Experiences of Publishing

My first statement ‘Early experiences of publishing’ was largely about print technology and the changes experienced in the industry ie production, when I first became involved in publishing. This piece will begin to address financing publications and distribution.

At the time I published the first book I co-authored (1978) I left the organisation for whom I edited the quarterly journal and I went into academia. Over the next ten years I published another four books of my own (incidentally I have never published any of my own work) and it was the fifth one that raised an interesting situation and one which saw me return to the world of publishing.

After leaving academia (temporarily as it turned out) at the end of 1983 I went to work for a research unit in central London. As a result of moving there I secured a contract with UNESCO in Paris to be the director of a global research project involving nearly 40 researchers in all continents of the world. The result was a book I edited and completed in 1987. However I was unhappy at the prospect of UNESCO publishing the final report as their distribution systems are so limited. Apart from appearing in the bookshops the UN possesses in each of its head offices, the book would only be available in this country from HMSO outlets and similar outlets in other parts of the world.

I therefore requested that UNESCO give the budget for publication to a commercial publisher who would take responsibility for printing and marketing the book. The UNESCO bosses agreed and it was then left to me to find the publisher. This was not straightforward but due to a fortunate set of circumstances I met a publisher of pharmaceutical books and journals – not an obvious match with someone who worked in the field of mass media! However we met, had lunch and he agreed to publish the book which carried a not inconsiderable level of financial support.

Half way through the lunch the publisher asked what was this field of ‘mass media’ and was there any future in it. My response was to say that it was a relatively new academic subject area but that the field was burgeoning. He then asked if I wanted to work for him on a part-time basis to build list of media books. As I was working freelance by this time I jumped at the opportunity and the rest, as they say, is history. Or at least, it is part of the history I am in the process of writing.

There were many new things I was going to learn as this was the first time I was working in the commercial sector as opposed to the state sponsored or supported sector. First of all this publisher worked in a highly focussed field and one where all books were sponsored (there is a very limited market for pharmaceutical books and they tend to be included in the cost of very expensive congress fees ie there is a limited amount of marketing you can do for them).

Secondly those titles that were marketed (and there was a full catalogue) were not marketed through bookshops involving reps etc but through ‘direct mail’ (sending out catalogues). The publisher was very insistent that this was not ‘mail order’ – a term he disliked for reasons of which I was not sure.

Thirdly this direct mail activity was a very low cost activity for this particular company because the publishing wing of it was part of a larger company he owned which constructed and maintained mailing lists for other companies ie our own mailing lists were constructed and maintained in down-time of the main operation of the company.

I was therefore immediately faced with three major tasks.

The first was to construct a list of books and authors which would be attractive to the readership of my specialist field but for which there would be no financial investment by the publisher.

The second was to construct – from scratch – a list of potential readers to be entered onto the company’s computers for which again there would be no financial investment ie it was not possible to buy pre-existing lists.

The third was to create a catalogue, for which there would be a small financial investment, which could be ‘direct mailed’ to the mailing list.

On a one day a week basis I took on the work with alacrity.