In the first Writing for Publishing lecture we discussed publishing as a business, and the main motivations behind publishers and authors, which we summarised in one word, MONEY. One reading this week that stood out for me in particular was Peter Jovanovic's Publishing in Hard Times (2009). Jovanovic discusses the impact that the different recessions over the years have had on the publishing industry, and how best for a publishing house to prepare for the inevitable financial problems they face during a recession.
Jovanovic summarises his answer to a recession, saying:
"In my view, publishers preserve their business and enhance their competitive position best by focusing all of their money and attention on the following: find authors, make products (books, journals,databases, etc.), and sell them."
He says that the biggest costs in publishing are people, and therefore publishers preparing for a financial struggle should make cuts in both staff and salaries. Some publishers try to avoid laying off people by making cuts in other areas, such as travel, entertainment, sales meetings or HR training sessions. But this just causes more problems, as he goes on to explain:
"Usually these steps do not add up to much; and, if T & E helps to find authors, or the sales meetings motivate great sales people to sell more, it is unproductive to stop them. Most of the staff finds such steps to be an irritant, which makes their working lives less productive while saving nugatory amounts of money."
One of the main messages I got from Jovanovic's work is that it is important for publishers to anticipate a financial struggle and to act fast, making short term sacrifices they may not necessarily want to make in order to get ahead of competitors and achieve more in the long term.
In Shifting Sales Channels, (2009), Mike Shatzkin also discusses the recent recession, as well as the internet and electronic publishing and how that is impacting book sales. The results of Shatzkin's survey and interviews with publishers suggest that trade publishing is suffering, but children's books sales are still encouraging, especially when faced with the fear of the 'born digital' generation rejecting books. (Shatzkin, 2009).
Shatzkin also discusses the rise of people buying from Amazon, which leads to the third reading, Amazon: Love Them? Hate Them? Let’s Follow the Money (2010) by Ted Treanor. Treanor discusses the rise of Amazon and how it has gone from a small company just selling books, to having $24 billion in annual revenue. "They’ve started from $0 in 1995, and will capture more than $6billion in media/book sales in 2010." (Treanor, 2010). Amazon CEO, talking about the Kindle in an interview with the New York Times, said:
‘‘When we launched Kindle 2 years ago, it was 90,000 titles, and today it’s more than 350,000. We’re adding thousands of titles every week. Our vision is every book ever printed in every language, all available within 60 s.’’
The former CEO of Random House said:
‘‘Traditional trade book publishers are scared...The world that they
have known, of print books and brick-and-mortar bookstores—the whole physical distribution system—is on the cusp of changing fundamentally.’’
His statement is supported by the fact that, among other investments, Amazon bought BooksSurge and Mobipocket, print-on-demand and e-book companies, in 2005 in a "clear message to both the digital and traditional book publishing industry that Amazon was investing in their vision of the future of book publishing." (Treanor, 2010).
All of this information shows that publishing is about money, and relies on money and therefore when the economy is struggling, publishing is affected and the industry has to make big sacrifices in order to survive. Also, in the face of the internet and new e-publishing technologies, book sales are threatened, making publishers worry that the industry is soon going to change.
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