Publishing as a Business

Derided in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica as "a purely commercial affair" that cared more about profits than about literary quality, publishing is fundamentally a business, with a need for the expenses of creating, producing, and distributing a book or other publication not to exceed the income derived from its sale.

The publisher usually controls the advertising and other marketing tasks, but may subcontract various aspects of the process to specialist publisher marketing agencies. In many companies, editing, proofreading, layout, design and other aspects of the production process are done by freelancers.

Dedicated in-house salespeople are sometimes replaced by companies who specialize in sales to bookshops, wholesalers and chain stores for a fee. This trend is accelerating as retail book chains and supermarkets have centralized their buying.

If the entire process up to the stage of printing is handled by an outside company or individuals, and then sold to the publishing company, it is known as book packaging. This is a common strategy between smaller publishers in different territorial markets where the company that first buys the intellectual property rights then sells a package to other publishers and gains an immediate return on capital invested. Indeed, the first publisher will often print sufficient copies for all markets and thereby get the maximum quantity efficiency on the print run for all.

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.

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.

(The text is borrowed and modified from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing#Publishing_as_a_business: as of 23 September 2011)

Task 7. Look through the text “Publishing as a Business” (Task 6) once more, answer the following questions (You have 5 minutes for this task):

1. According to the author of the article is publishing a business or an art?

2. What is freelancers’ job in many publishing companies?

3. Dedicated in-house salespeople are never replaced by companies who specialize in sales to bookshops, wholesalers and chain stores for a fee, aren’t they?

4. Have retail book chains and supermarkets centralized their buying?

5. How do publishing companies sell the finished products?

Task 8. Financial trends. Financial trends reflect the changes (ups and downs) in the rates and prices of financial products traded in the financial markets. Look through the table below. You can find verbs and nouns which are used to describe financial trends as well as the sample sentences in which they are used in this table. You can find the meanings of unknown words in the dictionary (You have 10 minutes for this task):

Trend	Common verbs + examples	Common nouns + examples
	go up, rise, increase, grow Prices have risen by 10 per cent.	rise, increase, growth We saw some growth last year.
	go down, fall, drop, decrease, decline Interest rates fell last month.	fall, drop, decrease, decline, reduction There's been a dropin sales
	remain unchanged/stable Prices have remained unchanged.	stability There has been stability in the markets
	peak Sales peaked in September.	peak Sales reached a peak in 2007.
	fluctuate Sales have fluctuated all year.	fluctuation There, has been some fluctuation in prices.

(The text is borrowed and modified from “Oxford Word Skills” (Intermediate) by Ruth Gairns, Stuart Redman: as of 23 September 2011)

Task 9. Match the adjectives which are used to describe financial trends with their meanings (You have 5 minutes for this task).

Adjective	Meaning
a slight rise in costs	noticeable and important
a gradual rise in profits	very large and sudden
a steady increase in the interest rate	slow and over a long period of time.
a significant fall in profits	very small
a sharp fall in sales	slow but regular and continuing

Task 10. Complete the sentences on the right. The meaning must stay the same. The first one is done for you as an example (You have 5 minutes for this task).

There has been a sharp fall in sales.	Sales have fallen sharply.
There has been a steady rise in sales.	Sales have……..
There was significant growth in sales.	Sales…….
There was a gradual rise in the price.	The price…..
There was a slight fall in profits.	Profits…..
There has been stability in costs.	Costs have remained…..

Task 11. Case study. Work in pairs of three or four. Below you can see the graph that shows the number of printed books from 2005 till 2011 of a publishing house. Your task is to describe this graph. You have 7 minutes to discuss and write the description in groups. Present the description in front of the class. Do not be afraid to make some conclusions about the company activities judging from the graph.

Home task

1. Imagine that you are the executive director of a small publishing company. You decided to change software because the existing system performs not very well at times. However, you want to avoid extra costs. How will you manage the situation? Make a short report. Be ready to present this information in front of the class.

2. Do Tasks 1-4 from the Workbook.