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The publishing wing of the British Broadcasting Corporation is widening its presence across the globe by introducing two titles to its Brazilian portfolio.

The Lonely Planet is the most recent title from the BBC’s portfolio to be specifically published for the Brazilian market. The localised publisher of magazines and books, Ediouro Duetto Editorial is handling the print and publishing contract on behalf of the BBC for the extension of the Lonely Planet brand in to South America, with an estimated print run of 40,000 copies per issue of the travel title. The styling for the magazine is following the already tried and tested winning formula of the Lonely Planet guides which have been popular with travellers and holiday makers for years.

The BBC has signed off another deal with the same Brazilian publisher for the title BBC Knowledge. The science magazine which has gained a successful readership across the globe, will be launched mid 2009 in Brazil with an initial print run expected of around 40,000 copies.

Daniel Stycer has been put in place to edit both titles, brings with him over 20 years of print and digital journalism. Establishing these two titles will definitely bolster the BBC’s presence as a global publisher.

The committee responsible for organising the London 2012 Olympic, LOCOG, have put out the publishing contracts on tender for all the brochures, programmes and magazines which will printed and distributed throughout the Games.

No indication has been given as to how many agencies shall be pitching, but the presentation process is due to start around the end of September this year.

A few partnership deals have already been set up, notably with McCann World Group who will manage the strategy behind the marketing communications once the pitch for the publishing is won. Other partnerships which include various well know Great British brands like Scalextrix, Hornby and Airfix all providing merchandise for the Games with Ticketmaster selected for the provision of all tickets, which go on sale in 2011 for both the Paralympic Games and Olympic Games.

As well as pitching for the print and publishing rights for the 2012 Games, the cities agencies will be pitching to the Mayor, Boris Johnson, with rebranding solutions for London itself. The pitch will require a new logo for the capital and will amount to a £600,000 spend on re-vamping the image of London.

Over recent years publishers have seen the migration of readers from the traditional print based publishing in favour of online content. In an effort to pull readers back to the newsstand Future Publishing are forging ahead in the hobbyist market, with the proposed launch of their World of Warcraft series of titles.

Hobbyist titles are the least to be affected during times of recession because when people are faced with financial stresses they will tend to stop spending on holidays, new cars and any high priced items. What they will continue with though are their hobbies, which they can enjoy from the comfort of their own home. There has been a new found lease of life for the World of Warcraft gaming community recently, which has prompted Future Publishing to provide this niche title launch.

At £29.95 per subscription of four issues, it may not attract all the Warcrafter’s out there, but due to the global size of the Warcraft community, Future will only require a proportion of readers from the vast numbers of regular players via the four language versions to make the title a success.

This is a bold move by Future Publishing in an effort to combat the latest ABC figures pertaining to the consumer magazines, which look to be in freefall with global magazine sales on the downturn. But it proves to publishers they must think outside of the box and can’t continue to churn out women’s lifestyle titles or the traditional lad’s mags.

As England relish in the glory of winning the Ashes this summer, UK book publishers are planning to cash in on our sporting success at the recent cricket tournament with over seven titles for proposed publication in the autumn and winter period of 2009.

Winning Captain Andrew Stauss is compiling his autobiography entitled ‘Testing Times and Bringing Home the Ashes’ which recalls events throughout 2009 Test series. Sitting at around 30,000 words, his book has a release date of mid September. Former England captain Michael Vaughan’s autobiography ‘Time to Declare’ will follow on mid October.

With the news of Andrew Flintoff’s Test cricket career ceasing this year, he too is publishing his thoughts of this last summer’s Oval excitement and the events pertaining to his retirement from the Test Series, which is to be called ‘Ashes to Ashes’ and expected on shelves in early October.

Other cricket titles due soon

The first expected tie in to this years’ Ashes win is due from Simon & Schuster who are publishing Mike Atherons words, entitled Atherton’s Ashes, due for release on the 1st September.

Publisher Aurum is finalising the works of cricket journalist Gideon Haigh, whose book ‘Ashes 2009: The Full Story of Test’ is due to publish at the end of October.

A&C Black’s title ‘Wisden on the Ashes’ may get a revamp with author Steven Lynch adding in details of the 2009 season win over Australia. No firm decision to re-launch this at this stage, as it was previously published in May this year. Still there’s plenty to go at to keep every cricket enthusiast happy during this autumn.

