Major Departments in Book Publishing Company
Book publishing is a process involving different persons who undertake tasks under various departments. The major departments in a book publishing company are as follows.
Editorial Department
This department undertakes all the functions required to acquire and edit books, including seeing them through to publication. Different professionals work in this department, from developmental editor to editorial assistant. They play crucial role in ensuring the book content is of very good quality in terms of grammar, syntax, lexis and structure, among others. This department also works with literary agents and authors, including interfacing with other staff in the book publishing company.
Contracts/Legal Department
This department is saddled with the responsibility of straightening the legal requirements in publishing a book. Since intellectual property issues are involved in book publishing, the contract department handles an author’s contract to prevent litigations. This legal element works with editors and literary agents to negotiate terms with authors, such as publishing rights, advances, royalties, due dates, the scope of the book, and other legal issues. The legal department is very critical in the publishing process especially in protecting the company from litigations.
Production Department
The production department handles the physical process involved in producing the finished book right from the manuscript stage. The managing editor’s team takes charge of ensuring smooth workflow of the manuscript and art throughout the production process. This is one of the most essential departments in a book publishing company. Any mistake made here could ruin a good book. Production activities have to adhere to strict, time-critical deadlines for book completion.
Managing editors liaise with both the editors and other production team members to closely monitor the publishing schedule to ensure the entire process is successful, even beyond the finished book product. The team is involved in a bit of post-production marketing from the angle of providing advanced reader copies (ARCs) used by sales or publicity team to let the public and the media have a preview of the book before it officially gets into the market. The sales department plays crucial role in deciding time sensitive deadlines which production team has to adhere to. This is because the sales department is responsible for getting each book to booksellers and they might have a deadline for such delivery too.
Creative Department
This is where you find the art director and team of designers involved in the creative aspect of the book such as coming up with the cover design and book title, and other aesthetic aspects of the book interior. This department is very important because the creative works provides the first, important consumer impression of the book. Even though there is a saying that you don’t judge a book by its cover, the cover design is very crucial in attracting attention to a book.
Sales
This is another very essential department in a book publishing company. The various sales departments are saddled with the responsibility of getting books to market and ensuring the books’ visibility both online and offline. Serious sales people primarily concentrate on selling books to bookstores and other distribution outlets, not readers. This way they work with bookstores to get their books in stock and ensure they are displaced in strategic locations or shelves where they could be easily seen by customers.
Subsidiary Rights Department
Also called the “sub rights” department, this is the unit that sells the contractual rights required to legally use the content of books in a variety of forms, from foreign translations to motion pictures. Publishers use only rights given to them by authors. Some agents might recommend that authors should separately negotiate certain rights such as foreign or movie rights. The sub right department negotiates these rights with the authors and ensures they are taken care of in the contact agreement.
Marketing, Promotion, and Advertising Department
The marketing department handles the marketing strategy of individual books which has to do with generating interest in a publication and ensuring its target audience are aware that the book exists via advertising, promotion, and sending samples out to key contacts. The marketing department also works closely with advertising (either in-house or with an ad agency) to create ads, as dictated by budget and strategy. Social media marketing efforts sometimes fall under title marketing or in a more general online marketing department.
The marketing team plans a campaign and produces promotional materials to make the book visible to the target audience. Other functions of the marketing team include attending conferences and book fairs to sell books, carrying out market research to gauge demand for products, social media marketing, and working closely with advertising team (either in-house or with an ad agency) to create ads, as dictated by budget and strategy.
Publicity
The publicity department engages the media (print, radio, television, online platforms, etc.) to attract attention of the public to clients’ books. In some companies, the publicity team is also saddled with the responsibility of organizing book signings where authors will come in contact with readers as they autograph their books. They also organize book tours and book fairs, including reaching out to social media platforms, to make the book visible in the market. The publicity team liaises with the marketing department in some instances to avoid duplication of functions.
Publisher Website Maintenance Department
The internet has made book publishing business very dynamic with opportunity to reach wider audience with creative distribution marketing strategies. Every serious book publishing company has its official website with booklists, author information, and author submission guidelines. There are also websites set up for promotional purposes, such as individual author sites, which the website maintenance department handles.
Support Departments
The support staff perform the same functions in every other industry. They are also essential in the book publishing industry. They include people working in the finance and accounting, information technology and human resources departments.
Finance and Accounting: This is one of the administrative departments in a book publishing company without directly book-centric functions. This department monitors the profit and loss statement of the company, including other issues involving income and expenditure.
Information Technology (IT): The IT department is responsible for handling all the tech-based activities of the company and every serious book publishing company operates in the digital environment. This makes the IT department very critical to the survival of a book publishing business in today’s world.
Human Resources (HR): This is another very essential administrative department which handles staff recruitment and hiring of talents. It oversees other tasks involving employees of the company, keeping record of their promotion activities, staff strength, reward structure, training needs, among others.
(Adapted from the Book: Media Economics and Sustainability)
