Print Materials:
The author, publisher and bookseller are all partners in turning ideas into a finished product. These groups operate as a team with division of responsibilities but with proper linkages between themselves. Generally, publishing of documents involves the following activities:
- Flow of manuscripts to publishers office;
- Publishing preliminaries: Selection and evaluation of manuscripts, in terms of quality and marketability, contract between author and publisher, etc;
- Production: Editing, printing, binding;
- Distribution: Dissemination of information about published documents, promotional activities, including advertising, bringing out catalogues, bibliographies, announcement bulletins, leaflets, folders, etc.;
- Sales and marketing
While some intimate knowledge of all these activities is desirable for collection development, we-shall concern ourselves only with distribution activities with which libraries are directly related.