essay.

It must be obvious, given the complexities of the American publishing scene, that our task will not be a simple one. It would be dangerous and unfair to generalize in assessing the marketing performance of over 40,000 publishers, ranging in size from one-person, shoestring ventures to multimillion-dollar corporations employing thousands, and varying greatly in character, efficiency, and success. The orientation and practices of educational and professional publishers differ substantially from those of consumer publishers, and among the latter the ways of small, independent firms vary markedly from those of the corporate giants. This essay will have to draw frequent distinctions in describing and analyzing this scene if we are to do justice to its diversity.

Furthermore, far too little is known about book readers and buyers and about publishers' marketing experience to render a report on these subjects exhaustive. While sponsoring a handful of studies, the book industry has shown less than wholehearted support for research; in consumer publishing, indifference to or even hostility toward research is still not uncommon. Even more surprisingly, only on rare occasions has the academic community shown an interest in dispelling the ignorance about the book world, which is obviously damaging to scholarly concerns, authorship, and culture.

The studies available, some of which are of outstanding quality and genuinely helpful, are few and far between. Data sources often contradict one another. Industry and government surveys, although claiming to be comprehensive, fail to report on a significant volume of small, independent presses. Sadly, the factual foundation necessary for developing a fully reliable survey of U.S. book marketing is lacking. Under the circumstances, this essay must rely heavily on the half century of experience and observations of its author and on his judgment in utilizing and interpreting the limited data available. Finally, limitations of space will allow no more than to highlight the most significant aspects of this large and complex topic.

History

Ever since colonial times, books in America have reflected the diversity, flexibility, and openness of American life and character. As a result, few hard and fast rules can be established about the nation's reading tastes. From the beginning, literate Americans have favored scholarly as well as popular, religious as well as secular, enlightening as well as practical, and inspiring as well as diverting books. Success and failure came equally to titles soon forgotten or later proclaimed to be great classics of learning and literature. As patterns of immigration, literacy, and affluence changed during the course of our history, book consumption varied accordingly. Just before World War II, the book industry represented a small and, in some sectors, financially struggling segment of U.S. commerce.

Since the war, however, the industry has been growing at an impressive rate. In 1947, fewer than 700 publishers sold under half a billion dollars' worth of books;⁴ by 1992, the number of publishers had risen to over 40,000⁵ and sales to over twenty billion dollars—the latter representing a growth rate more than one-tenth faster than that of the gross national product6 Sales of professional books grew at the most rapid rate, while consumer books contributed the largest volume to this expansion. Textbooks grew at a more modest pace.

The book industry's growth has been due to a number of cultural and economic factors, some unique to the book field. America underwent a cultural revolution following World War II. Increased educational attainment, coupled with a growing affluence, gave many more Americans than in previous periods the appetite as well as the means to pursue cultural interests. Not only books, but also the arts have been beneficiaries of this development, as increased attendance at museums, concerts, theater, opera, and ballet attests. America's postwar role has opened us up to the world; television has brought that world into our living rooms, stimulating curiosity and broadening our interests. Since books readily serve the full range of these interests, from the sublime to the frivolous, their acceptance grew along with affluence and appetites, despite economic fluctuations.

A number of significant developments have aided the process. The first occurred during World War II, when 123 million paperbound "Armed Services Editions" were distributed to soldiers and sailors in the field, acquainting many individuals for the first time with the pleasures of reading.⁷ Following the war, many of these new readers attended college under the G.I. Bill, where additional books were furnished to them. At that time the mass market for paperback books was created as well, opening magazine distribution channels to books for the first time and making them available in thousands of new locations. Soon paperbound books began to make their appearance and play important roles also in the traditional consumer and educational book markets.

The 1957 launching of Sputnik by the Soviets mobilized American education, resulting in the infusion of massive federal funding into the educational and library book markets. Between 1957 and 1970, nearly $1 billion was invested in public, school, and college library programs alone.⁸ Thousands of new libraries were instituted in elementary and high schools. While these expenditures have had a lasting impact on the reading habits of the young, they did not themselves survive the 1970s, when curtailments in federal largesse and taxpayers' revolts greatly reduced their scope.

In the meantime, the dramatic gains in book readership had persuaded some of the nation's major retail organizations that bookstores would be among the fastest-growing outlets of the future, and several launched bookstore chains with branches in the malls and shopping centers then opening all over America. Chains such as B. Dalton and Waldenbooks played a substantial role in exposing additional consumers to books and in further establishing the book as a popular commodity. At the same time, large numbers of independent entrepreneurs were entering the retail book field, so that the total number of bookstores nearly tripled between 1957 and 1982, from 8,300 to 21,500.⁹ Initially, chain stores tended to feature only the more popular books, while independents were apt to include a larger variety of specialized titles in their selection. In recent years, however, even the chains have broadened their inventories, opening a number of "superstores," in which even the most serious browser would feel at home. In this the chains were following the lead of a few large independents, like the Tattered Cover in Denver, who pride themselves on stocking nearly every available title likely to interest a serious reader.

