This classification includes establishments primarily engaged in miscellaneous publishing activities, not elsewhere classified, whether or not engaged in printing. This includes the publishing of atlases, business service newsletters, calendars, catalogs, directories, guides, maps and map globe covers, paper patterns, race track programs, racing forms, sheet music, shopping news, technical manuals and papers, telephone directories, and yearbooks, as well as the activity of micropublishing.
511140 (Database and Directory Publishers)
512230 (Music Publishers)
511199 (All Other Publishers)
The various sectors encompassed in the classification of miscellaneous publishing, which maintained strong sales figures through the mid-and late 1990s, suffered during the early 2000s from the economic slowdown and terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Miscellaneous publishers typically are rather small; less than one-fifth of all establishments employ more than 20 people. Overall, about 3,260 companies made up the industry, employing 84,450 workers. The industry, almost entirely domestic, depends heavily on the U.S. economy's advertising expenditure, and thus in turn correlates rather closely with the state of the overall U.S. economy, which meant bad news for miscellaneous publishers in early 2000s. Rising paper costs and increased postal costs also affected this sector, which encompasses a large catalog segment.
The growth of electronic commerce on the Internet may also prove beneficial to certain industry players, such as directory or newsletter publishers, because such publications are often fairly time sensitive and require frequent printings to keep information to date. An online publication can therefore allow publishers to quickly update information without necessitating costly reprintings, and revenue can still be garnered from advertisers. Other sectors, such as trading cards or calendars, were not likely to be directly affected by the Internet.
Miscellaneous publishers tend to be specialized within their respective categories. However, in addition to independent publishing companies, some book and periodical publishers also have divisions or departments engaged in miscellaneous publishing. The industry spans a range of some of the largest companies in publishing down to sole-proprietorship enterprises. The activities of some miscellaneous publishers more closely resemble book publishers, whereas others more closely resemble periodical publishers.
The largest category within miscellaneous publishing, comprising about a third of the industry's revenues, is telephone directory publishing. More than 6,000 telephone directories are published in the United States annually by approximately 200 publishers. This includes both telephone companies or their subsidiaries and independent publishing companies. There are several kinds of telephone directories. The utility, or core directory, is the standard directory provided by telephone companies for their service areas, with an edition distributed free to the owner of each phone line. Directories for smaller regional areas, such as a specific town, neighborhood, or larger regions than the core directories cover, may be published by either a telephone company or an independent publisher. Telephone company publishers also publish business-to-business directories whose listings include establishments that would be of interest to other businesses. Finally, there are independent companies that publish special interest directories, such as those targeted to specific ethnic groups.
The telephone directory publishing industry is often synonymous with the term yellow pages publishing because the same companies publish both comprehensive alphabetical telephone listings and categorized paid advertising listings known generically as yellow pages. Even if certain directory editions do not contain classified business listings, their publishers earn revenues from the yellow pages that they publish, whether as part of a directory or in a separate volume. Telephone directory publishing is thus an unusual industry because the bulk of its revenues are earned through advertising services and not the selling of the publications. The yellow pages account for 85 percent of the directory printing market.
Directories. Directory publishers that do not base their revenues on selling advertising space usually provide more comprehensive information on their entries than merely the telephone number and street address—and list individuals or organizations based on a common specialization. These directories are published by a different category of publishers than the telephone directory publishers. These publishers typically create and own their own databases of information to be published. Directory publishers may be primarily publishers of periodicals, such as trade journals, and publish directories focused on their journals' specialization. Other comprehensive directories, which provide substantive additional information, are published by reference book publishers. Directories are also published by nonprofit organizations, such as professional or trade associations. Two new revenue streams are emerging for directory publishers: as reference works and as sources of names and addresses for new business purposes.
Catalogs. The catalog industry is primarily a printing industry because catalogs are usually produced on contract for manufacturing, wholesale, or retail companies for the marketing of their products. In some cases, however, publisher-printers create catalogs on their own as a business initiative.
