Trade Book Publishing in Germany: Summary Report for 2011

In her article Veronika Licher presents some of the trends and developments in the German publishing industry in 2011. She reports how the German Publishers and Booksellers Association including book wholesalers try to add new services to adapt to the challenging changing markets??which not always turn out to be successful and give rise to many internal and external discussions. More and more non-publisher players appear on the stage. There is a trend to move to Berlin, Germany??s capital, as a base camp or location for publishing related services and in some cases publishing houses themselves.     

An interview with Klaus G. Saur

Klaus Saur, director of K.G. Saur Verlag, recently celebrated both his sixtieth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of his company. This interview revisits his company’s accomplishments over this period, discusses the post-war history of the German publishing industry, and the keys to success, or conversely the reasons for failure, in the reference and scholarly book publishing world.     

Looking Back at 2010: The Book Industry in Germany Still Trying to Find Its Way into Digitization

In her report about the German publishing industry in 2010, Veronika Licher shows some of the trends and different stages of digital development. She mentions how different players like the German Publishers and Booksellers Association or book wholesalers changed direction or added new services to adapt to the changing market and how e-book distribution is working its way through traditional and new channels. A short review of the bestselling titles in 2010 and the development in children’s publishing follows as well as an introduction how German publishers are trying to make use of the new reading pens.     

A publishing genealogy

Christopher Hurst started his own publishing company after learning how to acquire and sell books by working with various publishers.     

A Publishing Education Report

Notes about the February 2016 PubWest Conference (Santa Fe, New Mexico) and a panel discussion about the relationship between academic publishing studies programs and publishers. PubWest is a regional publishers’ organization in the U.S., with Canadian members. The 2016 conference—“A Passion for Books”—included keynotes, intensive sessions, and panels on making publishing more profitable. Per Henningsgaard, Portland State University, chaired the panel “What Publishers and Academics Who Study Publishing Can Learn from Each Other.” Co-panelists: Sybil Nolan, University of Melbourne; David Emblidge, Emerson College. Henningsgaard gave an overview of publishing studies programs worldwide, what they teach and how they serve students interested in entering the publishing business. Emblidge presented a publishing studies student project from Emerson College—a book proposal for an illustrated nonfiction trade book. Nolan commented on broader research interests concerning the book business and its history, shared by academics in publishing studies. Similar conferences for publishing industry professionals and publishing studies courses at various universities are noted here, as is a research project aiming to build a comprehensive database for publishing studies teaching and learning materials.     

谈商业对古代图书出版业的影响

论文提出商业为古代图书出版业的发展做出了重大贡献,推动了图书出版业技术的革新.商品市场的竞争机制发展了图书的内容形式和版式风格,同时,商业化也给图书出版业带来了难以克服的缺点.     

略论缪荃孙编刻丛书的特色

缪荃孙好古若痴,终生勤于编刻丛书.在选本上,他注重罕见之书,以及习见之书版本后出转精者,注重乡邦文献,以及有价值的零星小品与讲究实学的典籍.所刻各书,在校雠上用功甚巨,在辑佚方面也取得了很大成就.他刻书有严谨的校刻程序,所刻丛书质量皆高.     

Measured markets: Limited edition publishing and the Grabhorn Press, 1920–1930

In the postwar prosperity of the 1920s there burgeoned a new interest in fine book-making, which typically featured handcraft production, luxurious materials, “worthy” texts, and—virtually by definition—limited editions. A small but socially prominent community of bibliophiles and wealthy collectors consituted an eager market for these elite books, distinguished by their visible repudiation of mass culture and “commercialism.” This article examines the publishing enterprise of the Grabhorn Press, one of the foremost producers of finely printed books in twentieth-century America. It analyzes the press's editiorial and design strategies, pricing and marketing policies, and general business practices in order to better understand the cultural paradoxes of producing such books both “for love” and for profit.     

我国科技期刊数字化出版的成长因素分析

科技期刊出版的数字化趋势已势不可挡。在大力发展数字化出版的过程中,我国形成了本国特有的数字化出版模式,与国外有很大不同。文章在对比分析国内外科技期刊数字化出版现状的基础上,从办刊模式、产业链结构、出版流程、盈利模式和版权利益分配等成长因素,探讨了制约我国科技期刊数字化出版的症结所在。最后,针对这些问题,作者提出了提升科技期刊数字化出版效率和效益的产业结构的构想,为科技期刊数字化出版给出了多方位的发展建议。     

German Book Publishers’ Barriers to Disruptive Innovations: The Case of E-Book Adoption

To succeed in a period of change, German book publishers need to adopt innovations, e.g., implement e-books into their product portfolio. Yet, in the book industry, the adoption of new technologies is not commonplace: Despite being the second biggest book market worldwide, only 1.2 % of all published books in Germany are available as e-books. This problem leads us to investigate the factors that determine whether publishing companies decide in favor or against entering the e-book market. Based on a standardized survey of more than 240 German publishing houses, barriers to innovation adoption are examined from a micro, meso and macro perspective. Our main findings show that individual characteristics of management and the company’s corporate culture strongly predict adoption. Also, organizational communication seems to be critical. Taking this into account, the key resource to enable innovation seems to be information underlining the necessity of communities of practice.     