Quoting the circulation figures of a magazine is something of a grey area. For starters, one common perception is for publishers to look at it with the view that more than one person will read each magazine sold. Partly due to the fact that friends swap magazines, or they are left coffee tables which other members of the family may pick up, or that they are easily accessed by joe public – in libraries, waiting rooms, schools etc.

To try and formulate the circulation figures the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) was created in 1931 as a non profit scheme set up to manage and report on quantities of periodical newspapers and magazines sold.
Should a publisher register a title with this body, they must provide all the sales information they can collate and submit to the ABC for certification. There is a cost associated to registering, but once recognised a publisher can then print their most recent circulation figures within the title they have ABC’d.

The benefits of ABCing a title proves to potential advertisers exactly how many copies are being sold, rather than just take the word of the distribution director who works for the publisher.
The down side is that your competitors can also see your sales figures, plus if you have a few bad months due to recession, seasonal down turn, or poor content, you’ll see and everyone else will see your drop in sales. Advertisers tend to hang on published ABC’s in the hope that any slight drop in ABC will warrant cheaper advertising over the next quarter.

Another point that greys the area of valid ABC figures is the introduction of digital editions of magazines. We are yet to see the full impact on the traditional paper based newspaper and magazines as digital versions become more popular. Publishers will want to include them, as they can potentially get a better rate of return on these as opposed the having the high front end costs which are attached with the print and paper format. The route to market is just a few clicks away, as opposed to the long haul of the conventional distribution channels.

Love them or loathe them, ABC’s have always played a vital part in publishing. There’s nothing in place to say you must ABC your title, but it can help in your favour. The best advice is only ABC when you know you’re selling a lot of copies at very regular intervals, otherwise it’s not really worth shouting about.

Whether it’s your local newsagent or the favourite supermarket, as soon as you enter the shop you are faced with a wall of magazines. The wall is made up of hundreds of fluorescent printed covers, for men, women and children, all vying for your attention. They cover every conceivable topic from hobbies and lads mags, to weddings and celebrity gossip. You name it – there’s a magazine about it.

The perception is that a publisher has approximately four to five seconds to draw your attention to their cover, as you scan across the shelves either trying to locate the most enticing cover which meets the requirements you want from a magazine. Hence why so many 5th colours are printed on magazine mastheads, and the use of oversized polypropylene bags inked with vibrant colours on their tall headers. All this is done to catch the eye of the potential customer is a very short period of time, as competition is high.

It’s not always been as cut throat a market as it is now. What was considered the very first magazine to be published ran its first edition in January 1731 and shared shelf space with books of poems and novels.

Ironically, this very first periodical magazine published fell under the category of being a lad’s mag. Published every month for the disconcerting man about town, The Gentleman’s Magazine provided regular commentary on any subject matter the editor deemed fit for the general public – covering subjects ranging from poetry in Latin, share and commodity values, plus excerpts from various other published works.

The publisher (Edward Cave) found routes to all corners of the English speaking world at that time to distribute his title and built a vast readership up, which others would try to mimic. Edward Cave’s legacy continued in to the 1900’s, when the final issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine ceased publication in 1907.

All be it a far cry from today’s Zoo and Nutz magazines, The Gentleman’s Magazine was the first of its kind and set the president for a whole new industry in modern times for the likes of Rupert Murdock to monopolise and make money from, by printing newsworthy articles relevant to the demographic at the time.

Probably the world’s best know publisher of adult magazines, Playboy Enterprises Inc has reported a slump in magazines sales over the last quarter which will look to affect their current share value prices. This combined with a decrease in advertisers spend and an increase in competitor activity such as free online adult content, are contributing to the deprecation in the company’s revenue for this period. The expectations are that they will struggle to achieve the same profit margins compared to last year. This year’s second quarter reports were filed showing an $8.7 million USD net loss.

The drop in advertising revenue has affected all paper based publishers alike, with advertisers closing their doors to weather out the current economic crisis. Although this kind of cost saving on the part of the advertiser is beneficial in the short term and boosts working capital, it can have detrimental effects to their company in the long term – by not maintaining their presence in their marketplace, they increase the chance of their competitors winning any new business that’s out there.

To combat these hard times, the Playboy brand is diversifying out from the usual routes to market. As well as the traditional print, television and video offerings, further resource is being used to push the company’s branded clothing merchandise and investing in licensing deals with nightclubs.

