Publishing Industry

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PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Book publishing began to flourish in the American colonies during the eighteenth century. Printing began in 1639 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and expanded geographically to Boston in 1674, Philadelphia in 1685, and New York City in 1693. Almanacs, primers, and law books were published; theology being the most popular subject. Books were sold in various ways: through subscription, by the printer, in the streets by hawkers, and in shops by booksellers. Hezekiah Usher, who added books to his general merchandise inventory around 1647, may have been the first American bookseller.

The availability of reading matter after 1650 contributed to the spread of literacy and an educated middle class. During the eighteenth century prose novels grew in popularity, while among those of modest means almanacs and chapbooks were more common. Benjamin Franklin's (1706–1790) Poor Richard's Almanack (sic), which contained a variety of information as well as religious and moral sayings, was published in Philadelphia in several editions from 1732 to 1764. Chapbooks typically contained a popular story illustrated with woodcuts.

In 1800 the Library of Congress was established. The growth of book publishing led to the establishment of commercial lending libraries in the eighteenth century and, in the nineteenth century, free public libraries. The nineteenth century marked a new era in book publishing brought on by technological innovations that significantly reduced the cost of printing and publishing books. These innovations included stereotyping, the iron press, steam power, mechanical typecasting and typesetting, and new methods of reproducing illustrations. Paper and bindings became less expensive. After 1820 cloth cases began replacing leather bindings, and publishers that had previously issued their works unbound began to publish them already bound.

The nineteenth century book trade was marked by expansion and competition, both in Europe and in the United States. Populations were rapidly growing, communications were improving, and there was a strong desire both for self-improvement and for entertainment, all of which contributed to a strong book trade. In the United States publishing gradually became concentrated in a few major cities: Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. In addition to publishing American authors such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. publishers competed fiercely to publish reprint editions of British works by Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Macaulay, and others. U.S. publishers would wait at the dockside for a new British title and have a reprint edition ready within hours. Many of these editions were pirated, with no royalties paid to the authors.

Comprehensive catalogs of books began as early as the book fairs held in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1564, and in Leipzig, Germany, in 1594. During the nineteenth century several such lists were published in England and France and became national lists, with the first U.S. Cumulative Book List appearing in 1898.

Many small publishing houses were started in the United States in the 1890s and in the early part of the twentieth century. Start-up costs were low, and it was relatively inexpensive to publish an edition of 1,000 copies of a new book. Public education created a need for textbooks, and publishers began to specialize. In 1912 the Authors' League was formed in the United States to help standardize relations between authors and publishers, especially regarding contracts and the payment of royalties.

Following World War I (1914–1918), booming economic conditions produced an even more prosperous middle class who demanded even more books. The number of publishing houses grew. U.S. authors, such as Ernest Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis, found a world market. New York City became a source of talent for publishers everywhere. Universities grew in number and college textbooks became an important part of the publishing industry.

Book clubs that offered books by mail began to appear following World War I, with the Book-of-the-Month Club starting in 1926; its rival was The Literary Guild. Book clubs experienced a decline in popularity in the 1950s with the advent of cheap paperbound books.

The Great Depression (1929–1939) caused a trade slump in book publishing beginning in October 1929. In 1935 British publisher Allen Lane launched the Penguin series of paperbacks, and it immediately caught on. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II (1939–1945) Penguin paperbacks became available in the United States through Ian Ballantine, who later founded both Bantam Books and Ballantine Books. U.S. distribution was later taken over by Victor Weybright, who in 1948 founded the New American Library, another successful paperback venture.

The most successful U.S. publisher of mass paperbound books was Pocket Books, founded in June 1939 by Robert F. de Graff. Partnering with Richard Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster, founders of publishing house Simon and Schuster, de Graff began with a modest list of 10 titles, all reprints. Their success was immediate and unprecedented, and the company continued to dominate mass-market paperback publishing for decades. Several magazine publishers decided to launch paperback imprints, including Avon Books in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell Books in 1943.