Business Service Newsletters. Newsletters geared toward businesses and industries proliferated rapidly in the mid-and late 1990s, surpassing the billion-dollar sales mark in 1995 and reaching nearly $1.5 billion by the close of the decade. The field is crowded with more than 5,000 publications. Nearly half of their income is from related products and services, as these publications depend heavily on revenues from advertising. Profitability is also tied to the cost of postage. Because there is growing concerns about postal rates, many publishers cut costs by reducing paper weight and more accurately targeting their audiences.
The distinction between business service newsletters and regular periodical publishing is often blurred. In general, business service newsletters contain no advertisements, charge high subscription rates, are narrowly focused, and contain articles, tables, or graphs oriented toward data rather than commentary. Such newsletters are often available in electronic form in addition to or instead of print. Companies in this industry may be independent firms, but the largest publishers are often divisions or subsidiaries of market research or financial information services firms. Other business service publications besides newsletters are sometimes grouped with this category; these would include such publications as bibliographic databases.
Sheet Music. Like trade book publishers, publishers of sheet music publish, market, and hold existing copyrights to creative works of independent composers and lyric authors. Many music publishers, however, derive the majority of their revenues from sources other than sheet music, namely from performance royalties or recorded music royalties for the music to which they own the copyrights. Thus, these publishers are categorized instead under the financial industry for patent and trademark owners and lessors. Publishers that gain most of their business from printed sheet music publishing, and thus are part of the miscellaneous publishing industry, tend to be publishers of classical music, in which most of the written music is in the public domain and no royalties are paid. Vocal music is another major category in printed music publishing. Sheet music publishers may also publish collections of their music as books.
Maps and Atlases. Map and atlas publishers create maps with their own copyright, using data from public domain geographic surveys. The publishers' cartographers draw up their own maps according to these surveys, altering the map sizes and adding or deleting data to the maps. Major publishers publish their maps both in book form as atlases and as free-standing, posterstyle maps. Smaller map publishers create local and regional maps for their local market. Smaller cartographic companies draw up maps on request for clients, which are typically book publishers and advertising agencies. Other book or periodical publishers may also publish atlases as a secondary activity.
Trading Cards. The trading card industry is dominated by baseball cards but also includes the publishing of other sports cards and entertainment cards, depicting personalities or scenes from films, television shows, and music. Companies may publish a full range of cards or they may specialize. Sport trading card publishers have licenses from the professional sports leagues and pay royalties to the players or teams pictured. There are about 80 companies in the sports and entertainment trading card business. Sport cards were originally sold with bubble gum but are increasingly sold separately and marketed toward adult collectors. Trading card publishers are often categorized under the printing industry instead of publishing.
Calendars. More than 200 companies published calendars in the United States in the late 1990s. These comprise both specialized calendar publishers and those with other publishing or non-publishing activities. The industry does not include the multitude of companies that have calendars produced in their name as marketing devices. Calendars are among the most effective conventional ways to boost business.
Micropublishing. Micropublishing comprises microfilm and microfiche publishing, known collectively as microform. Publishing on microform typically involves the reproduction of printed material, especially periodicals, for distribution primarily to libraries. Microform publishers usually are not the original copyright holders of documents but must obtain licenses from the original print publishers to publish microform editions. Newspapers and magazines are usually reproduced on reels of microfilm, whereas government documents and telephone directories are the texts most commonly published on microfiche. Some print publishers, such as The New York Times Company, publish their own microform versions.
UMI, a Bell & Howell company, has been aggressively acquiring business information service providers such as Data Times, establishing cooperative relationships with index producers, and making the World Wide Web central to its strategy. Both text and images from more than 3,000 journals, magazines, and other titles were available from Telnet, CD-ROMs, or the Web using its ProQuest Direct services and Z 39.50 compliant servers. Selected articles indexed in ABI/Inform and Periodicals Abstracts are provided directly to library users in seconds on their request from any terminal they are using. OCLC, the largest provider of library services, has agreed to make such access available via its Web site. Increasingly, such full-text databases are being offered online for membership-access fees. Electronic, on-demand publishing and delivery of archived articles will continue to make UMI a viable force. The foremost publisher of microfilm for other newspapers, magazines, and academic dissertations is University Microfilms International. Microforms have not yet been completely replaced with electronic, digitized formats, however.
