Publishing house functions

The publishing house generally acts as an intermediary between an author and his readers. It supervises the production and distribution of works that has selected beforehand.

Selection of texts

Before publishing a text, a publishing house must ensure that it meets its selection criteria. These criteria, which can generally be found on its website, vary from one publishing house to another (editorial line, quality of writing and plot, originality, etc.). While not all publishing houses have a review committee, they do have a system for sorting the manuscripts received and discarding those that do not meet their editorial requirements.

Selection is not the only function assumed by publishing houses. These, once the text has been chosen and the publishing contract signed, will accompany the author throughout the process of creating and distributing the book.

Publishing contract

The publishing contract defines the terms of the relationship between an author and a publishing house. As a legal act, the contract engages and obliges both parties. The clauses, which obviously vary from one contract to another, concern, among other things, the rights granted to the publisher by the author and, of course, the latter’s remuneration.

At the publisher’s expense

This is the standard in the book industry. The publisher undertakes to bear the costs related to the production, distribution and dissemination of the work by means of an assignment of the publication rights (and sometimes translation and adaptation rights) of the author. In general, the latter receives in exchange an amount of money upon signing the contract and royalties for each book sold.

At the author’s expense

Some publishing houses define themselves as being “at the author’s expense”, which means that they do not pay the production costs of the works they publish; the author pays for everything. In this type of business, a contract is always signed between the author and the publishing house, but this is considered more of a service contract since the author generally remains the owner of the works created and the rights of his artwork.

Production and distribution

Once the text has been chosen and the publishing contract signed, the publishing house will support the author throughout the process of creating and distributing the book. At the book-object manufacturing stage, the publishing house usually calls on specialists: layout designer, graphic designer, illustrator, printer, etc. Its role is to coordinate the activities of the various stakeholders and to ensure that the final product respects the vision of the project.

When the book is printed or formatted for digital sale, the publishing house relies on a publisher and a distributor who are responsible for finding points of sale and sending copies there.

(Includes texts from Wikipedia translated and adapted by Nicolae Sfetcu)