Publishing

Publishing is a broad word that includes many types of jobs.  Those who work in publishing are writers, editors who check and edit the writers work and those who put the whole publication together.  The public relations and advertising agencies create public awareness for the publications.  The three basic fields of publishing are books, newspapers and magazines although they don't function in quite the same way.  Computers have brought a whole new era to publishing also. 

Book publishing involves an author who has written a piece of work and then submits his manuscript to a publishing house.  Reference books like encyclopedias employ their own staff writers.  These teams are assigned articles on different subjects.  There are many different kinds of book publishing.  Trade book publishing covers fiction, history and biography.  Also included in the group are poetry and children's books.  The way these books are announced to be released is by a publishers list.  These lists come out in the spring and fall and sometimes summer.  Booksellers read the list to find out which books they will stock their stores with.  

Textbook publishing generally involves the subjects that are learned in schools.  These books have to meet certain educational standards and are checked and edited by educational experts.  Sometimes teachers might suggest some new ideas for a text book if they consider the one they're using is inadequate. 

Medical, law and religious publishing houses print the information that is needed by these specific specialized groups.  Scientific and technical publishing provides the new information and developments that are always coming out in order to inform these groups.  A publishing house that is attached to a University is called a University Press.  They publish books for the University and also scholarly works and trade books. 

Paperback publishing has become an important aspect in American book publishing.  Paperbacks started to become popular in the 1930s and included mostly Western and adventure stories.  Now, we can find almost any major work in paperback, including the works of scientists, historians, playwrights and reprints of older hard backed novels.  Usually when a new hard back becomes successful, it will be printed as a paperback. 

Newspaper publishing is usually an in-house operation with their own staff of writers and reporters.  These people generally are experts in their particular area of the news.  The uniqueness of newspaper publishing is that they have their own printing presses.  As soon as news breaks, they can print it almost immediately. 

Magazine publishing is kind of a combination of both book and newspaper publishing.  Magazines are printed by outside printing presses, although weekly magazines are published much the same way as newspapers are.  The monthly magazines assign the articles in advance much the same way as encyclopedias do.  Gradually, some of the different publishing companies have joined together to form new firms with many different components of publishing.  Newspaper publishing however still remains separate. 

While the publishing industry is not a giant one by comparison to the other huge corporations in the country, it is a very important one.  What would we do without our books, magazines and daily newspapers?  These printed pages are certainly an important part of our lives.