Merchants of Culture. John B. Thompson

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      Figure 3 Publishing value chain

The starting point of the value chain is the creation, selection and acquisition of content – this is the domain where authors, agents and publishers interact. The interaction is much more complex than it might at first seem. Sometimes it is a simple linear process: the author writes a text, submits it to an agent who takes it on and then sells it to a publisher. But often it is much more complicated than this simple linear process would suggest: an agent, knowing what publishers are looking for, often works closely with his or her clients to help shape their book projects, especially in the area of non-fiction, and proposals may go through multiple drafts before the agent is willing to send them out, or a publisher may have an idea for a book and seek to commission an author to write it, and so on. It is not altogether unhelpful to think of agents and publishers as ‘gatekeepers’ of ideas, selecting those book projects they believe to be worthwhile from the large number of proposals and manuscripts that are submitted to them ‘over the transom’ by aspiring authors and rejecting those that don’t come up to scratch.¹⁰ But even in the world of trade publishing, which probably concurs with this model more closely than other sectors of the publishing industry, the notion of the gatekeeper greatly oversimplifies the complex forms of interaction and negotiation between authors, agents and publishers that shape the creative process.

In trade publishing, both agents and publishers are involved in selecting content, working with authors to develop it and exercising some degree of quality control. The essential difference between the agent and the publisher is that they sit on opposite sides of the table in the market for content: the agent represents the interests of the author and is selecting and developing content with a view to selling it (or, more specifically, selling a bundle of rights to exploit it), whereas the publisher is selecting content with a view to buying it (or buying the bundle of rights) and then developing it for publication. The development of the content will commonly involve reading draft material and editing it (sometimes several times); it may also involve picture research, copyright clearance and various kinds of quality control. Many of the other functions in the publishing chain, such as copy-editing, text and jacket design, proofreading and indexing, will either be handled by specialized staff in-house or will be outsourced, depending on the publisher. Virtually all publishers today outsource typesetting, printing and binding to specialized typesetting firms and printers. Most publishers retain responsibility for sales and marketing, although some smaller publishers may buy in sales and distribution services from specialized firms or from other publishers who take on third-party clients. The sales reps sell to the booksellers, retailers and wholesalers (many smaller booksellers are supplied by wholesalers), and the booksellers and retailers stock the books, display them and seek to sell them to individual consumers/readers. Books are supplied to booksellers, retailers and wholesalers on a sale-or-return basis, so that unsold stock can be returned to the publisher for full credit.¹¹ The publisher employs a range of marketing and publicity strategies, from advertising and authors’ tours to attempts to get authors on radio and television programmes and to get books reviewed in the national press, in an effort to bring books to the attention of readers and drive sales (or ‘sell-through’) in the bookstores, which is the only way of ensuring that books which have been notionally ‘sold’ into the retail network are not returned to the publisher.

      Each task or function in the publishing chain exists largely by virtue of the fact that it makes some contribution, of varying degrees of significance, to the overall objective of producing and selling books. Some of these tasks (design, copy-editing, typesetting, etc.) are within the range of activities that could be done by a single publishing organization, although a publisher may decide to disaggregate the functions and contract them out in order to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Other tasks are rooted in activities that are quite distinct and that have, in historical terms, a more settled institutional differentiation. This differentiation may be characterized by harmonious relations between the agents and organizations involved, since all have something to gain from cooperation; but they can also be characterized by tension and conflict, since their interests do not always coincide. Moreover, particular positions within the chain are not necessarily fixed or permanent. Changes in working practices, economic developments and technological advances can all have a major impact on the publishing chain, as tasks that were previously commonplace or essential are bypassed or eclipsed.

Given that the publishing chain is not rigid and that particular tasks or functions can be eclipsed by economic and technological change, what reason is there to believe that the role of the publisher itself might not be rendered redundant? What are the core activities or functions of the publisher? Are these activities that could be phased out by new technologies, or that could be done by others? Could publishers themselves be disintermediated from the publishing chain? These questions have been raised often enough in recent years: in an age when anyone can post a text on the internet, who needs a publisher anymore? But the issues are more complicated than they might seem at first sight, and to address them properly we need to examine more carefully the key functions traditionally performed by the publisher and distinguish them from other activities that can be outsourced to freelancers or specialized firms. Figure 4 highlights six key functions of the publisher – it is by carrying out these tasks or functions that the publisher has traditionally made a distinctive contribution to the value creation process.