Inside Book Publishing

by Giles Clark, Angus Phillips

How do publishers work and make money? Why do they exist? This expanded and thoroughly revised fourth edition of Inside Book Publishing is designed for students of publishing, authors needing to find out publishing secrets, and those wanting to get in or get on in the industry. It addresses the big issues – globalization of publishing, the impact of the internet – and explains publishing from the author contract to the bookshop shelf. It It

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Reference

302 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

Reviews

[March · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tries to explain how book publishing works, from the author's manuscript (or even before that, and technically speaking, "manuscript" as such is now a ridiculously rare animal in the industry) to production, marketing, distribution, price setting, print runs, returns and so on. However, be aware that all this is examined through a strictly UK perspective.
All fields of book publishing are discussed, which gives a useful comparative overview by showing the challenges and opportunities present in consumer, academic, professional, children's publishing.
The book concludes with practical information on how to get into book publishing and contains useful resources on relevant publishing organizations, university programs, grant and scholarship resources and websites for job search in the field.
I'd like to mention a couple of drawbacks as well. Having in mind that this is probably the fourth edition of the book [if i'm remembering correctly:], it is still full of mistakes, which irritates me as a rule.
Content-wise, I think the last part is missing information on starting your own publishing business [or starting a business related to publishing, also, what could other businesses, for example, servicing the publishing activity be:]. I guess we're so overrun by big corporations that we have become sorta tranquilized to the idea that all one could do with her/his degree is start at the bottom in some monster of a publishing company, and crawl her/his way up to a more mid-level position in two or three decades, and then retire. Call me overly unrealistic but this prospect scares me, and I think there are other options out there as well, which the book could and should mention.

[Stacey | prettybooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOTE: This book uses case studies from the UK publishing industry so bear that in mind if you're not from the UK. However, it definitely would still be helpful and informative for non-UK residents because I imagine things like marketing, sales, rights, terminology etc would be very similar and applicable to other countries.

I bought Inside Book Publishing as a recent graduate hoping to start a career in the publishing industry within publicity or marketing. I gave the book 4/5 instead of 5/5 for two reasons:

1) I had hoped (and assumed) there would be more information about the publicity side of publishing. Although publicity is not completely separate from marketing (and therefore is talked about in the marketing section of this book) I think it would have been better for it to have its own chapter like other areas of publishing have in the book. As this is an area of publishing I am interested in, it would have been helpful if it had more information on what being a publicist/publicity assistant entails.

2) Another problem I had with the book was that not all terminology was explained properly (even in the glossary), which I think is needed since this book would most likely be bought by those wanting to enter the publishing industry or those who have recently gotten a publishing job.

Apart from these two issues, I found the book extremely informative. It is not too complicated and describes the process of publishing a book, and the people involved, from beginning to end (and from the author to the consumer). It gives specific examples (such as of a specific book or publisher) which is instrumental in helping the reader understand certain sectors sufficiently. The chapter on starting a career in the publishing industry was also very insightful.

The contents of the book is:
1. Introduction
2. A short history of modern trade publishing
3. The consolidation of non-consumer publishing
4. The characteristics of the main publishing sectors
5. Creating and protecting value
6. The author
7. Commissioning
8. The author contract and product development
9. Design and production
10. Marketing
11. Sales and distribution
12. Rights sales
13. The sales channels for books in the UK
14. Getting into publishing
Glossary

[Olivier Bosman · Rating 3 out of 5]

It gives a good idea of what goes in the UK publishing world. The only problem with this issue is that it was released just before e-readers really took off, making it somewhat redundant as presumably a lot has changed in the publishing world with the rise of e-books

[Morgana Ribeiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise with straight-forward language.
Covers a nice range of topics and offers good advice and tips!