Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

NODIADAU/ NOTES The Aberystwyth Centre for the Book appointed its first Research Fellow in 2000. This is a significant step forward in the strategic development of the Centre. Greg Stevenson, the appointed Fellow, embarked upon his study of the marketing activities of publishers in Wales in tandem with the Centre's major project investigating the main aspects of the booktrade in Wales. Among the goals of the study are completing a detailed comparative study of marketing techniques currently employed by individual Welsh publishers, identifying problems and issues as they affect small publishing houses and printer-publishers who form the backbone of the Welsh booktrade, identifying marketing methods and techniques used by similar small publishers and presses in England, identifying opportunities to enhance, improve, and refine marketing activity, providing some practical advice in the form of recommendations, and promoting synergy between marketing endeavours currently carried out by the Welsh Books Council, and other initiatives supported by the Arts Council of Wales, Literary Publishers Wales, a representation scheme on behalf of Welsh publishers in London, and others. The study is based primarily on structured interviews with a large sample of publishers and printer-publishers in Wales who publish material in English and Welsh or both, their marketing officers, their editorial officers or, if neither officer is employed, with the owners or managers of the publishing houses or press. A selected sample of publishers in England will also be interviewed, but many appear to guard their marketing intelligence and approaches very jealously (quite naturally) and appear to be relucant initially to participate in the study. It is anticipated that the study will be completed by December 2000 and a report published as part of the report on the booktrade in Wales study sponsored by the Centre. Already some significant impressions and inferences have emerged. There appear to be considerable differences in marketing