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Publishing: marketing message: 1

The UK publishing industry has one of the most productive outputs of any publishing industry in the world and makes a significant commercial contribution to UK plc.

• Publishing is the UK’s largest media sector, employing more people and adding more to the country’s bottom line than any other.

• The UK publishing sector has a combined turnover of some £19 billion.

• Of all the UK's creative industries, publishing makes the largest contribution to the country's Gross Value Added (GVA). In 2009, it generated nearly £11.6 billion in GVA. (1)

• The UK publishing industry employs over 243,800 people in 9,700 businesses. (1)

• The UK publishing industry is one of the most successful in the world for the breadth, depth and quality of content it creates, as well as the multiple ways in which that content is brought to market.

• In terms of turnover, the UK has the second-largest publishing industry in Europe and one of the largest in the world. London is considered one of the world’s leading publishing centres.

• The UK book publishing industry is one of the most productive in terms of new title output, producing well over 150,000 new titles a year.

• 151,969 new book titles were published in the UK in 2010, the highest number in Europe. (2)

• The UK accounted for 29 per cent of new European book titles in 2010, compared to 16 per cent in Germany, 8 per cent in Spain and 7.6 per cent in France. (2)

• UK publishers sold an estimated 739 million books in 2010.

• The UK is a leading publisher of newspaper and periodicals titles.

• The UK customer publishing industry is the most developed in the world. It is worth over £904 million and is expected to grow a further 15 per cent by 2012. (3)

• More than 7,500 magazine titles are published in the UK. (4)

• Consumers spend approximately £2 billion on UK consumer magazines each year. (5)

• An estimated 1.4 billion magazine copies are circulated/distributed in the UK each year. (6)

• The demise of the UK’s Net Book Agreement in 1997 enabled best-selling books in the UK to be sold at heavily discounted prices and prompted the entry of overseas booksellers into the UK market.

Sources

All facts and figures sourced from The Publishers Association, apart from:

1. Creative Industries Economic Estimates, DCMS, December 2011

2. European Book Publishing Statistics 2011, Federation of European Publishers

3. Association of Publishing Agencies

4. Brad, 2010

5. KPMG, 2010

6. ABC J-D, 2010