Demographics and destiny

Although publishers are accustomed to defining audiences and markets, they rarely take into account demographic data. Knowing the size of various age groups can help publishers to distinguish between subject areas whose markets are likely to grow and those whose markets are likely to shrink or level off Kendrick Noble offers demographic profiles of the U.S. population in 1988 and 1995 and predicts some likely effects of demographic change on the markets for pubishers’ products. J. Kendrick Noble, Jr., is first vice president of Paine Webber, Inc. and a leading analyst of the publishing industry.     

Priorities for publishing research

The author suggests a wide-ranging research agenda, including applying and safeguarding copyright, increasing literacy, comparing the appropriate uses of the printed word and other media, understanding language itself, assisting authors to get their work into print, improving statistics about the industry, predicting the future of suppliers as well as publishers themselves, improving distribution, and influencing the likely future of the information superhighway. J. Kendrick Noble was formerly publishing industry analyst for Paine Webber, Inc.     

Global publishing in the 1990s

Publishing education must prepare students to work productively in the industry as it will operate in future decades. Robert J. Jachino looks at the challenges we can expect from globalization in the 1990s and discusses a number of limitations on that process which are of interest not only to publishing educators but to practicing publishers. Robert J. Jachino is president and chief executive officer of the Thomson Information—Publishing Group. He began his publishing career with Allyn & Bacon and has held positions with Addison-Wesley, Harper & Row, Benzinger-Bruce, Glencoe, Fearon Pittman and Bowmar/Noble. He has been with the International Thomson Organization since 1980.     

The media megamerger wave of the 1980s: What happened?

The wave of publishing mergers of the 1980s ended with the recession of 1990. This article looks at the nature of that wave and its likely effects, both short and long term. Noble finds the scenario of a handful of media giants unlikely and anticipates more rational times. He was formerly publishing industry analyst for Paine Webber, Inc. Address for correspondence     

Collection Development Patterns of Fiction Titles in Public Libraries: The Place of Independent and Small Presses

Recent scholarship has identified increased corporate control of the news and book publishing industries as a worrisome trend insofar as it has meant a decrease in the sites where diverse public expression is allowed to occur. Public libraries are major buyers of fiction titles, yet mainstream commercial publishers owned by large conglomerates now publish a large portion of all available fiction despite the proliferation of small, independent presses. This article looks at the fiction purchases of public libraries in the United States which are members of OCLC by type of publisher in the period 1994–1997, and then compares these purchases with those of Barnes & Noble bookstores. While Barnes & Noble seems to have significantly increased its purchases from small, independent presses during this four-year period, public libraries have not done so. Yet, in general, public library fiction purchases do reflect both the availability of independent titles and their rate of appearance in popular collection development review tools.     

Isaiah Thomas Invents the Bookstore Chain

We think of bookstore chains—Barnes and Noble, Brentanos, Walden Books, or the defunct Borders—as recent phenomena. But, the roots of franchised bookselling lie deep in American publishing history. A case can be made that late eighteenth century publisher-printer Isaiah Thomas, of Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, was the originator of the bookstore chain. At his zenith, Thomas and various partners had eleven stores operating in a network reaching from Boston to Albany to Baltimore, with branches in New Hampshire and Vermont. Driving the Thomas publishing-bookselling enterprise was a form of vertical corporate integration of publishing services (all the way from papermaking to distribution of product) that would, under today’s antitrust laws be hard to justify legally. At the time, in the 1790s–1810, Thomas’s multiple interlocking businesses were, nonetheless, truly a bookman’s empire, with bestsellers like almanacs and textbooks leading the way.     

Brentano’s: Books Afloat on a Sinking Ship

New York-based Brentano’s Bookstore (1850–1996) demonstrated growth and resilience when the economy or their business went up or down, but Brentano’s never adopted the deep discounting that became a modus operandi for American booksellers and book clubs from the 1930s onwards and especially after World War II. Resistance to deep discounting spelled doom for Brentano’s, particularly when Barnes and Noble became a competitor in the 1980s. Over many decades, Brentano’s experimented successfully with innovative retailing techniques, including bookstores on ocean liners plying Atlantic routes, serving upscale, multi-lingual, international readers. The on-land bookstore chain, in several cities, peaked at 28 stores in the 1980s and was known for its well read, impeccably dressed, courteous staff, setting a model of effective handselling. Tension between appealing to rarefied tastes of elite consumers vs. meeting practical demands of ordinary shoppers manifested in Brentano’s bookselling tactics. Conglomeration in US publishing eventually dissolved Brentano’s publishing operation as well.     

