Welsh Journals

expertise and endeavour between publishers and in the skills and competencies available to them. Few publishers in Wales employ staff dedicated to marketing, even fewer employ staff with specific training and expertise in marketing. Marketing officers appear to be involved with products only at the post-production stages, and have to work very hard trying to promote too many titles on too small a budget. Most marketing officers (or editorial and other officers who may have marketing responsibilities thrust upon them) are rarely consulted, if at all, on the decision whether to publish a title or not, and some appear to have limited status and influence within companies. Commercial viability is not always the primary consideration in the decision whether to publish a title; many books are published in Wales because 'they should be' or because they are 'good and the author deserves support'. Much of the publishing in Wales is rarely consumer-led on the evidence of this study. Marketing techniques deployed do not vary much from title to title or, for that matter, from one publisher to the next. Shortage of time and lack of marketing budgets appear to be major constraints on the work undertaken. It is rare indeed to find a publisher in Wales who identifies specific dedicated funding for marketing purposes, and there exists some confusion as to where responsibility lies for marketing tasks within certain publishing houses. Nevertheless, specific grants for occasional marketing initiatives for particular titles or publishing ventures from the Welsh Books Council are generally welcomed, as are allocations given to certain publishers who obtain block grants for an agreed publishing programme and associated activity from the Arts Council of Wales. Significant cooperative arrangements, such as those between Literary Publishers Wales, are generally deemed to be successful. Among other problems identified and explored by the study to date are the lack of brand image for Welsh publications and Welsh publishers, the very limited opportunities for specific marketing initiatives and experimentation for particular titles or