seventhhousepublishing.com

This month I will be review some news and views that I find on the internet. I am to give people an insight to the world of publishing. This should be as entertaining for you as it is for me.

I am going to be pushing as much info at you as possible so you will have to watch this space. I hope to be able to educate myself and others as well.

The next post that I am going to do is talk about how Google wont be digitising New Zealand’s books. This should be a exciting article for all the masses.

The Periodical Publishers Association (more commonly known as the PPA) has opened their doors again to all those wishing to enter the Independent Publisher Awards, 2009. To be eligible for the Awards, each entrant must be an independent publishing company or individual, who are operating with less than a £7 million pound turnover per annum.

For the 2009 event, the PPA has expanded the number of categories to eleven this year, by including Customer Magazine of the year and Team of the year. This year’s event is taking place at Vinopolis, located at the heart of uba cultural Bankside in London, commencing on the afternoon of Tuesday, 1st December. It’s expected over 150 people will attend the awards ceremony which is to be presented by entrepreneur and business mogul James Cann, famed more recently for his fiery joint hosting of the BBC’s Dragons Den television series.

The PPA expects to be inundated with entries as the closing date of the 12th October looms closer. Now in its 6th year of running, the awards have gained great momentum and create a lot of interest in the independent publishing sector, with just a nomination for a campaign being a big accolade to anyone who entries, as it pushes them up the ranks to wider markets and exposure of their brand.

In what must be one of the largest corporate buy outs that America has seen this year, the iconic comic book giant Marvel Entertainment has been bought by the Walt Disney Corporation.

The Disney brand will now encompass all the 5,000 Marvel characters that have graced the shelves of comic book stores for what is 70 years, this year. During this time Marvel Entertainment has seen its fair share of ups and downs, with the business filing for bankruptcy back in 1996 after 57 years of trading, when the comic book sales across the world dropped leaving Marvel with massive debts. It was two years later in 1998 when they emerged as a phoenix company and the sketch books of Marvel were opened once again.

The merger of Marvel into the Walt Disney empire will see the likes of Spiderman and the X-Men now rubbing shoulders with Hannah Montana and Mickey Mouse as the two lucrative industries come together, with the Marvel super hero’s now able to jump the band wagon and expand their presence through Disney’s established merchandising, theme parks, Hollywood studios and third party licensing.

The digital revolution has had another victory over the more traditional paper-based book publishing market, as E-book publisher MP Publishing, situated in the Isle of Man, agrees a deal to release e-books up to six months before the offical hardback publication date.

MP Publishing has partnered with the San Fransico based MacAdam/Cage Publishing, to provide full e-book versions of popluar written works half a year prior to the hardback verison general release.

With the ease of use of e-books comes the users need to be access books immediately. Why should they have to wait for the printing, storage and for the distribution of a title, when it’s ready to go on electronic format. As well as saving time, e-books reduce the publishing bills made up of the print and paper plus any transport costs incurred.

Because the e-book market still in it’s infancy, there is a continual development of new technological advancements providing new and alternative options to view them. As well as using PC’s, laptop’s and specific e-book readers, advocates for the new style of literature can now enjoy an e-book on their Blackberry or Apple iPhone, now utilising video and sound clips making the whole e-book experience very user friendly and interesting.

The now famous Northern Irish band Snow Patrol are venturing into the publishing arena in an effort to support up and coming new talent.

The idea behind the start up of Polar Music is to provide publishing services to music artists by music artists. By cutting out the corporate money makers who would mark up every publishing service they offer, the band hope their more direct approach will give new bands and artists an opportunity to see the publishing processes implemented, giving them more control and input to their publishing requirements.

With Polar Music running as an independent entity to Snow Patrols parent record company, Universal Music Publishing, it will provide an initial stepping stone for breaking artists to been seen in what has become a very competitive market.

How times have progressed for the band, as it was once lead singer Gary Lightbody who had to sell his record collection to afford his rent, but hopefully with the creation of Polar Music, more music hopeful’s will benefit from Snow Patrol’s company, and avoid some of the costly pit falls on the route to stardom.

Inks and pigments have been used for printing on to various substrates for many years. By mixing different colours you can achieve a much wider variety of palettes, which is how and why magazine printing only uses a basis four different coloured inks to then produce the spectrum of colours which make up a finished, printed magazine.

The four colours used are yellow, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. When the paper passes through each inking station of a printing press, a cylindrical plate which has an etched image of the text pages picks up one of the specific colours and transfers it on to the paper as the paper passes through the inking station. The paper than passes through the other three inking station which builds up the full colour images on the paper.

The printing plates put ink down on the paper in very small dots, which can be seen with a magnifying glass. If you want to achieve different colours, the density of the dots increases which to the naked eye looks like you are creating a new colour. For example, to achieve an orange colour on a specific area, one printing plate in the yellow inking station will be etched in that specific area, so it picks up the yellow ink and puts it down on the paper. Then as the paper passes through the magenta inking station, that printing plate will be etched in the same area so magenta ink will be put down on the same area, thus creating an orange image, as it contains yellow dots and magenta dots which to the naked eye make orange.

There are other ink colours of course like specials like metallic’s, but cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, known as CMYK, or the four colour process has been used for many years to print magazines in the conventional printing process.

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.