An approach to the history of publishing: Twentieth-century Quebec

To understand modern publishing, detailed historical studies must be undertaken of individual publishing houses, their leading figures, and their relationships with authors. Such studies, the authors argue, will permit us to understand how a publishing house establishes its identity. They describe in detail a research program based on these principles that is investigating literary publishing in Quebec. Translated by Larry Shouldice Richard Giguère, a literary scholar and critic, is a professor in the Department of Letters and Communications at the University of Sherbrooke. Jacques Michon, a professor in the Department of Letters and Communications at the University of Sherbrooke, is president of the Quebec Association for Studies in Publishing. M. Michon has written articles on the Quebec novel and publishing in the twentieth century, and is the author of two books,Mallarmé et les mots anglais andEmile Nelligan: les racines du rêve. Since 1982, he and Richard Giguère have directed the Research Group on Quebec Literary Publishing. Address for correspondence     

Politics and publishing in a democratic society: Technical breakthroughs and research agendas

Publishing flourishes best in a democratic society. Technological changes alter the relationship of forces so that opportunities for publishing expand. A broader range of information channels, for example, increases choice and makes authoritarian rule more difficult. Publishing also enhances democracy when decisions are made on the basis of merit rather than top-down legislation. Research should reflect awareness of the interaction of publishing and politics. Such areas as the relationship between public and private sectors, the impact of internationalization, non-U.S. ownership of information, mergers and acquisitions, and conflict between the First Amendment and copyright law, are examples of areas in which democratic outcomes are critical. Decision making in publishing would benefit from heightened awareness of the political consequences of publishers’ activities. Irving Louis Horowithz is the author ofCommunicating Ideas: The Politics of Publishing Mary E. Curtis has written widely on subjects of concern to professional publishing.     

Value Creation in the Publishing Industry: The Impact of Acquiring IT Services Firms Between 2002 and 2007

With the presence of online, digital content and new services for manipulating and searching it, printing and publishing firms may experience technological uncertainty and risk and diminishing profitability. Mergers and acquisitions are approaches for dealing with the current technology and market changes that are underway in the printing and publishing industry. Using an event study methodology and a sample of 60 U.S. printing and publishing firms, this study investigates the value creation of acquiring information technology (IT) services firms. The study's findings reveal that printing and publishing firms experience significant increases in their market values as a result of acquiring IT services firms. In fact, non-newspaper firms realize the largest increases in market value. The study's findings should help academicians and practitioners understand the kinds of strategic acquisitions from which printing and publishing firms are most likely to benefit.     

Developing and Electronic Journal:

Technology has leapt ahead to the point where what was impossible to imagine a year ago is feasible today. But technology is only one component of the publishing revolution. Developing an electronic journal for Internet delivery presents challenges on every front. It is nothing less than reinventing the business of publishing. The story of the development of the Journal of Image Guided Surgery illustrates the challenges, the pitfalls, and the excitement of this new medium.     

Electronic publishing: trends and responsive strategies

Corporate publishing organizations face a major practical task in deploying electronic publishing systems (EPS), with little strategic guidance. In response, this discussion focuses on large-scale trends at work in electronic publishing, their impact in a corporate environment, and strategies to address those trends. Specifically, the discussion begins by defining electronic publishing; continues with trends affecting document workflow, components of a situation analysis, and three potential organizational responses to the situation; and ends with a responsive strategy to compete for business in five dimensions: cost, convenience, timeliness, quality, and capability. Jay E. Gillette has worked as a senior technical planner at Bellcore since 1987. Previously he was a consultant in documentation and technical planning and served on the technical communication and humanities faculty of the Colorado School of Mines. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.     

科研诚信背景下学术出版第三方服务的合理界定及学术不端防范对策

学术出版活动是促进科学知识传播、共享科研成果及推动科学研究的主要形式,而发表科技论文是学术出版活动的主要内容。近年来,随着科学技术的发展,全球学术出版活动蓬勃发展,与学术出版活动密切相关的第三方服务也逐渐兴起。学术出版第三方服务为科研人员开展科学研究提供了便利,被国内外学术界广泛接受,但由于其服务范围模糊、界限不分明,往往存在个别学术不端现象。本文基于最新发布的《学术出版第三方服务的边界蓝皮书(2020)》,阐述了其中规定的正当服务及不正当服务,并从管理部门、第三方服务机构、期刊编辑部及科研人员角度提出了学术不端行为防范对策。学术出版活动各个环节要积极参与治理学术不端问题,推动科研诚信及创新性国家建设。     

Of cultures and compromises: Publishers,textbooks, and the academy

Relationships between professors as textbook authors and publishing houses as textbook producers have always been fragile. L. Kathy Heilenman examines this relationship and describes how current changes in the climate of universities and in the structure of publishing houses have converged to render this relationship more than usaually problematic. She concludes with suggestions for restructuring the relationship so as to encourage the production of high-quality, innovative textbooks in a partnership between publishers and professors. L. Kathy Heilenman teaches French at the University of Iowa and is one of the authors ofVoilà! a first-year college-level French textbook.     

