The publishing business is incredibly popular with Russian entrepreneurs. There are 16 thousand publishing houses in Russia. This is largely due to the extremely low cost of entering this market - the publication of one book costs no more than $ 5-10 thousand. However, it is extremely difficult to stay on it: the success of a publication is impossible to calculate.
The publishing market is fairly open. This is due to its specifics. A person can read more or less books, depending on whether there is currently a good product on the market or not. And if he buys a book, he does it at the expense of another.
A variety of participants testifies to the openness of the market. Their owners did not conceive of many publishing projects at all as a business, but as a “good intention” to compensate for the existing gap in the market. Such an idea was, for example, at the heart of Mann, Ivanov and Ferber. The founders faced the problem of choosing the necessary business literature. Organized a publishing house that specializes exclusively in business publications.
Before starting a publishing project, you need to understand its goals and capabilities: what books the publisher will publish, what the target audience of this literature is, how to deliver the product to the consumer, etc. If this condition is met, the chances of success are quite large: Russia is a country big, and any good book has millions of potential readers.
The entry price to this market is quite low. The cost of issuing one book with a circulation of up to 10 thousand copies is about $ 1. Accordingly, investments in the first edition will amount to $ 5-10 thousand.
But you will have to rely mainly on your own resources. Banks do not lend to the publishing business because book publishing is considered a high-risk business. The risks are as follows - a new book may not be in demand, the author may not write a new book on time or go to another publisher altogether, etc. Such force majeure circumstances are a usual situation for the market.
In publishing, there are two options for financing new projects. The first is attracting private investors. The second is cooperation with large publishing companies. The practice is very common. In this case, small companies act as contractors: they are preparing a product, a larger partner is preparing a book directly for release, it is engaged in printing and selling books through its distribution network. Profit is divided in half.
For beginners, such cooperation is beneficial; they receive funding and good distribution. Large companies are also interested in this: small companies can be specialists in narrow niches in which universal operators are often not strong.
In the total volume of sales of literature in Russia, action-oriented literature, as well as applied and school teaching, 20% are fiction, children’s and teenagers, and 7-8% are fiction and fantasy, contemporary prose and business literature.
Only a very large company can afford to be a universal publishing house. This requires at least a large staff. In addition to the personnel issue, universal publishers have to solve a lot of problems associated with a large volume of diverse books: simultaneously work with several printing houses at once, have extensive distribution, etc. Such problems cannot be addressed to a beginner.
The optimal model for a startup is to choose a narrow niche in which it is well oriented: knows the material, knows the tastes, interests and opportunities of the target audience, etc. Books on cooking, floriculture, homestead farming, esoterics, psychology, etc. are always in demand. In a narrow niche, you can always successfully compete with a major publisher.
For a novice publisher, the biggest challenge is finding new authors. Firstly, already held authors will probably refuse to work with a beginner, if only because large publishers offer much more attractive working conditions. Secondly, the likelihood that the publisher will be able to successfully enter the market with a new author is extremely small. Thirdly, it is impossible to calculate whether the author will be in demand or not. Large publishers annually receive up to 2 thousand manuscripts, and only 400 of them are published, and only a few become bestsellers. And the profit from the sale of these 400 authors is extremely small.
Formation of the staff start with the search for the editor. At publishers, everything rests on the editors. They select the manuscripts that will eventually be published. They should have a good idea of who is reading the future book, how to convey information about this book to it: for the cover to correspond to the content, the price is affordable for the target audience, and even choose the right sales channel (it happens that books become best sellers in the catalog trade, but completely not sold through stores, and vice versa). Sales Director - the number two person after the editor.
To be an effective publishing house it is not necessary to have a huge staff, as in some large publishing houses. There are only a few people who develop the concept of the book and engage in its merchandising, all other processes can be performed by the publisher-contractor. Most printing houses are ready not only to print the book, but also to conduct its full pre-press preparation. Such a scheme of work, for example, at the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, they work without staff, all the main work there is carried out by three founders.
The second main problem of the market after the problem with the authors is the lack of an effective distribution system. In Russia, it is very difficult to bring the book to the reader: the country is large, and there are few bookstores.
All wholesale and distribution companies involved in the distribution of books from Moscow to the regions are focused only on large volumes and large publishers. The chances that the distributor wants to work with a newbie are small. And even the wholesaler's consent to take a new book for sale does not guarantee its high sales - in a large volume of publications delivered by the wholesaler to the store, the book will simply be lost somewhere on the edge of the shelf.
The best way out is to start promoting your own book yourself. This is the only way to succeed in the publishing business. Establish contacts with retailers, convince the store that your book should be sold, control how it will be displayed on the trading floor, buy an advertising space in front of the store, etc. An important point: you need to count on all stores in Moscow and in regions. You should not focus on only the three most famous Moscow stores. According to the experience of experienced publishers, sales of even bestsellers through them do not exceed 1-2% of the total circulation, while they sell ordinary books at all in single copies.
The main risks for the publisher are associated with the authors. The list of possible force majeure situations is unusually wide and varied: disagreements with the authors, the repurchase by its competitors, the author is "writing", ceases to be popular, etc.
Also, when starting a business, you should know two important points. Firstly, the technologies of promoting books on the market guarantee only 20% of success, 80% of it depends only on whether the reader likes the book or not. The success of books cannot be accurately calculated. Secondly, selling a publishing business is extremely difficult. In publishing, there are no assets that would be of interest to the investor. Unrealized remnants of books in warehouses do not need anyone. All are interested only in the authors.
According to the materials of the newspaper Business published on the website www.jankoy.org.ua
* The article is more than 8 years old. May contain outdated data