As well as conducting our own surveys to see what you think, we have provided here pre-existing statistics to further show how Your Thoughts are indeed reflected in professional, wider surveys on the publishing industry today.
The Independent Publishing Industry Today
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(All information taken from the 2016 Independent Publishers’ Guild annual report)
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UK independent publishing industry seen to be ‘thriving’ - 48% of IPG members said their business is growing, 40% said it was stable and 13% said it was contracting
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Publishers seemed to be mostly worried about Brexit with regards to their business
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Growth particularly strong in children’s publishing sector - 56% of business said they were reporting growth, although this was down from 73% in 2015
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41% of businesses experienced rising sales in the academic sector
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47% of businesses in the educational book publishers said their business was growing, down from 73% in 2015
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46% of professional book/journal publishers said sales were rising, down from 62% in 2015
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Emergence of new channels of distribution had a positive impact on 40% of publishers, the stabilisation of the e-book market had also had a good impact on growth
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59% of publishers said that e-books made up between 1-20% of their sales while 26% said that e-books made up none of their sales. 2% said that e-books made up between 81-100% of their sales
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22% said the majority of sales were exports while 67% said that the majority were UK based
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IPG chair, Caroline De la Bedoyere said “the independent sector is not gloomy and depressed but continues to be nimble, reactive and very successful.”
Diversity in the Publishing Sector
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(From a survey of BAME interns in the publishing industry from Creative Access)
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Majority want to stay in the industry (only 24% said they didn’t want to and 18% had already left) but are split as to how well the industry is diversifying its workforce.
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32% said they had found it difficult to progress in the profession
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55% said they didn’t feel that the industry was welcoming towards people from different backgrounds and 45% said they hadn’t seen an improvement in diversity since they had started working in publishing. Several said that diversity was only seen as an exercise in box ticking rather than an inclusive approach.
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Several also said it was a trend to only see diverse employees in lower-paid roles
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32% of interns said they found it difficult to progress in the industry after their placement, 9% found it easy and 44% said they found it neither easy nor difficult
From the Indpendent:
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Major survey of people working in publishing in London said that only 11% of respondents identified as BAME (compared to 40% of people working in the capital).
