Publishing Contexts and Market Conditions

Abstract

The twentieth century was a time of great reorganisation in the British publishing industry. During this period, the production of literature would be affected by great upheaval in terms of ownership, operation and competition. In the course of the century, the ideology and culture of publishing would also come to be re-evaluated. Although some book historians have argued that the last two hundred years of British publishing have shown at least as much continuity as they have change in terms of rising production figures, merchandising, the mass-market paperback, the knowledge economy, and the exploitation of intellectual property, there have nonetheless been profound shifts.1 This chapter details these shifts, and relates them to the specific market conditions of contemporary literary publishing.KeywordsPublishing IndustryBritish PublishingLiterary AgentRetail EnvironmentIndependent PublisherThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.