Their growing maturity and sophistication are symptomatic of the transformation bookstores have undergone during the postwar expansion. Fifty years ago, most bookstores were struggling mom-and-pop operations or departments in major department stores. The mom and-pop shops tended to combine a strong high-culture bias with slight business acumen, which isolated them from their customers and ensured them a marginal existence. Today's independent booksellers appear to be much freer of cultural prejudices, to relate better to their clientele, and to be more service-oriented and commercially savvy. As a result, and because they can rely on a broader consumer base, they seem to be a much healthier breed, even if publishers often treat them with surprisingly little sympathy or understanding.

But if bookstores thus played a decisive role in the postwar book boom, a parallel development demonstrated that under certain conditions publishers could achieve spectacular results while nearly bypassing retailers altogether. Time-Life Books, founded in 1961, and American Heritage, founded in 1968, are examples of magazine publishers who successfully utilized their subscriber lists and contemporary direct mail techniques in marketing books directly to consumers. A big game for big operators, these ventures involved richly illustrated titles and series created in-house, extensive market testing, mailings by the millions, and sales in the hundreds of thousands. In adding this new armament to the industry's arsenal, mail order publishers demonstrated how large a potential for book consumption existed in the United States, so long as publishers could find ways to tap it.

Another recent development that is particularly encouraging because of its promise for the future is the major expansion of children's books. When federal support of institutional markets waned in the 1970s, publishers, who had been downplaying consumer juveniles during the school and library boom, began to concentrate once again on the consumer field. They encountered a singularly receptive audience in the baby boomers, who had now become parents. Many were teaching their children to read at an early age and were anxious to promote their children's interest in books. Thus children's books became the fastest-growing sector of the consumer book field. Children's book departments and stores specializing in juveniles expanded everywhere, as did children's book clubs, publishers' lists, and new juvenile imprints.

The vast expansion of its markets has had a profound impact on the publishing industry. The relatively small and often undercapitalized houses constituting the core of publishing half a century ago lacked the resources to finance the expansion; at the same time the bright prospects, particularly of educational publishing after Sputnik, attracted the acquisitive interest of some industrial giants, who hoped for a profitable symbiosis between their audiovisual productions and book publishing. By the 1960s, mergers and acquisitions had become commonplace. What had essentially been a cottage industry became concentrated over the succeeding decades into a select group of corporate empires. This development made it possible for the industry to serve the much larger audiences for popular titles then developing, but it also forced publishing into organizational and economic structures that made serving any but such large audiences difficult, if not impossible. The new corporate owners and their investors demanded that publishers show substantial profits, far more substantial at any rate than those that publishers could generate by serving the small audiences constituting much of American readership. As a result, mainstream publishers began to withdraw from specialized and "midlist" publishing, abandoning thousands of titles and authors. The abandoned authors, confident that audiences for their work existed, began publishing their own manuscripts. Some succeeded so well in their publishing efforts that they began taking on other authors' writings as well. Thus the independent small press movement was born. By 1992, more than 35,000 such presses were active in the United States.¹⁰

From the beginning, many independent presses showed a better understanding of the market and of effective methods for reaching it than had their mainstream counterparts, particularly those in the trade book sector. Thus, unlike many traditional trade houses, who operated largely in ignorance and isolation from their readers, these independents were in close touch with theirs. Unlike traditional trade imprints, which promoted books according to a uniform formula effective only with a few very popular titles, these independent presses devised carefully targeted and individually tailored campaigns for every one of their publications. Unlike some traditional houses, who gave marketing a low priority, the independents considered marketing to be among their prime functions and special obligations.

Prior to the merger era, traditional trade publishing had not changed significantly since the 1920s, and in many ways remains unchanged even today. The 1920s were a formative era for the trade book industry, during which a literary flowering was effectively nurtured by a group of revered publishing pioneers and editors. The period was a golden age, whose beliefs and practices have been handed down to the present time with almost religious devotion. But the heritage is fatally flawed. Many of the entrepreneurs of the 1920s were wealthy esthetes who defined publishing in terms of literary discovery; they placed primary emphasis on their own role rather than on the service they might render to authors and readers. They disdained popular tastes and commercial success (except as ways to finance literary publications). They viewed publishing as an occupation for gentlemen, implying that commercial activities were beneath them and that marketing was a demeaning nuisance at best. In turn, the people whom they hired to perform the disdained commercial and marketing tasks were often quite contemptuous of the entrepreneurs' literary aspirations, thus giving rise to the kind of bitter internal disputes still common in certain trade houses even today.

Of course, even in the 1920s there were people in trade publishing who believed themselves called to serve readers and writers rather than to engage in narcissistic self-aggrandizement; who acknowledged the intrinsic worth of all good books, literary as well as popular; and who knew that publishers must be committed bot...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Contributors
• Topics in Publishing
• Regions and Countries
• Appendix
• Index