World War II disrupted publishing but brought hidden benefits. Nazi persecution of the Jews resulted in the emigration of publishing talent to England and the United States, among other countries. Paper shortages caused publishers to print fewer new titles and fewer copies, but many of these smaller editions sold out to a public that had more time to read. There were also fewer consumer goods to compete with books, because of wartime rationing. As a result a new reading public emerged, and social and economic conditions favored publishing in the postwar period.

Technological developments after World War II spurred the publication of many new technical books, including college textbooks. There was also a major advance in printing, with photo composition replacing the labor-intensive methods of the traditional letterpress system. Large print runs of 100,000 or more copies could now be economically printed, although the problem of printing economical short runs of a few thousand copies remained.

By the 1950s paperback books were more than just a novelty, with paperback sales reaching 200 million copies and paperback revenues an estimated $46 million in 1950. In fact, a paperback revolution took place in the 1950s in the United States and throughout the world. It converted book borrowers into book buyers and created a large population of book buyers. For the first time books fell into the area of impulse buying. They were offered for sale in a variety of new locations from drugstores to airports. Scholarly paperbacks, aimed at university students, began appearing in the United States in the 1950s and soon spread to England and the European continent.

By the 1960s paperbacks had become a fixture of U.S. life. They reflected the social change of the decade, and in some cases helped bring it about. Paperback publishers perfected the "instant book" during the 1960s, providing in-depth treatment of major news stories within days of the event. Bestsellers were emphasized, with many authors benefiting from the wide exposure they received through paperbacks.

The tremendous profits generated by paperbacks in the 1960s and 1970s brought another change to publishing. Large corporations began to look at publishing as an area for investment. During the late 1960s and early 1970s many independent paperback firms came under the control of giant corporations such as Gulf & Western, CBS, RCA, and Warner Communications. These parent corporations made large amounts of cash available to their paperback subsidiaries, resulting in new levels of bidding among publishers for bestsellers. By the mid-1970s, million-dollar auctions for paperback rights were commonplace. Unfortunately, this resulted in higher prices for consumers; paperback sales, which had climbed steadily since their introduction, began to level off. During the late 1970s and early 1980s several paperback houses went out of business. It became more common for publishers to issue both hardcover and paperback editions, rather than selling the paperback rights to a separate firm.

Consolidation affected the rest of the book publishing industry as well. Fifteen major corporations dominated the industry by the early 1970s. This consolidation continued through the 1990s, when seven giant publishers accounted for 80 percent of all bestsellers in 1992. Concentration of power raised concerns about the quality and diversity of books being published, and some looked to small presses to fill the need for less popular but higher quality titles that catered to a variety of special interests.

Book publishing experienced tremendous growth during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. From sales of $1.68 billion in 1963, annual book sales doubled by 1973 then reached $8.6 billion in 1983. They nearly doubled again to reach $17.2 billion in 1993.

During the 1990s book publishers became more concerned with cutting costs, maximizing profits, and effective management techniques as a result of corporate ownership. For too long publishers had lagged behind other industries in achieving efficiencies in production, distribution, and marketing. Many challenges faced the book publishing industry in the 1990s, ranging from huge cash advances required to capture best-selling authors to competition from computers and VCRs for the leisure time of traditional book customers.

The fortunes of the publishing industry have been closely related to existing social, economic, and demographic conditions and trends. During the second half of the 1980s, children's publishing experienced tremendous growth, from $336 million in sales in 1985 to $1.1 billion in 1992, as the "baby boomlet" market developed. Suddenly, though, sales dropped by one-half, and publishers were forced to rethink their strategies. Trends favorable to publishing in the 1990s and beyond included higher enrollments in schools and colleges as well as an aging population that's interested in a variety of issues.

See also: Blanche Wolfe Knopf, McGraw-Hill Companies