Growth of Publishing BPO
May 18, 2009
Research and Markets has come out with a report that indicates that despite economic slowdown, offshore publishing industry is poised for some robust growth mainly in the Asian sub-continent (India, Philippines, Vietnam, China, Sri Lanka. Dubbing this region as the world’s publishing destination, the report estimates that the offshore pre-press services offered by these countries were worth $780 m as of 2008.
The biggest share ($660 m) of this market is with Indian desktop publishers who mainly operate in the STM/Academic, educational and legal publishing fields, with smaller traction in magazines, corporate/B2B publishing, etc.
Of significance is the offshore vendor’s transition from low value services such as tagging, editing existing designs and copy editing to high value inputs such as making original designs or devising testing, assessments and e-learning tools for school curriculum. The report predicts that with better technological input, the industry will grow from $780 m in 2008 to $1.2 b by 2012. Already, the report identifies over 140 credible vendors in this field.
Meanwhile, another report by ValueNotes, a business intelligence company in Pune, India estimates that already there are some 35,550 people in direct employment generating revenues worth USD 660 million as of end-2008 in India. The maximum revenue is earned through content creation. Further, the STM/Academic segment contributes 60% to the offshore revenues, followed by the Educational publishing segment. The market leaders in this sector are SPi, Aptara, Integra and Laserwords to name a few.
Meanwhile, with digital publishing gaining ground in the sub continent, and with the entry of Rs 3,000-crore Future Group’s Depot into the business, the nascent self-publishing industry has also begun to grow in size and scope. Self-publishing is a very cost-effective solution for first-time authors who want to keep a control over their print-runs.
On the global plane, the biggest player in this sector is Lulu.com, followed by BookSurge.com, another print-on-demand service acquired by Amazon.com. Optimists go so far as to suggest that mass market paperbacks will die out and over time be completely replaced by the self publishing industry.
For interesting trivia and stats on self-publishing industry, quickly log on to http://www.selfpublishingresources.com/Booknews.htm.
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9 Responses to “Growth of Publishing BPO”
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HI,
Can anyone tell what type of publishing BPO work is currently being outsourced to India?
-Rj
Editorial services like proof reading, ebook creation, art work design, etc are outsourced to India. Now outsource vendors are capable handling full life cycle editorial management services
I didn’t know that publishing work has been outsourced to India? Does anyone knows how big the market is going to be in the next couple of years?
India as got best human resources is the reason, why outsourcing to India.
Off shoring in the publishing business has been going on for quite some time though the trend has picked up to new levels recently. Publishers based in UK were one of the first who took to off shoring, forming units in India as early as the late 1970s to execute content expansion and production functions. In technical and medical publishing, a large amount of the work and prepress activities is primarily done offshore in countries such as India and other low cost Asian countries. Offshore content development market is growing approx at 30 percent per year according to research reports.
Not only the manpower is the reason, but also the timze zone difference, 24/7 (fully opearational & support) and last but not the least is the cost advantage.
Publishing BPO has come a long way with this merits & demerits. Lot many people are getting employed, lot many customers are getting the ebook at a competitive pricing & ebook publishers are competitive in the market just because of this reason.
Still it has long way to go.
true. it has traveled a long way and still has a long way to go.
Whats the E-Pub offshoring market size in India?