Globes. Globe publishing began with Johann Schiner, a German mathematician, who was the first to produce globes in quantity in 1515, shortly after the appearance of the printing press. Antique globes constitute a lucrative submarket in this sector, attracting the attention of collectors, and auction prices for eighteenth century versions have brought up to $20,000.
Telephone Directories. The first telephone directory, which listed 50 names, was published in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. The first directory with classified business headings was published in 1883. It is said that the first yellow pages were printed in 1883 when a printer in Cheyenne, Wyoming, ran out of white paper and had to use yellow sheets instead. Telephone directories were originally produced as a service for telephone users, and the business of taking in revenues from advertising developed later.
The telephone company American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), a major phone company in the United States, became the largest directory publisher, earning more than $1.5 million from its yellow pages business in the late 1970s. AT&T introduced the name "Yellow Pages" and the famous walking fingers logo but chose not to trademark either name or logo, which have since been adopted by numerous publishers. When AT&T divested its Bell companies in 1984, the directory publishing business was also divided among the seven new regional holding companies, resulting in a publishing subsidiary or division for each company. This led to greater competition for advertisers, as the regional Bell companies introduced directories for regions beyond their own service areas. Meanwhile, independent yellow pages publishers had existed for decades.
The yellow pages industry grew rapidly in the 1980s from revenues of $2.9 billion in 1980 to $8.9 billion in 1990, including non-publishing marketing and advertising service sales. The number of directory editions published increased steadily to a peak of 6,500 in 1986, when the number began to decline somewhat. The regional Bell companies withdrew to publishing for only their own territories in response to consumer confusion and advertiser complaints over multiple yellow pages for the same region. Also, some niche publications, such as one by Southwestern Bell that targeted the elderly, were unsuccessful. Although traditionally considered a recession-proof industry, yellow pages advertising sales slowed, but did not decline during the recession of 1990 to 1992.
Several trends affected yellow pages publishing in the early 1990s. Publishers are increasingly relying on third-party marketing agencies. The industry was working toward a standardized advertising menu in 1993. Targeted niche marketing is being further developed. The growth of 800 numbers has led to an increase in national advertising whereby a company chooses to advertise in various yellow pages throughout the country. Recently, audiotex services were being introduced in some areas. Sometimes referred to as "talking yellow pages," voice information services permit callers to enter in codes for information on the advertised product or service. Yellow pages publishers, both independent and utility, are teaming up with newspaper publishers to offer these information services. Another trend among telephone directory publishers is a greater dedication to community service with the publishing of community-oriented information pages. Recently efforts were made to overcome the old dusty image and to consider the yellow pages as the first place to shop. Directories rating World Wide Web sites for beginners and listings or evaluations of CD-ROMs are also being published.
The total value of shipments for miscellaneous publishing as a whole rose from $12.3 billion in 1994 to $14.6 billion in 1999 on steady growth. Although analysts expected the early 2000s to continue to offer growth opportunities to miscellaneous publishers, the rapid emergence of new technologies and shifting consumer trends make it impossible to provide fixed predictions for the industry as a whole, as the various sectors were likely to go in their own directions.
More than 17 billion catalogs were mailed in 1998, the equivalent of 64 for every person in the United States and consuming more than 3 million tons of paper. Such news has not gone unnoticed by environmentalists, for whom the Internet is a welcome development in this case. By the end of the 1990s, many catalog publishers had not fully integrated the World Wide Web into their operations, a fact that some industry proponents were trying to mitigate. There is a rapid movement toward electronic cataloging and consolidating design and prepress operations to bring them in-house. Catalog growth expanded by 8 percent annually between 1993 and 1998, and began a slow decline at the end of the decade as consumers shifted to buying directly from the Internet.