Popularizing Vocabulary Extraction Service on Digital Publishing Platforms

With the development of electronic publications, the digital publishing industry is increasing. The digital features of a digital publishing platform and electronic books bring new changes of learning style and learning outcomes in the process of reading. This paper discusses the popularization of service function of words extraction on digital publishing platforms, which can provide assistance to readers of electronic books as well as corresponding paper books. It can help readers to solve the problem with reading original works more efficiently and conveniently.     

The United States as a market for international scholarly publications

Fred Kobrak, who has spent much of his career marketing U.S. scholarly books abroad, puts his experience to use in viewing the task of foreign publishers who wish to sell their products in the U.S. market. In so doing, he discusses changes in the environment of scientific publishing and raises the interesting question of how one distinguishes between “domestic” and “foreign” publishers. He suggests that “U.S.” publishers have much to learn from “foreign” competitors, and that competition can benefit publishers, their authors, and their customers. Fred Kobrak is a partner in Adrian Higham Associates, consultants, on the international publishing industry. He recently retired from the presidency of Collier Macmillan International, New York, the international arm of Macmillan Publishing Company. Address for correspondence     

AAP-BISG book industry data

Book publishing is a relatively small and extremely volatile industry. For this reason, it is difficult to collect data and formulate statistics. This article describes the statistics program of the Association of American Publishers and the Trends Program of the Book Industry Study Group, including information on how data are collected, organized, and published. Measures taken to ensure confidentiality are also described.     

Conditions and Survival: Views on the Concentration of Ownership and Vertical Integration in German and Swedish Publishing

This paper compares publishing in two European countries with fixed respective free book prices: Germany and Sweden, when it comes to the phenomenon vertical integration. Concentration of media ownership is a central issue in today’s global publishing industry and large international media groups are consolidating at a fast pace, taking over more and more links in the value chain of books. One of the foremost examples is Amazon—established in Germany and fast expanding in Europe, but not yet present in Sweden. This paper presents a broad overview of the two markets and interviews with several actors in the German and Swedish book trades are analyzed and compared. Amazon’s impact on the respective book markets as well as strategies for independent publishers are discussed. The question whether concentration of media ownership in the book trade affects publishing and distribution of “quality literature” is also raised.     

Is It a Small Publishing World After All?: Media Monopolization of the Children's Book Market, 1992-1995

This study considers how the trend toward media conglomeratization affected the little-studied industry that provided books to millions of children between 1992 and 1995. Two hypotheses are proposed that test different aspects of competitive market theory. The first predicts that the size of the publisher' s ultimate parent company will influence sales, and the second predicts that children's books that have ties with other media products will sell more copies than books that have no such ties. The second hypothesis is supported and the implications for the concentration of this segment of the publishing industry are discussed. In particular, this question is asked: In an environment of continuing media concentration, where are the measurable effects of that concentration in this market?     

Selling Translation Rights to an American Publisher

American publishers publish few books in translation, so making a deal for American publishing rights is reason for congratulations, however, American publishing contracts are complex documents and variations in house policies on important issues make them seem even more complex. The article includes a chart that may be useful for navigating a typical contract an American publisher will issue to a foreign proprietor from whom it is buying translation rights.     

A Sixty Year History and Analysis of the Japanese Publishing Industry: A Statistical Analysis of Circulation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how changes in the social environment of print media have affected the history of the Japanese publishing industry in the postwar period. Data on the circulation of books, magazines, and newspapers are analysed on a population basis. The results of these analyses show that per-capita circulation of these media increased almost monotonically until the 1980s, but then began to decrease after peaking in the 1990s. After conducting statistical correlation analyses, we conclude that per-capita circulation was affected by economic trends indicated by the GDP growth rate. Our analyses also show a positive correlation between the pace of change in per-capita book and magazine circulation, and this reciprocal relationship is investigated in detail.     

Digital Publishing and its Impact on the Publishing Industry in the Arab World

The Arab print publishing industry is characterized by variety and complexity due to a combination of geographical and cultural diversity. This has resulted in Arab publishers facing a number of challenges, and this article aims to shed light on some of the most common problems faced by the industry—distribution, censorship and piracy—as well as examining the impact of digital books on this fledgling industry and how digital publishing can be used to overcome some of these problems.     

"三大四库文化工程"的学术价值与编纂出版中的若干问题

编纂山版《四库全书存目丛书》、《四库禁毁书丛刊》和《续修四库全书》三大四库系列丛书是近年来我国文化出版界最重要的活动之一,本文对各丛书的特点与学术价值进行了评析,并就收录范围、编辑体例、印刷质量等方面的问题提出了若干见解。