Finally, a book that discusses the economics of publishing

By Sarah on December 4, 2006 9:04 AM

At Shelf Awareness, John Mutter takes a look at a new book published by Stanford University Press that looks at the book industry in a comprehensive way. It’s THE CULTURE AND COMMERCE OF PUBLISHING IN THE 21st Century, co-written by Fordham University professors Clara Rodriguez, Robert Wharton, and Al Greco, perhaps best known here as the compiler of the Book Industry Study Group’s annual Book Industry Trends.

“It’s a nutty business but a great business,” Greco said. “It’s a cultural business that’s different. Hollywood talks about culture but couldn’t care less, and newspapers have a cultural tradition but they’re publicly owned and under major pressure.” But because most people in the industry break in with a liberal arts background, Greco and his co-authors wanted “to provide a framework for the business growth after World War II.” And so, the book contains all kinds of tables of data going back decades, chronicling bookstore chains’ market share; U.S. book title output; annuals changes in the consumer price index, gross national product and population; publishers’ sales data; book unit sales; and more. (There’s even a table of all of Oprah’s book club picks.)

There’s lots in the book about retail-based trends, some obvious (B&N and Borders still major players; sharp increase in sales at places like Wal-Mart, Costco and Target) and some not (Online sales have “certainly changed the business but they haven’t grown the way some people thought they might.”) But in what may be the biggest irony, Greco doesn’t yet have hard sales data on The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century, saying, “We’ll find out once a year.”