Telephone directories constituted a nearly $12 billion sector in the late 1990s, by far the largest category in the miscellaneous publishing industry, though these revenues include advertising-related services as well. The growth-hungry U.S. business environment played no small part in the sector's strong sales; yellow pages advertising revenues were up 8 percent in 1999 to reach $2.16 billion. Despite these strong figures, however, the industry's voracious competition kept advertising prices fairly low. The 1996 Telecommunications Act opened the door for independent directory publishers to gain a foothold in this industry by forcing phone companies to release their listings databases. By 1998, independent publishers had achieved an 8 percent share of the directory market. Observers expected the early 2000s to be marked by consolidation among directory publishers. Meanwhile, American Business Information took advantage of opened directory listings to develop a white page database with more than 100 million residential listings for use in Internet directories and telemarketing.
The Yellow Pages Publishers Association embarked on its first national marketing campaign in years, shedding its famous "walking fingers" logo in favor of a yellow light bulb, in an effort to promote the yellow pages as an idea source. Meanwhile, in urban markets such as New York, yellow pages geared toward specific ethnic groups experienced great success in the late 1990s. Such directories focus on people and businesses of specific ethnic groups in their own languages, catering to customers with an affinity for doing business within a subcommunity and promoting strong identity ties within ethnic populations. This niche market, with its more specialized advertising, is becoming a popular and profitable supplement income for yellow pages publishers.
The global market for sheet music publishing continued its slow but steady growth through the mid-1990s. The 1999 International Survey of Music Publishers, conducted by the National Music Publishers Association, listed total publishing revenues of $6.29 billion worldwide in 1997. This included both mechanical royalties and performance revenue. The gap between these segments is widening in favor of the former. Mechanical royalties are based on the reproduction of published music, and they generated an income of $2.74 billion, or 44 percent of total publishing revenues. However, growth in sheet music publishing revenues is limited by the tendency toward copyright violations. Because sheet music is usually only a few pages long, it is easily photocopied illegally. In 1998 U.S. music publishers signed a 10-year royalty contract with record labels, securing publishing revenues into the 2000s. However, of growing concern to publishers and labels alike was the emergence in the late 1990s of online music distribution, of which the industries have yet to iron out the legalities.
The 1990s were an exasperating decade for the trading-card industry. Companies were forced to adapt quickly to survive a shaken market as sales across all categories declined, greatly exacerbated by a series of sports strikes. In 1998 manufacturers and licensers formed the Sports Card Association, Inc. to pool efforts following a 60-percent decline in total industry sales, dropping from $1 billion in the early 1990s to $450 million in 1998. The association launched huge promotional campaigns, including offers of trips to sports All-Star games, as well as large sports-and entertainmentcard displays in retail stores. In early 1999 baseball cards comprised 37 percent of sales; footballs cards, 34 percent; and all others, 24 percent.
And then came Pokemon. Through 1999 the children's sensation almost single-handedly resuscitated the trading-card market. The release of Pokemon movies sustained sales through 2000 and is anticipated to generate the first increase in trading card sales since 1991. Meanwhile, the secondary market of dealers and collectors has been growing recently due to increases in sales to adults, sophistication in marketing, and the use of nonexclusive licensing contracts by professional sport leagues as a means of improving their images and marketing their players and teams.
Yearbook sales are likely to continue their strong growth patterns well into the 2000s due to demographic trends; the growing number of elementary school students through the 1990s will lead to increasing numbers of high school graduates as those children come of age. The yearbook market was estimated at about $500 million. Yearbook publishers greatly enjoy the benefits received from the unpaid creative efforts of students. However, the sector's intense competition was characterized by the victory of Taylor Publishing Co. in an antitrust lawsuit against market leader Jostens, Inc. in 1997, which held that Jostens had interfered with Taylor's sales representatives.