Government publishing in Brazil

Brazil's size, federal structure, and extent of government intervention in the economy mean that its official publishing output is considerable: some 6.000 books and pamphlets a year and about 1,000 serial titles. The development of official publishing since de facto independence in 1808 reflects the country's administrative history. Bibliographic control, at least of federal level publishing, is now at last being achieved, but distribution is still poorly organized, and edition size often fails to correspond with demand. The range of material is vast, although publishing trends tend to reflect the importance of personalism in government in Brazil. Technical and esthetic standards are briefly touched upon.     

The economic context of book publishing

A healthy publishing industry flourishes in a healthy economy. This article (written June 1990) provides a brief forecast for the U.S. economy and overall consumer spending. The authors combine economic and demographic forecasts to predict trends in book sales. Jim Haughey is Vice President, Research and Economics, at Cahners Publishing Company, which publishesPublishers Weekly, Library Journal, and seventy other business and consumer magazines and newspapers. Deborah Selsky is the economist for the printing and publishing group at Cahners Economics. She regularly writes on economics forLibrary Journal and is the editor ofPublishing Markets, a newsletter.     

Do we need to move from communication technology to user community? A new economic model of the journal as a club

Much of the argument around reforming, remaking, or preserving the traditions of scholarly publishing is built on economic principles, explicit or implicit. Can we afford open access (OA)? How do we pay for high‐quality services? Why does it cost so much? In this article, we argue that the sterility of much of this debate is a result of failure to tackle the question of what a journal is in economic terms. We offer a way through by demonstrating that a journal is a club and discuss the implications for the scholarly publishing industry. We use examples, ranging from OA to prestige journals, to explain why congestion is a problem for club‐based publications, and to discuss the importance of creative destruction for the maintenance of knowledge‐generating communities in publishing.     

Bilingual and Multilingual Legal Dictionaries in the European Union: An Updated Bibliography

This annotated bibliography is intended to shed light on the availability and distribution of legal dictionaries that translate the twenty-seven European languages. The representative corpus consists of about 200 printed bilingual legal dictionaries (BLDs) with terms from two or more legal languages used in the European Union. This bibliography aims to illustrate the wide variation in the quality of these BLDs by the usage of three special headings and by referring to relevant professional reviews. In addition, the authors have commented upon noticeable BLDs that deserve serious criticism or special attention. This annotated bibliography updates the previous bibliography (Gerard-René de Groot & Conrad J. P. van Laer. The Quality of Legal Dictionaries: An Assessment [Maastricht Faculty of Law Working Paper No. 2008/6, 2008]) and covers almost all recently published BLDs. However, this bibliography is not exhaustive because of the dispersion of publishing houses: Each publisher issues only two BLDs, on average.     

The Future of Academic Publishing: Application of the Long-Tail Theory

Print academic journals are dead. As we watch large metropolitan newspapers fail (as are many small town newspapers), the same economic forces are driving online scholarly publishing. This phenomenon is more than print journals going online. The options available with new low-cost online publishing software and the rise in the ability to use ratings from user generated content suggest more near-term changes are likely. Many of the outcomes are unsettled: the economics of online publishing; the standards for peer review, rank, and tenure; and the very nature of scholarly publishing itself. What is certain, however, is that the economics of online academic publishing—modeled via Anderson’s Long Tail Theory—will make it possible to provide greater access, more collaboration, and, ultimately, improved research and researchers. Universities acting as publishing centers with their e-reserves will be expected to change their faculty evaluations, providing greater academic rewards for those who act as editors, reviewers, and proofreaders within this new born-online and only-online world.     

Book production and library purchases: looking beyond the thor ruling

Many of the concerns regarding the impact of the issues of the early 1980s on book publishing and library acquisitions continue to be discussed in library literature. Discussion focuses on the availability of material, while the economic realities are often overlooked. The present study was conducted to provide background data on these issues by exploring the correlation between new title output and library acquisitions, the change in new title production prior to and following the 1980Thor ruling, and changes in library spending patterns. Additionally, it discusses other factors that may be influencing library purchases and the state of scholarly publishing. Her research interests are in publishing and scholarly communication. Address for correspondence