Print groups

In contrast to the music business, discussed elsewhere in this profile, book, journal and newspaper publishing involves a large number businesses. Overall, most sales in advanced economies involve the subsidiaries of a handful of publishers, most of which are subsidiaries of the major 'infotainment' conglomerates.

     Statistics

Figures on what's being published (and by whom) are problematical. A 1996 UNESCO study suggested that 968 735 new book titles were published that year. How Much Information, the major 2000 report by Hal Varian & Peter Lyman, suggests that in 1999 there were upwards of 22 643 newspaper titles, 40 000 scholarly journals, 80 000 mass-market periodicals and 40 000 newsletters.

One estimate for the total number of book titles in print in the English-speaking countries (as at the end of 1999) is 3.2 million titles, with the US supposedly accounting for 40% of that figure. Varian and Lyman suggest that the world stock of books (including out of print items) might be around 65 million titles.

Around 1.1 billion books were sold in the US in 1999. Annual sales of newspapers in the US are estimated at around 56 million copies of daily newspapers and 60 million Sunday newspapers.

     Structure

Book publishing in advanced economies is dominated by a few multinational groups: News, AOL Time Warner, Viacom, Bertelsmann, Holtzbrinck, Pearson, Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier, Disney and Thomson.

National restrictions mean that newspaper publishing is more diverse when viewed from a global perspective, compared to books and the record industry, but on a country by country basis it is common to see particular groups (which often operate in several countries) having market shares of greater than 40% by circulation or title. Australian newspaper publishing, for example, is concentrated in the hands of News, Fairfax, APN and Rural Press. Canadian newspaper publishing was until recently split between Thomson and Hollinger; it's now dominated by broadcaster CanWest Global (which controls Australia's Ten network).

Scholarly/professional journal and general magazine publishing shows a higher concentration, with groups such as Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier, Hachette, Thomson, Advance, AOL Time Warner, VNU, Viacom and Hearst enjoying dominant sectoral positions on a national or global basis.

During the past five years there's been an active trade between conglomerates as they buy, sell or swap bunches of titles or publishing houses. That movement's evident in the corporate histories and chronologies for each group discussed in this profile.

     perspectives

Our Publishing guide offers detailed pointers to electronic publishing. There's background information about traditional publishing in the Print profile and Communications Revolutions profile.

Among studies highlighted on those pages and elsewhere on the site we recommend the following works for insights into the text publishing business:

Richard Ekman & Quandt's Technology & Scholarly Communication (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 99),

Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier (Cambridge: MIT Press 96) edited by Robin Peek

Harold Vogel's Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 96)

Lewis Coser, Charles Kadushin & Walker Powell's Books: The Culture & Commerce of Publishing (New York: Basic Books 82)

Albert Greco's The Book Publishing Industry (Boston: Allyn & Bacon 97) and Giles Clark's Inside Book Publishing (London: Routledge 00)

The Structure of International Publishing in the 1990s (New Brunswick: Transaction 92) edited by Fred Kobrak & Beth Luey

Andre Schiffrin's The Business Of Books: How The International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing & Changed The Way We Read (New York: Verso 00)

Thomas Whiteside's The Blockbuster Complex: Conglomerates, Show Business & Book Publishing (Middletown: Wesleyan Uni Press 81)

Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering (Fayetteville: Uni of Arkansas Press 01) edited by Gene Roberts, Thomas Kunkel & Charles Layton and The Menace of the Corporate Newspaper: Fact or Fiction? (Ames: Iowa State Uni Press 96) by David Demers.

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