The super graphics segment of the industry (oversized posters, murals, banners, signs, and maps) has been expanding into new markets such as "tied" formats in large collages and historical exhibits. Using new technology, they then print on transfer paper to vinyl, textiles, canvases, and even wood. Large-format output is one of the largest areas of anticipated growth.
Other solid miscellaneous publishing sectors in the late 1990s included micropublishing, with revenues of $146.2 million in 1997; pattern publishing for clothing and other purposes, with $197 million; and calendars, with revenues of $220.4 million enjoyed by companies specializing in calendar production.
After the economic peak of 2000, the ensuing climate of the early 2000s brought trying times to many U.S. industries, and the miscellaneous publishing sector was no exception. An economic recession combined with the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 resulted in a decrease in business spending and a downturn in consumer confidence. Many segments of the miscellaneous publishing industry were also negatively affected by increased paper costs and postal rates. The growth of the Internet, however, did aid some sectors of the industry.
After growth of 5.6 percent per year from 1997 to 2000, the number of catalogs mailed in the United States dropped 2.7 percent in 2001 to 19 billion units. That translates to about 70 per year for every man, woman, and child. Circulation fell by 9 percent in the quarter immediately following the terrorist attacks, and many did not expect significant improvement in the near future. The various negative economic factors also have led some catalog producers to reduce circulation, page counts, trim size, or move to less expensive paper. Catalog publishers also faced an 8.7 percent increase in postal rates in June of 2002, leading many to gear more of their marketing online.
With more and more shoppers buying from catalogs, however, the Direct Marketing Association estimated that catalog sales, including online sales, actually grew by 6.3 percent to $118.1 billion in 2001, up from $111.0 billion the previous year. As of 2002, there were about 10,000 catalogs published per year in the United States. Approximately 60 percent of those catalogs were consumer-oriented marketers, and 40 percent served the business-to-business market. The top 10 U.S. catalog publishers were Dell Computer, with $31.9 billion in catalog sales; IBM, with $7.6 billion; W.W. Grainger, at $4.1 billion; Corp. Express North America, with $4.1 billion; J.C. Penney Co, with $3.8 billion; CDW Computer Centers, with $3.8 billion; Office Depot, with $3.6 billion; Staples, with $3.0 billion; Micro Warehouse, with $2.5 billion; and Henry Schein, with $2.3 billion. Other notables included Spiegel, with $1.7 billion; Lands' End, with $1.4 billion; and L. L. Bean, with $1.1 billion.
Although the economy had little in the way of good news, advertising revenues in the Yellow Pages industry rose 5.3 percent to $14.4 billion in 2001 when all other media were posting losses. Although historically slower in growth, the industry also has the advantage of being nearly recession proof. As of 2002, about 240 publishing companies published approximately 7,270 different Yellow Pages directories in the United States annually, with total circulation of more than 530 million. The four Bell regional directories, with 373 million in circulation, were the largest. Independent publishers not affiliated with any telephone company, however, were growing at a rapid rate. The nine leading independent Yellow Pages publishers grew 12.4 percent in 2001 with total revenue of $1.09 billion. Yellow Book USA, with estimated revenue growing more than 27 percent in 2001 to $530 million, was the leading independent publisher.
According to the National Music Publishers' Association, Inc., total publishing revenues gained 6.7 percent in 2000 (the latest figures available) to reach $6.87 billion worldwide. There were problems facing the industry, however, the biggest of which remained piracy. The growing number of illegally shared music files, downloads of music from the Internet, and "burning" music onto recordable compact discs threatened to undermine the global music industry. The economy in 2001 and 2002 led to sales slowdowns, as well as the maturation of the compact disc in major markets. Intellectual property protection problems also remained in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and other developing regions.
Trading cards remained a formidable segment in 2001, with $658 million in sales. Like many segments in the miscellaneous publishing industry, trading cards were also making the move online, with leading baseball card marketer Topps launching an Internet-based trading card line in 2001. The lines offered baseball, football, basketball, and hockey player cards available online only for between $3 and $9. The etopps Trading Floor, a trading site co-branded with online auctioneer eBay, would provide the platform for trading and selling the cards among registered users. Another innovation in trading cards came in 2002, when StatCard combined trading cards with online gaming in its new line of Smart Trading Cards. The game, using chip technology, allowed users to connect to their PCs with a card reader and play a game online as the player on the card.
