bestsellers and badsellers: towards new strategies for publishing books: the Dutch case

The market for books in the Netherlands shrank over the past five years with at least 25%. And as far as we can see growth is nowhere near in sight. For publishers, authors and new entrepreneurs this is not a fine outlook. This book helps to gain insight in the current business of publishing books, a typical business where overproduction or ‘waste’ is paramount. But foremost this book wants to form a basis for developing new ways of publishing. Sometimes it seems as if publishers are forced to create only bestsellers, but in the process of publishing this book gives him a way out to -profitably- excercise his role in bookpublishing in a healthy and succesful way. This book puts forward improvements on the one hand, and proves on the other hand that there are other viable businessmodels for publishing. Based on a benchmark of 14 Dutch publishers not only three new publisher types were developed, but also strategies to improve and develop every type of publisher to a higher professional level.