While there are a lot of literary blogs and a quite a number of blogs by literary agents, I’m not familiar with many blogs examining the internal operations of a publisher. One site that does a very good job is by Mark Long, a publisher specializing in textbooks: TSTC Publishing.
His blog postings are in-depth and informative. In one posting Mark talks about university presses, which have been facing financial difficulties for years:
if you look at the history of for-profit ventures in higher education, which is what our kind of publishing operation is, you see that many of the people behind these efforts have little or no business experience. In particular, too many people in higher education see collecting money for a service rendered or a product delivered being the same as inevitably making a profit. (This is speaking from my own experience, as well, by virtue of having an MA in English when, at this point, I often wish I had an MBA.) Making money in any business is hard work and if you don’t have the right mindset going into a venture it’s easy to lose a lot of money. Certainly, it’s a little unrealistic, just a little, to expect higher ed professionals, who have a long history of being subsidized in a variety of different ways, to suddenly understand how to turn a profit at the drop of a hat.
He’s absolutely right. I spent 15 years working in higher education in the U.S. and ended up being more of a manager and administrator than I ever imagined in graduate school. Most people never realize that every college and university is, in fact, a big business with huge budgets (even if they are non-profit). Heck, even most university libraries have budgets that are in the millions of dollars. But there are a lot of demands on that money and millions don’t go nearly as far as most people think. Staffing is usually the largest cost segment, but also every little expense matters: $1,000 here, $1,000 there soon adds up to a lot of money.
Anyway, head over to Mark’s blog for an interesting read from inside the publishing industry. If anyone knows any other blogs that talk about publishing from an inside perspective, please let me know.
Many thanks for the kind words about our blog and recommending that people check it out. I hadn’t seen your blog before but I see that it covers the kind of production/design issues we’re always talking about at the office and will be checking it out on a regular basis.
You know your discussion of textbook publishing reminds me just how frustrating it is to see the buiness models of different publishers in operation. I realize all the small publishers, some not-so-small, and book packagers that I work for may all have different aims from the big picture perspective, but–clearly–none of them has, as a goal, the intention of losing money.
I realize this is only peripheral to the larger issue of textbook publishers’ lack of business acumen, but it reminds me of all I’ve observed and scratched my head at in almost 15 years of freelancing as a book designer and layout artist.
Just a few examples … I’ve done books for a small religious press, a non-profit, that paid a certain figure five years ago. The other day, a textbook publisher in New York–one with a whole catalog of books under its belt–offered me the same amount, on a three-book trial basis–but also wanted me to create a new template or adapt an old one, as part of that price. Does it make sense that the non-profit, a publisher with a mission that’s clearly not making money, would offer the same amount?
A small press that has sent me seven books to do straight layout on in the last year pays a tad more than both the aforementioned publishers. How to see some kind of rule to be guided by in approaching different publishers? Interesting and frustrating.
You’ve a thoughtful, idea-provoking blog that I’d like to link to. I’d be appreciative if you’d have a look at mine and it worked out that you thought it worth linking to in turn.
Hey! It’s Stephen Tiano! Alive and well! (I used to read The Book of Tiano on blogspot.) Good to see that you have a new blog going . . . we added it to our blogroll and look forward to seeing what you keep having to say in the future.
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am a Phd student researching into textbook publishing in Ghana. can i please some information, articles, theses on textbook publishing to use as my literature review.
thank you.