Once a phenomenon in this sector, the Pokemon trading cards began declining in popularity in 2001, with revenues falling from $778.4 million in 2000 to $511 million the following year. Maker Hasbro, however, was planning a line of Harry Potter trading cards to coincide with the release of the film.
The consolidation of many communications companies that produced telephone directories was a trend in the early 2000s. The major telephone directory publishers in 2002 were Verizon Communications, Inc., formed by the 2000 merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic, with total revenues of $67.6 billion; SBC Communications ($43.1 billion); Bell South Corporation ($22.4 billion); Reuben H. Donnelley Corporation ($73.8 million), Sprint ($26.6 billion), Yellow Book U.S.A. ($463.2 million), and Alltel ($7.9 billion). In an effort to trim operations, one of the largest yellow pages producers, Quest Communications International (which acquired Baby Bell U.S. West) sold its phone book business to two private-equity firms in 2002 for $7.0 billion. R. H. Donnelley was also slated to take over Sprint Corp.'s phone books in 2003.
Reuben H. Donnelley Corporation derives most of its revenue from advertisement services. Its publishing business was given over to Ameritech in 1998 in a joint venture between the two firms and Don Tech. The bulk of the firm's yellow pages operations, meanwhile, were sold to Yellow Book U.S.A. Yellow Book, the largest independent phone directory publisher in North America, was acquired in 1999 by British Telecommunications, an alliance that merged the two companies' Internet databases.
The leading business service publishers include Dow Jones and Company Incorporated; Dun & Bradstreet Corporation and its Moody's Investors Service subsidiary; Thomson Information Publishing Group; Value Line Incorporated; and Disclosure Incorporated.
The January 2000 merger between EMI Group PLC and Time Warner, Inc. created the largest music-publishing firm in the world. EMI Music Publishing Worldwide and Warner Brothers Publications control about one-third of the world market for combined mechanical and performance royalties.
The nation's largest catalog publisher-printer is R. R. Donnelley and Sons Company. The firm engages in a variety of printing and publishing activities, as well as online and electronic-commerce services, generating revenues of $4.75 billion in 2002 for all its activities.
Sagging industry sales resulted in the reshuffling of the leading sports card publishers in the late 1990s. Longtime market leader Topps Company, Inc. maintained its position with sales of $326 million in 1999, largely owing to its copyright over the stellar Pokemon series but also deriving from candy products and comic books. However, many of Topps' traditional competitors were swallowed in the late 1990s by Playoff Corp., which acquired the trading-card rights of Donruss, Score, and Leaf on its way to sales of $25 million in 1999. Donruss maintained its hockey and baseball card lines.
Rand McNally Company remained the world's largest commercial map publisher, selling more than 10 million road atlases annually in addition to its hardcover world atlases. In 1998, Rand McNally purchased another of the leading map publishers, Thomas Brothers, whose specialty in digital mapped street guides produced annual sales of $30 million and was incorporated into Rand McNally's burgeoning CD-ROM mapping products. Successful products in this line included the Business Traveler's Suite CD-ROM package. National Geographic Society, meanwhile, dropped its nonprofit status in 1997 amidst declining contributions and expanded its map and atlas businesses, making available to the public goods and services previously available only to members. Other leading map and atlas publishers included Simon & Schuster, which owns Mobil Road Atlas and H. M. Gousha, and Hammond Incorporated.
Jostens Incorporated prints about half of all high school yearbooks in the United States, with sales of $736.6 million in 2001, though that figure also includes its line of class rings. Jostens' chief competitor in the yearbook market was American Achievement Corp.'s Taylor Publishing Company. American Achievement had total 2002 revenue of $304.4 million. Other yearbook publishers included Herff Jones, Inc. and Walsworth Publishing Company.
