Magazine and newsletters publishers usually employ in-house editorial staff to write and compile their publications, but typically also use other journalists on a freelance basis. Book publishers employ commissioning editors in-house to develop new titles and journal editors to oversee those publications.
The publisher absorbs all the costs of getting the information to the readers (typesetting, printing, distribution, and marketing) and generally takes most of the profits. When print publishing began, this was a technologically complex and expensive business involving high capital investment for skilled typesetters, large printing presses, physical distribution systems, and so on. Today, with the advent of the Internet, electronic publishing is easy and cheap, and the role of primary publishers, many feel, is becoming one of the official archive, a repository system whereby your publication is guaranteed a permanence and peer review.
However, this is a time of flux for publishing and the true impact of electronic primary publishing in the sciences is yet to be fully realized. It is probably an interesting time to get into the field but perhaps one of economic contraction. The situation is perhaps a little less acute in business information, but newsletters and newspapers must now compete with free news services providing the press releases that were once the basis for their articles directly to readers, so they too are seeking ways to add value to their offerings. The key probably lies with the original content and analysis.
Secondary publishing is basically the process of indexing, abstracting, and organizing primary publications, such as what we did at Bio-Commerce Data. Secondary publishing is also in a time of flux as new technology makes searching full text databases easier, quicker, and more useful. However, the exponentially increasing amount of published information makes the need for filtering and summarizing systems ever more important and so there is likely to be a continuing role for some such services.
Publishing directories, another activity of Bio-Commerce Data, is a bit of a hybrid type of publishing. Most contain original information but they involve the collection and organization of large quantities of data, and while some directories are compiled by external authors, most are prepared in-house by the publishers. Abstract databases may use all internal staff or some freelance or home-based workers, often graduate students. Abstracting is often an entry level job in STM publishing for people with an undergraduate or a higher degree in science and no desire to continue in the lab.
Most scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing is based on subscriptions. Some magazines and directories in the sector are distributed free, with their costs paid by advertisers, exactly the same concept as the free local newspaper but with rather different content.
A publication may be of excellent quality and content, but if it cannot be published profitably, no commercial publisher will continue it. This is a big difference from the mentality of basic research and you need to be comfortable with the need to market a product as an essential part of the publishing activity.
What Are The Jobs Within Publishing?
The tasks of publishing can be broken down into five broad categories: market research, product development, production, sales and marketing, and competitor monitoring. These tasks describe a circle linked to a product life cycle. First you identify whether a product is needed, then you have to create it, then you have to make it and successfully sell it, and finally, you have to change it in response to competition and to respond to changing market needs, which brings you back to research again.
Market research can be conducted formally through interviews and questionnaires or more casually through an ongoing process of dialogue with your customers and target market sector. However you approach it, market research will seek to establish: Is there a need for this type of information in this form? How much will readers pay for it? What content and form of presentation do they prefer? Are competitors already providing something similar? and, if so, What are the limitations or disadvantages of their products in the eyes of their customers? What would give your product a real advantage in the marketplace? It is very important in any research aimed at revising existing products to talk both to your current customers and to non-purchasers.
Product development is a mixture of people and content. You need to create the right collection of information by, for example, commissioning articles on hot topics for a book (like the editor who commissioned this book, for example), covering all the right organizations in a directory, attracting the right sort of authors to a journal, or developing a really comprehensive database.
To do this, you need a good editorial and design staff because presentation is also important. You may need to design a snazzy Web site, you may need to have state-of-the-art retrieval software or just a nice-looking print publication. The style needs to be appropriate to the readership- academic books, business newsletters, and advertising-based services all take different approaches depending on the expectations of the typical reader. Even within these genres, publications vary greatly in style, with some being very factual and others deliberately putting forward thought-provoking opinions or promoting the activities of advertisers and sponsors.
Whatever you are presenting, you need a good editorial staff composed of people who understand the subject matter and the marketplace and who can deliver quality work to deadlines. Finding these people can be quite difficult, and all publishers are always on the lookout for new staff who wish to move away from a laboratory career and have the right sort of personal qualities. To keep and motivate the editorial staff is a managerial challenge that requires a constant balance between the knowledge base and the operational continuity that is achieved by having the same long-time editor versus the fresh approach that a new editor can bring.
Once you have developed the publication, you must keep it rolling out on time, and getting either very creative or very detail-oriented editors to do this can also be challenging. Written operating procedures for routine tasks are useful in the event of staff changes, but the key factor here is planning and scheduling, plus an attitude that the product must come out on time! It is easier sometimes to keep to such schedules with in-house staff. Editors who use busy external authors must develop high levels of diplomacy and persuasiveness to obtain their manuscripts.
Now that you have a regular publication going, and often before the product actually exists, you must market and sell it. The distinction between marketing and sales is blurred. Essentially, marketing is broadcast publicity, promoting the product usually by direct mail and on-page or loose insert advertising in other print publications aimed at the same sector. Pages on the World Wide Web are also a part of the mix, as is a presence at relevant exhibitions and conferences. Marketing also encompasses preparing sales materials, such as flyers or leaflets, promotional letters, exhibition panels, sample or demonstration copies, Web pages, and so on.
Sales is the actual process of making the sale, which is usually a one-to-one transaction. This may occur in person, by mail, e-mail, fax, telephone, or via a third party such as the distributor of an online database or a foreign agent. Direct mail campaigns are the principal marketing method for print publications, and looking for sources of good lists of potential subscribers is a key marketing activity. These lists may come from other publishers, conference delegate lists, purchasers of other titles from the same publisher, industry and professional associations, and other sources.
Sales will only involve personal visits for large-value items, such as major corporate database subscriptions or large advertising contracts. With the exception of exhibitions, most direct sales activity in publishing is telesales, and even that is mostly for advertising. It is simply not cost-effective to visit purchasers to sell a $50 book or even a $500 newsletter or journal, so good marketing is essential, with much of the sales activity really being just order taking.
In developing a publication, you must allow for a launch phase during which marketing costs are extra high. Once a target sales level is reached that guarantees profitability at an acceptable level (taking into account all staff, production, distribution, and ongoing marketing costs), a continuing marketing activity must be maintained to compensate for business that will be lost due to personnel changes, changes in corporate interests, budget cuts, and so on. The ongoing efforts usually aim to slowly increase the subscription or user base over the years and to replace losses of from 15 to 30% per year.
Once your publication is established, you must constantly monitor competitors. If you have a good idea and if you are the first to develop it, you can be sure that someone else will copy it, and probably improve on what you have done and/or undercut you on price. They may or may not have a better marketing approach, but they can learn from your mistakes and they no longer have to introduce the product concept to the marketplace.
At present, a new type of competition in publishing is the increasing amount of free information available from the Internet. In response to such pressure, it is vital to ensure the highest levels of quality and value-added as well as easy access to your information. You cannot expect to not have competitors and you must not be frightened by their existence into giving up, even if they seem to have better resources than you do.
Over the years at Bio-Commerce Data, we have outlasted or superseded a number of competitive products that initially seemed to present serious threats. Never be complacent, but don't panic either! Decide how you can have a better product that provides value for the price, market it equally effectively, and you should be able to retain an adequate market share.
