Publishing, most simply put, is the issuing, usually for sale, of printed
matter. As Dennis McEldowney describes it, the publisher 'selects and
edits the text before it is printed and sells or otherwise distributes
it after'. The publisher does not write the book, nor print it nor bind
it, nor sell it to the reader, who is the publisher's ultimate customer.
Without the publisher's presence these other activities would, however,
be pointless. Even after excluding all of these activities, publishing
encompasses a number of complex tasks. The publisher carries out the
roles of financier, organiser, and go-between as part of the process by
which the written work gets from its author to its reader. These tasks
can be divided up according to the relationships the publisher forms
with others who perform various actions on or around the author's
manuscript, and with those who bring the published work to its eventual
market. Some of the activities excluded from the following discussion
are covered elsewhere in this guide.
In order to 'prepare
and issue (a book . . . etc.) for public sale' (as the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines 'publish'), there must first
be a text. Whatever the impetus behind its genesis, a commissioned work
or independently created, it has an author (or authors). Once the
publisher has decided to publish a text, it becomes the object of
attention of a number of the publisher's agents. These include all those
people who work on the text or on the book which is to contain it:
editor, designer, typesetter and printer. Formerly many of these people
were employed within the office of the publisher, but increasingly they
work independently of the publishing house, and are contracted to
perform specific tasks. The publisher organises all of these: the
preparation of the manuscript for printing, the production of the item
by printers and binders, the provision of illustrations and covers,
advertising and promotion, and the sale of the product to distributors
and booksellers.
Central to any
consideration of the process of publishing is the fact that publishing
is a business. All of the operations described above are financed by the
publisher's capital. The publisher must spend most of this money before
any return is received. The capital is advanced against a perceived
market and therefore a return on its outlay: without a market for the
published work, the publisher could not contemplate this financial risk.
However, this discussion will concentrate on the editorial processes of
publishing rather than the financial side, which remains to be written
about in the New Zealand context. Some inkling of the issues may be
gained from overseas publishers' accounts (e.g. Stanley Unwin's The Truth about Publishing , 1926) or surveys
such as John Feather's History of British
Publishing (1988), which devotes considerable discussion to the
topics of copyright ('the cornerstone of publishing in a free market
economy') and the commercial imperatives of marketing.
What defines the
direction of a particular publisher's activity could be described as the
result of the tensions between an individual publisher's personal
inclinations and the forces of business reality. What makes New Zealand
publishing distinctive in this context is probably the level of
influence of individuals, and small and medium-sized firms which have
often prevailed and had an effect disproportionate to their size as the
multinational behemoths fragmented, disestablished, regrouped and
refocused around and amongst them. This would not have happened to the
same degree in a larger pond.
Outlines from a New
Zealand perspective of the process of publishing are to be found in some
of the handbooks which have been produced for writers and editors,
including:
Arnold Wall, A Reed Deskbook for Writers (1973)
Anna Rogers, Write and Be Published (1994)
First Edition (1993, rev. ed. 1995)
Write, Edit, Print (1997)
Publishers' accounts of the process are to be found mainly in the
autobiographical writings of those involved, including:
Charles Brasch, Indirections (1980)
Denis Glover, Hot Water Sailor & Landlubber Ho!
(1981)
Phoebe
Meikle, Accidental Life (1994)
Dennis McEldowney, Then and There (1995)
A.W. Reed, Books are My Business (1966)
Ray Richards, 'The man
in the middle' (1974)
