Publishing Research Quarterly

Book publishing became more decentralized when New York State's percentage of industry employment declined from 38 percent in 1963 to 31 percent in 1987. In spite of this reduced share of the publishing labor force and a significant reduction in its proportion of book publishing establishments, New York kept its value-added share at roughly 46 percent of the nation's total. Yet the emergence throughout the country of several much smaller but nonetheless noteworthy regional publishing centers suggests that requisite cores of expertise can innovate and flourish in areas where residential amenities and access to regional marketplaces for manuscripts and books compensate for the contacts and capital concentrated in Manhattan.

The general objective of this research is to analyze, through a descriptive methodology, the impact that audiobooks have on internal processes in the value chain of Spanish publishers. To this are added two more specific objectives related to answer the following questions: (a) how to include the agents of the audiobook in the publishing circuit?, and (b) is this new business model consolidated within the Spanish publishing sector? Through the analysis of the publishing circuit and the production flow chart, it is possible to observe not only the impact of the audiobook on the entire operational process of a publisher but the new actors in the publishing business scene. Based on the existing data on the audiobook business in Spain, the study concludes that today, the Spanish publishing sector has recently begun to perceive the economic potential of this sound format. The confinement by COVID-19 has led to a collateral effect on the production, marketing, and consumption of audiobooks, driven by the two large publishing groups that dominate the book market in Spain.

In few areas are the risks and opportunities for publishers as great as they are in new technology products. Richard Johnson discusses the opportunities publishers have in expanding into software, audiotapes, online databases, CD-ROM, and video. He reviews the history of publishers’ involvement in these fields, what has not worked and why, what has worked, and the costs. He also offers rules of thumb for each product and outlines what is needed to succeed in any new technology venture.