Publishing facts for kids

Publishing is all about sharing information, stories, and music with lots of people. It's how books, newspapers, magazines, and even websites get made and sent out to the public. Sometimes, a writer might even publish their own work! The word "publisher" can mean a person who runs a publishing company or someone in charge of a magazine.

Long ago, publishing mostly meant printing books and newspapers. But now, with the internet, it includes digital things like e-books, websites, blogs, and even video games.

Publishing involves several steps: getting the content, editing it, making it ready, printing (or putting it online), telling people about it, and finally, sending it out.

There are two main ways books are published:

• Traditional publishing: A company pays the author to publish their book and then pays them a small part of the money from each book sold. Authors don't pay anything.
• Self-publishing: The author pays all the costs to get their book published. They usually keep all the rights to their book.

History of Publishing

Publishing first became possible when people learned to write. It became much easier when printing was invented. Before printing, people had to copy books by hand, which took a very long time. Printing helped books become more common.

Bi Sheng, a Chinese inventor, created movable type around 1045. This meant individual letters could be moved around to print different words. Later, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg in Europe also invented movable type. His invention made books much cheaper to make and available to many more people.

Books printed in Europe before 1501 are called incunables. Imagine this: a person born in 1453 (when a big city called Constantinople fell) would have seen about eight million books printed by the time they were 50! That's more than all the books copied by hand in Europe for over a thousand years before that!

After books, printing helped create other types of publications. Modern newspapers started in Germany in 1609, and magazines followed in 1663.

For a long time, publishing was done by big companies. But with computers and the internet, electronic publishing became possible. The World Wide Web started in 1989, making it easy for almost anyone to create a website and publish information. Then came wikis and blogs. Traditional publishers also started putting their books, newspapers, and magazines online.

Today, the internet helps combine traditional publishing with self-publishing. It also mixes publishing with creating multimedia content like videos and interactive experiences.

How Books Get Published

Publishers spend a lot of time finding or asking writers to create content. Newspaper publishers often hire their own writers, but they might also use freelance journalists (writers who work for themselves).

Writers often send their ideas or finished stories to a literary agent or directly to a publisher. If a publisher accepts stories without being asked, these are called "unsolicited submissions." Most of these come from new writers. These stories go into a "slush pile," where readers look for good ones to show to editors. The bigger the company, the more people check the stories. Very few unsolicited stories get published – maybe 3 out of every 10,000!

Many big publishers only accept stories through literary agents. This means the agent helps find and improve the writer's work before sending it to the publisher. Agents usually get 10-15% of what the author earns.

Some writers get published in different ways. For example, popular bloggers might turn their website content into a book. Sometimes, famous people write books with the help of a ghostwriter (someone who writes for them).

For a book to be published, an editor or publisher must really believe in it and convince others in the company to publish it. An editor who finds a best-selling book can become very well-known!

Getting the Deal Done

Once a book is accepted, editors talk about buying the rights to publish it and agree on how much the author will be paid. This payment is called a royalty.

For printed books, authors usually sell the rights to publish their work in certain countries. Publishers and writers also decide if the book will be a paperback or hardback.

For e-books, it's a bit different. Since e-books can be downloaded anywhere, publishers often buy rights based on language (like English or French) rather than specific countries.

After agreeing on the type of publication, they decide on the royalty rate. This is the percentage of the book's price that goes to the author. Royalties are usually 10-12% of the book's retail price. The author also gets an advance payment, which is money paid upfront before the book is even sold. An advance is usually about one-third of the royalties expected from the first print run. For example, if a book sells 5,000 copies at $14.95 each, and the author gets 10% royalty, they would earn $7,475 if all copies sell. The advance might be around $2,490. Famous authors usually get much larger advances.

Getting Ready to Print

Even though these steps are listed separately, they often happen at the same time. While the text is being edited, the cover is designed, and sales and marketing plans begin.

Editing the Story

Once a book is chosen, the author might be asked to make changes or improve parts of the story. Editors then check the work carefully. They make sure the writing style is consistent and that grammar is correct for the market. Editors also often choose or improve titles and headlines. Sometimes, they ask for more information or suggest big changes to the story's structure. For non-fiction books, some publishers even have fact checkers to make sure everything is true.

Designing the Book

After the final text is ready, the next step is design. This includes creating or choosing artwork and planning how the pages will look. "Art" in publishing can also mean photographs. If a book needs many photos, the publisher might get them from photo libraries or hire someone to find and license them. The design process prepares the book for printing, including choosing fonts, designing the cover, deciding on paper quality, and how the book will be bound.

The amount of design needed depends on the type of book. For a regular storybook, design might just involve fonts and the cover. For books with lots of pictures, design is a much bigger job, planning every page, chapter beginnings, colors, and extra materials like posters. Non-fiction books with many illustrations need the most design work to make sure images, captions, and text all look great together.

