The current trends dominating the publishing industry are closely linked with several factors, among which: technological advances and the Internet development, changes in consumers’ preferences and usage patterns, increasing competition globally, social networks development, high fragmentation of the magazine market, and consumer and advertising revenues downturn due to economical and structural reasons.
Scope of the Publishing Industry
According to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy, the publishing industry comprises mainly newspapers, periodicals, books, and directory and mailing list publishers.
Newspapers include general newspapers and specialized newspapers, periodicals comprise general interest periodicals, professional and academic periodicals and books refer to textbooks, children’s books, general reference books, professional, technical, and scholarly books.
These works are characterized by the intellectual creativity required in their development and are usually protected by copyright. Publishers distribute, or arrange for the distribution of copies of these works that may be published in one or more formats including traditional print form, electronic and on-line.
It is important to distinguish publishing from printing. Printing concerns the physical manufacturing process. While an independent economic activity, printing is nevertheless seen as an integral part of the publishing industry supply value chain.
This chapter focuses mostly on magazine publishing.