UK Publishing Facts

The publishing industry in the UK is the second largest in Europe. Here is a snapshot of the industry and some interesting facts from standards, regulations, top publishing companies and recent trends.

There are 8, 000 publishing companies in the UK, 388 book publishers are in London alone. In the UK 164,000 people about 0.6% of the work force work in book publishing. http://www.berr.gov.uk

The top four publishers are Hachette Livre, Random House, Penguin, Harper Collins, all of which are owned by larger publishing conglomerates. For example Bertelsmann owns Random House, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp owns Harper Collins, Pearson PLC owns Penguin and Hachette Livre is part of the Hachette Book Group a subsidiary of Lagardere.

Of these top four publishers all except Hachette Livre experienced losses in 2009, the only reason that Hachette escaped the vacuum was because one of it’s imprints is Little Brown which published the popular Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer. Which sold 29.4 million pounds, or 10.5% of Hachette’s revenue for the year. Rounding out the top 10 largest publishers in the UK based on 2009 sales is: #5 Pan Macmillan, #6 Pearson Education, #7 Oxford University Press, #8 Bloomsbury, #9 Simon & Schuster, #10 John Wiley & Sons, (#11) Faber Independent Alliance* (independent publishers alliance) had higher sales than Pan Macmillan for 2009. www.thebookseller.com

The travel sector has gone down across the board in lieu of the recession, which would greatly affect Penguin for they publish the DK and Rough Guide’s. However the UK based Pearson group, which owns Penguin and many other subsidiaries, has ousted Thomson Reuters as largest book publisher in the world. www.publishersweekly.com

A report by the Book Industry Study Group article claims that the majority of book sales made by mid to small sized companies are falling under the radar and that book sales are actually a lot higher than they seem. Many in the industry find this claim controversial, nonetheless it is said the reason smaller presses sales are not always accurate is because they don’t have to report book sales and many sales are made "outside of traditional bookseller channels." The report "Under The Radar" says approximately 63,000 publishers with annual sales under 50 million dollars generate aggregate sales of 14.2 billion."http://BookStatistics.com

Big global conglomerates dominate the majority of the UK publishing industry, this can be beneficial for employees get great benefits, vacations and can move around within the company to many different departments. Like Editorial, Marketing, Production, Design, HR, Contracts, Finance, Publicity, Sales, Online, and Rights. However working for a small to medium sized publisher allows one to “forge a path… within the company,” where they wouldn’t have as much of an opportunity to do so at a corporate publisher. Small to medium sized publishers usually employ less than 250 employees and yet have an annual turnover of about 26 million pounds. http://www.prospects.ac.uk

From a regulation or standards viewpoint the Book Industry Standards and Communication, makes sure that standards are met and the best publishing practices are carried out, from bar codes and labels to digital protocols and classifications. This is meant to reduces costs and increase efficiencies across supply chain. It also stays up to date with environmental trends or practices and innovations in digital production, consumer trends, and an annual review of publisher net unit and dollar sales. www.bisg.org