Frequently asked questions

Publishing brings ideas and stories to life. Please watch the video on this page.

Yes – please refer here.

We are a trade association not a publisher so are unable to assist you. Please refer to How Publishing Works for guidance.

Yes – please visit Special Collections at the University of Reading.

Only if they are a current member. Please refer to our Member Directory. We do not hold historical data on UK publishers.

Associate member BookMachine have answered ten popular questions on book marketing – read them here.

A Literary Agent is someone who helps writers get their stories made into books.

We suggest you contact The Association of Authors’ Agents (AAA) which is a British voluntary trade association whose members are all UK-and Republic of Ireland-based literary agencies.

Congratulations. We suggest you contact the Society of Authors who are the UK trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and literary translators, at all stages of their careers

Please refer to the Careers section. Please also visit the website of the Society of Young Publishers.

No – you will need to contact the publisher directly or search at the British Library.

Please refer to Penguin’s Guide for Writers.

We are the member organisation for UK publishing, representing companies of all sizes and specialisms. Our members produce digital and print books, research journals and educational resources across genres and subjects. Please read more here.

The interaction between members and staff is essential to our work and we convene a range of councils, communities and task forces to facilitate this. The groups all perform a variety of roles and functions, covering the full breadth of our members’ businesses and interests. They provide information, direction and instruction to our staff, taking care at all times to ensure no competition law issues arise.

The Publishers Association was established in 1896 by publishers, called into being by a crisis in British bookselling and publishing during the late 19th century and founded around the net book agreement. Pleases read on – our history.

We are governed by a council of 20 representatives elected from the membership.

Please refer to our Membership Directory.

Our Annual Reports for the last five years are available in our publications directory.

Yes in 2022 we launched Industry Insights, an interactive dashboard containing the data from what was previously known as the Yearbook, namely publisher sales income across sectors, formats and markets. Industry Insights is a Member Only benefit.

Please refer to our team on this page.

First Floor, 50 Southwark Street, London SE1 1UN.

You can join via this page on our website. If you wish to speak with someone please contact our Membership Manager, Zuzana Halliwell.

Our membership fees start from £250 and a fee table is available here.

If your publishing turnover is less than £9m you can use the tool here to calculate your membership fees. If your publishing turnover is above £9m please contact our Membership Manager, Zuzana Halliwell, for a personalised quote.

Yes – if you feel your service or product would be suitable to promote to the publishing industry in the UK you can apply to become an Associate Member. Further details are available here.

No – see our Membership Criteria.

Please refer here.

Membership is for a period of 12 months.

See our list of Member Benefits.

Please refer to our Definition of Turnover.

Please contact our Membership Manager, Zuzana Halliwell.

The following page on our website lists examples of initiatives by our members.

Please refer to this page on our website.

Yes we do and the latest survey can be found here.

Yes you can view the latest version here.

There are several projects underway – please refer here on our website.

Yes – please refer to Publishing Declares, which is a declaration on behalf of the UK book and journal publishing industry to take urgent action on climate change.

We have engaged expert providers to deliver a range of specialised tools bespoke to UK book and journal publishers. Our members will have access to these tools and the accompanying guidance as part of their membership. One tool is the Carbon Calculator that is bespoke to the UK book and journal publishing industry.

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices which ensure that the published outputs of academic research, such as journal articles or monographs, are made available to the public free of charge and free of other access barriers as soon and as widely as possible. There are a number of different models that allow for research to be made available open access.

Open research goes further than open access to include all the research outputs – such as the research files, data, code, citations and sometimes even open peer review – that underpin a research publication. By ensuring these files are as open as possible, research becomes more accessible and reusable, and thus more impactful.

Open peer review refers to the process of making peer reviewer reports openly available. Many publishers and journals offer some form of open peer review. It may also indicate openness about the reviewer’s identity; the participation of a wider community in the review process; and allowing final version commenting.

UK academic publishers have long been proactive supporters of Open Access. Their work over the last decade, in conjunction with other stakeholders across the scholarly communications industry, has helped ensure that the UK offers one of the highest proportions of Open Access research content in the world.

Different publishers have established different schemes for transitioning the scholarly ecosystem to open publication practices, and are able to offer advice to researchers on the best way of sharing their research outputs openly.

We have worked with our members in recent years to promote open access, and to work with the broader scholarly communications sector to inform ambitious new policies. As part of our activities, we have co-ordinated ongoing industry engagement with funders and government officials, commissioned new research, collected data on the increased up take of open access publishing models and organised conferences that discuss the future of open access in the UK.

We conduct a range of work and provide services across the area of Copyright Protection and Enforcement as detailed here.

The Copyright Infringement Portal was created as an online system to enable publishers to easily identify online infringements, quickly send Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) compliant takedown notices to infringing sites and to reliably collate takedown data. Further information with pricing for non-members is available here.

Details of publishing career paths are here.

Please see this page on our website.

The website bookcareers.com includes useful information.

The Publishing Apprenticeship is a ground-breaking apprenticeship standard that is catered specifically to the publishing industry. Further information is available here.

Please refer to this page about studying, training and upskilling.

Mentoring and networking are great opportunities to know people who are already working in the publishing industry. Most mentorships are designed to support the individual through to their end goal, whether that’s getting into the publishing industry or taking the next step from assistant to executive. Please read more here.

Publishers with issues selling goods or services to Europe can contact the Government’s bespoke export support team by phone or online for help.

Details:

Export support team
Telephone: 0300 303 8955
Textphone: 18001 0300 303 8955
Daily, including weekends: 8am to 10pm
Find out about call charges

The Publishers Association has a seat on the Department for International Trade’s Creative Industries Trade Advisory Group, directly supporting negotiations.

Information on current free trade agreements and ongoing discussions with non-EU countries is available here.

Please contact our Associate Director of Export Services, Gloria Bailey, for bespoke member export support.

Yes we can. Please contact Gloria Bailey.

Yes we do. Contact Gloria Bailey to discuss your requirements.

Please refer to the book fairs services section of our website for further information.

Visit the Publishers Association’s Export Toolkit to find a list of Country Profiles.

There is a list on the Publishers Association’s website and Export Toolkit.