The now iconic brand, was established by Hugh Hefner at the age of 27, when he published his first issue of the now world famous magazine in December 1953. Little did he know then of the fortune’s he would come to make and where the Bunny girl brand would take him. While his CEO’s push the business in other directions, Hef’s latest personal venture sees him in discussions about producing a film about his life. To be rated 18 no doubt.

The digital revolution which spawned the internet has created a perfect route for publishers and authors alike to reach an audience with their literal ramblings anywhere in the world.

By using the web as a distribution base, this digital medium can carry vast amounts of content and provide a mass of electronic resource, accessible by all those searching for information. Initially, the web allowed existing written work to be published online with electronic versions of weekly and monthly periodicals as well as books and reports, available through websites. Blogs have now become a very popular medium for allowing quick excerpts of text to be available to the masses as well as an extra option for regularly communicating with those people most interested in what you have to say.

By publishing works on the web, you’ll automatically save costs on the likes of printing, paper and any sales and marketing programmes you would use by going down the traditional channels to promote your works, whether it’s via radio or television, bill board or leaflet advertising, or in store promotional activities.
That’s to say that you still have to have a budget available to spend to publish via the web – it’s just you’ll be spending it on the likes of a web or blog site design and install, plus hosting issues if you’re creating your own, or alternatively, there will be joining fee’s if you choose an existing site which could publish your material on your behalf.

Whether you publish as printed material or direct to web, you must ensure you have full copyright covering your work, otherwise you leave your work open to be duplicated which could lead to a loss of revenue and possible court action if someone contests they wrote the work first. Even unpublished works require some kind of copyright authentication, as works can lie dormant for years, so it’s best to copyright to protect it in case someone stumbles across the same or similar story or idea.

When it comes to publishing your own work – whether it be your autobiography or a fiction piece you’ve being working on, there are several routes to choose to get your written work designed, printed and distributed.

One option is to find a publisher suitable for provide these services for you. Firstly, search for a publisher who is going to be likely to be interested in your topic. If it’s your life story or someone else’s, then seek a publisher who focuses on biographies. If it’s a fictional romance, thriller or sci-fi for example, then find a publisher who already publishes similar works. This will utilise their design skills when helping you create your styling of the book and the all important cover and dust jacket.

These establishments will have contracts in place with plenty of book printers who specialise in monochrome printing and case binding, so you won’t have to worry about setting up accounts or paying up front for the printing process. They will also have the most suitable contacts within the sales and distribution arena by choosing a publisher of similar ilk’s of work. Don’t see other books as competition – see them as potential leads for generating interest in your title, when they are all sat on the shelves together. Remember, especially in book stores, people will spend a long time browsing.

By piggy backing on their established routes to market you’ll get in to the right point of sale quicker and more efficiently time wise than doing it yourself, as your book will be fed into their chain of distribution along with multiple others. All this will come at a cost, literally. Each publisher will have a pricing system in place for all these services, so do a cost comparison of a few relevant publishers first to gauge which offer the best benefits and package to best promote your time.

Alternatively, there is the option to self publish. This can be more time consuming but could save you money. The self publish theme will be followed up in more detail in a later post.

Hi! And welcome to the Seventhhouse Publishing site. We hope you find the information we’ll provide a useful resource and valued insight into the world of publishing. We’ll provide in-depth articles covering all aspects of publishing and the differing types of media platforms that can be used to publish works through.

Traditionally publishers and authors have reached their target audiences utilising the medium of print and paper, in the form of books and magazines, whereas today’s writers have the choice to publish their content on line, making their works available to all that search for it. With the introduction of the web creating easy access for all across the globe, paper based publishing has taken a few hits recently, with sales of titles off the shelves of the high street stores reducing.

It’s unlikely in our time that the web will be the complete demise of printed material, as there are the aesthetics associated with printer material which people just seem to prefer over the web in certain occasions. For example – reading a chapter of your current favourite book in either paperback or hardback each evening before bed is easier and more traditional and probably is still the preferred option to do in paperback or hardback format, as opposed to breaking out your wifi laptop and reading off screen. Why – well with more and more people using either laptop or PC screen at work for seven or eight hours a day – they don’t want to come home and relax by staring at a 15 inch LCD screen again.

There are various pros and cons for using printed reference and the web as platforms to reach audiences, with some of it just coming down to people’s personal preference. What this space to read more about the benefits of each and how best to get ahead in the world of publishing.