The miscellaneous publishing industry was one of the top 20 industries at the three-digit SIC level for rate of employee growth during the 1980s. Its workforce increased 79.6 percent between 1979 and 1989. This growth cooled considerably in the mid-and late 1990s, reaching 70,400 in 1998. In 2001, workers numbered 84,450 and the median hourly wage was $16.01. The U.S. market for published information is expected to continue its breakneck pace into the 2000s, portending a voracious labor market for employees in this category.
Most companies engaged in miscellaneous publishing have little or no international presence. Only about 1 percent of all products in this category are set for exports; thus, firms focus little on international marketing campaigns.
One area that has experienced increasing international activity is directory publishing. After British Telecommunications purchased Yellow Book U.S.A., many analysts expected to see an increase in international merger activity, particularly in the market for online directory publishing. As the global business climate integrates, firms will likely desire access to detailed information on overseas businesses, thus heightening the need for internationally based directories.
As the U.S. directory market splintered following the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which put an end to the monopoly power wielded by telephone companies, foreign operations increasingly maintain the largest yellow pages publishing operations. Although local and national telephone utilities continue to publish the alphabetical directories, the commercial market has been left wide open for experienced North American publishers. However, U.S. publishers have taken considerable strides to compete with these larger firms in untapped markets where no large-scale yellow pages had existed. U.S. publishers have won contracts to publish directories in Eastern Europe and Russia as those countries move toward a free-market economy.
Sheet music publishing is a lucrative international business, along with music publishing as a whole. Publishers contract with licensed distribution agents in each country or region in which they distribute their music. In printed music, the United States is the world leader. The revenues of U.S. music publishers have been growing faster internationally than domestically. After the United States, the countries with the largest music-publishing industries are Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and France. Taken together, these top five countries enjoy nearly 70 percent of the world music-publishing market.
Affected by a logic of globalization similar to that of directory publishers, business-service newsletter publishers are increasingly marketing their publications internationally to serve business people interested in market conditions in different countries. Newsletters are much lighter than business magazines and therefore ship well by airmail. Whether companies are sending articles, bibliographic or directory databases, or numeric tables, business service publications in electronic formats are by far the easiest to "export."
For much of the miscellaneous publishing industry, the potential consequences of the World Wide Web and other online technologies remains clouded. Catalog publishers are likely to realize enhanced revenues from electronic commerce, while sheet-music publishers fear that the Internet will allow wide proliferation of published music on the Web and through e-mail programs from which companies will be unable to collect royalties. Maps and atlases are often published online, though the large graphic files are often slow to download. Map publishers, therefore, have focused much more on digitizing their information for use in CD-ROM programs.
Throughout the miscellaneous publishing industry, in fact, many publishers of printed material have begun publishing versions of their books or periodicals on CD-ROM, while others license their data to specialized CD-ROM publishers and online vendors. A wide range of miscellaneous publishing exists on CD-ROM: telephone directories, other directories, maps, business service publications, business newsletters, guides, and even forms of catalogs and yearbooks. Some business service publishers now publish more information in electronic form than either print or microform. Fax and online information services are being utilized—especially by business newsletter publishers who need to provide speedy delivery of information.
CD-ROMs have the physical attributes, low production costs, and standardization necessary to make it an almost ideal medium for publishing, data distribution, and archival material for the business consumer. Computerized maps of the entire United States with adjustable scales now fit on one CD-ROM. Rand McNally, along with several other map producers, have expanded into the CD-ROM market. Rand McNally has enjoyed strong sales from its Trip Maker, Street Finder, and Quick Reference Atlas CD-ROMs. New products and markets include oversized posters, banners, and maps for exhibits or murals and a variety of surfaces. Many reference books, technical manuals, and even children's books are packaged with a CD-ROM version accompanying them. CD-ROMS are increasingly used for technical manuals because of their ease of indexing and compactness. The manufacturing industry at large still relies heavily on paper technical manuals, however.
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