Today, almost all steps like choosing fonts, arranging pages, and preparing for printing are done on computers. If the book will be electronic, the files are saved in formats like PDF for e-readers.

Selling and Marketing

Selling and marketing start early in the process. As cover designs are made or chapters are edited, sales teams begin talking to customers to create interest. Publishers often create "advanced information sheets" to send to customers or other publishers to guess how many copies might sell. This early feedback helps decide how the book will be formatted and how it will be sold. For example, if many foreign publishers are interested, they might share printing costs to make a very large number of books, which lowers the cost per book. But if there isn't much interest, fewer copies might be printed, the marketing budget might be cut, or the book might even be canceled.

Printing the Book

After all the editing and design work is finished, the printing starts. First, the printer sends a "pre-press proof" to the publisher. This is a final check to see exactly how the book will look when printed. It's the last chance to find and fix any mistakes. Once the publisher approves it, the actual printing begins.

New printing methods like printing on demand (POD) are now common. With POD, the book is written, edited, and designed, but it's only printed when a customer orders it. This saves money on storage and prevents printing too many books that might not sell.

Binding the Pages

For books, binding happens after printing. This means folding the printed pages, putting them together, attaching covers, and wrapping the whole book in materials like leather.

Sending Books Out

The last step is making the book available to the public, usually by selling it. In the past, authors often did everything themselves – writing, editing, printing, and selling. But now, these jobs are separate. Once a book or newspaper is printed, the publisher uses different ways to send it out. Books are usually sold through bookstores and other shops. Newspapers and magazines are often sold directly to subscribers and delivered by mail or newspaper carriers. They are also sold at newsstands and vending machines.

For books, printers often send some finished copies to publishers quickly. These are "sample copies" used for sales or early reviews. The rest of the books usually travel by ship, so it can take months for books to go from the printer to a warehouse and then to a store. For books related to movie releases, publishers make sure books arrive in stores a couple of months before the movie to build excitement.

Publishing as a Business

Eslite Bookstore in Taiwan.

Publishing is a business. It needs to make enough money from selling books or other publications to cover the costs of creating, producing, and sending them out. Today, publishing is a huge industry, with big companies like Reed Elsevier and Pearson PLC operating worldwide.

The publisher usually handles advertising and other marketing tasks. However, they might hire special marketing agencies for some parts of this work. In many companies, editing, proofreading, layout, and design are done by freelancers (people who work for themselves).

Sometimes, publishers use companies that specialize in selling books to bookstores and large chains instead of having their own sales team. This is happening more often as big book chains and supermarkets centralize their buying.

If an outside company or person handles everything up to the printing stage and then sells it to the publishing company, it's called book packaging. This is common when smaller publishers in different countries work together. The first publisher buys the rights, then sells a "package" to other publishers. They might print enough copies for all markets at once to save money.

Most book publishers don't own their own printing presses or binderies. They usually sell their finished products through a distributor who stores and sends out the books for a fee.

The internet has made it possible to distribute books electronically without needing physical printing, delivery, or storage. This has made people wonder about the role of publishing houses. Authors, who create the work, often sign contracts that give them only about 10% of the money from a book's sales. The rest, about 90%, goes to the publishing house, distributors, marketers, and retailers.

Here's an example of how the money from a book sale might be split:

• 45% to the store that sells the book
• 10% to the company that distributes the book to stores
• 10.125% to the publisher for printing (often done by another company)
• 7.15% to the publisher for marketing
• 12.7% to the publisher for getting the book ready (editing, design)
• 15% to the author (royalties)

Many people think publishing houses make huge profits, and authors are the lowest paid. But most publishers make very little profit from individual books; about 75% of books don't even make back their costs. Around 80% of a book's cost comes from preparing, distributing, and printing it (with printing being one of the lowest costs). For successful books, publishing companies usually make about 10% profit, while authors get 8-15% of the retail price. However, authors are usually individuals and often get paid advances even if the book doesn't make a profit, making them the highest-paid individuals in the process.

For e-books, the publisher's role is almost the same. Preparing an e-book is very similar to preparing a printed book, with only small changes for the different format. While some costs, like the discount given to stores, are removed, new costs for e-books (especially converting files) mean the total production costs are similar.

Print on demand (POD) is quickly becoming a popular way to publish. Companies like Amazon (through CreateSpace) and Ingram (through Ingram Spark) offer POD services. This allows small publishers and individual authors to get their books printed and sold online. These services take a large percentage of the sales money. Some big publishers, like Simon & Schuster, are also starting to sell their older books directly to customers through their websites.

Book clubs often sell directly to customers. Smaller, specialized publishers use many different ways to sell their books. Their sales are usually small enough that they don't threaten the traditional relationships between printing, publishing, distribution, and retail.

Images for kids

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  The building of Otava's publishing office in Helsinki, Finland.

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  The World Intellectual Property Organization building in Geneva.

See also

In Spanish: Edición de libros para niños