Market research and data services provider Research and Markets, Ireland, has announced the addition of the 'Publishing Industry Market Review 2008' report to its existing offering. According to the report, the UK publishing market was worth £18.41billion in 2007, having grown by just 0.4 percent during the year. Each of the three sectors examined in this market review - newspapers, magazines and books - is dominated by around a dozen companies. Hardly any companies are involved in more than one sector of the market, and only Pearson PLC has significant interests across all the three.
The book-publishing sector is experiencing greater change than any other sector of the publishing industry. Some of the large publishers are planning to digitise vast numbers of the books that they have published in the past (their so-called backlists). They also plan to launch thousands of e-books in 2008 and 2009, and some publishers are starting to sell a proportion of their books online. The major academic publishers are increasingly investing in digitised content and are printing much less material.
For newspapers and magazines, the key concerns are maintaining their advertising revenues and winning new readers. To survive, newspapers will have to become as familiar online as they are in print. Magazines appear to be in a stronger position, but they too will have to increase their multimedia activities. Research indicates that the majority of consumers already believe that magazines are too expensive.
The report forecasts that the UK publishing market as a whole will grow by 5.1 percent between 2007 and 2012. Newspaper revenues are forecast to decline over the period, while book revenues will show the strongest growth.
Key topics covered in the report include industry overview, PEST analysis, key note primary research, competitive structure, newspapers, magazines, books, a global perspective and the future. The report mentions companies such as Conde Nast Publications, Quarto Group, Reed Elsevier Group, Future Publishing, Wiley Blackwell, Thomson Reuters, Oxford University Press and Informa.
