Publishing policy

A policy review paper for discussion at the Trustees’ meeting, February 2005.

Introduction
The National Portrait Gallery holds the foremost collections of British portraiture in the world and publishing supports the Gallery’s mission ‘To promote through the medium of portraits the appreciation and understanding of the men and women who have made and are making British history and culture, and …to promote the appreciation and understanding of portraiture in all media…’.

Over recent years the Gallery has developed its work as a publisher of high quality catalogues and books. Everything published by the Gallery has an ambassadorial role and needs to be of the highest standard. All publications have to be immaculately researched, written, edited, designed and produced, and feature wherever possible a high percentage of material from the National Portrait Gallery collections.

Irrespective of the likely audience or the predicted sales, each publication takes a significant commitment from the Gallery’s publishing section in terms of editorial resources. With a finite amount of editorial time available each year the choice of which publications to undertake is therefore critical.

The Purpose of Publishing
Publications enable the National Portrait Gallery to:

  • encourage enjoyment and appreciation of the collections
  • interpret the collections and exhibitions
  • document knowledge, research and ideas, particularly for specialist audiences
  • extend the Gallery’s audiences
  • promote understanding and appreciation of portraiture
  • promote understanding of British history through portraits
  • record the activity and history of the institution

The Range of Publishing

  1. Guides to the collections
    We currently publish two guides: the Visitor’s Guide (£4.99), and The National Portrait Gallery – a large-format souvenir book (£20)
  2. Exhibition catalogues and books
    It is not the Gallery’s policy to produce a catalogue for every exhibition, but for those where there is a good academic or commercial reason for doing so. It is our policy to produce catalogues to the highest possible standard within an agreed budget, to experiment with formats, and to provide material at a range of price-points. The two formats for larger photographic exhibitions, such as Horst or Cecil Beaton, demonstrates this well.
  3. General books and educational material
    General books are commissioned either to develop new approaches to the collections or to present popular aspects of British portraiture and history. The newly re-made National Portrait Gallery ‘Insights’ series, or the Norman Parkinson photographs, exemplify this approach. The Gallery publishes a wide range of materials for schools including resource, postcard and slide packs.
  4. Collection catalogues and other research
    The Gallery’s policy is to try to publish up to date information and associated research related to the collections. Given the expense, this can only be undertaken when private or institutional subsidy is available. The Complete Illustrated Catalogue (2004) and the Mid-Georgian Catalogue (2004), while very resource-intensive, demonstrate the Gallery’s commitment to research.
  5. Paper products including postcards and posters
    The Gallery endeavours to make available a wide range of paper souvenirs featuring important and popular portraits from the collection, as well as a selection of exhibition-related merchandise.

General Issues

1. Audiences
Publications are aimed at all Gallery visitors, the general public and key specialist and specific-interest audiences:

  • Gallery visitors
  • Exhibition visitors
  • Specialists (academics, art historians, historians, biographers, artists, photographers etc)
  • People of influence (teachers, critics, government)
  • The general public

2. The economic model for the publishing department
The publishing programme in principle aims to balance the more profitable catalogues and general books against the un-profitable catalogues and more specialist books. Therefore, depending on the exhibitions, there will not be a break-even budget in all years.

It is always difficult to determine the number of more specialist books and catalogues in which to invest. However, for each year a budget needs to be set that reflects the commercial viability of the core exhibition-related publications. Whilst a particular catalogue may be deemed essential in terms of the wider role of the Gallery it is acknowledged that because of the subject and/or content it may only sell to a specialised core audience and therefore will be loss making.

The general policy of the Gallery is to publish most titles directly. Specific instances of collaboration such as the Complete Illustrated Catalogue have not always proven straightforward. However, in future developing more educational titles, including the publication of conference papers, and books for children may involve collaboration with specialist publishers that have effective distribution to particular markets.

The publishing department has proven extremely enterprising in recent years with the sales of books to exhibition tour venues, co-editions and serial rights. The ability to make these sales is maximised when an exhibition tours. Our policy is to sell the Gallery’s edition of a book to the tour venue, and where possible to sell a trade edition to a co-publisher. This policy aims to maximise revenue for the Gallery.

Internally, all revenue from the sales of Gallery publications through Gallery retail outlets is divided between the Retail and Publications departments. However it is worth noting that in many years sales of Gallery publications constitute a third of all Gallery retail income.

3. Deciding which publications to produce each year
Each publication should meet some or all of the following criteria in order to be commissioned:

  • relate to the Gallery’s core mission of promoting an interest in history and portraiture
  • contain a substantial number of works from the collection
  • either be tied to an exhibition or represent works from the collection in a new way, or be tied into promotion within the media such as a portraiture-related television series

The overall programme is reviewed by the Editorial Advisory Group, which meets twice a year, and includes two trustees as well as external advisors. The purpose of the Group is to help develop publishing policy and to guide the overall direction of the publishing programme and to take a wider range of expert views on new ideas or opportunities.

The detail of which titles to publish is determined by the Publishing Review Group, which includes the Head of Trading and the Publishing Manager as well as a small number of senior staff. It meets three times a year and reviews all relevant external as well as internal proposals.

4. Marketing
The Gallery needs to be more realistic about how competitive it can be within a very tough retail environment for National Portrait Gallery publications. Consumers now have a vast choice available to them both online and in the high street.

In any year only a few Gallery publications will break out from their core-audience of exhibition visitors and crossover to the wider public (irrespective of the marketing resources available). Those publications that do crossover will either have popular content (such as Mario Testino) or be television-series related and therefore benefit from powerful broadcast exposure (such as Great Britons or The Worlds Most Photographed).

The Gallery therefore has to make the best use of the programme of displays and exhibitions to promote the relevant titles and to choose adroitly where to place its very limited marketing resources.

5. Electronic publishing
Currently the Gallery website is maintained by the Digital Programmes team. In future it may be appropriate to investigate opportunities to publish specific-interest research or out-of-print publications on-line but there is still a cost associated with electronic publishing that must be considered in terms of point 3 above. All Gallery publications are available for purchase on our website

Future policy development
The Gallery may wish to be more specific in recording the degree of ‘subsidy’ decided upon each year to support a number of loss-making publications which are required to accompany the exhibition and the research programme. Such an approach may be nearer to a BBC model rather than a pure commercial model.

Areas for development in the future may include children’s and educational publishing, digital opportunities such as the CD-ROM, and the continued determination of the Gallery to find the resources to support high cost collection catalogues.

The Gallery needs to agree clear and consistent indicators of success. The publishing programme needs to be judged against several criteria. For example, we must accept that there is a small, well-defined audience for many titles and that their success must not be measured against commercial return.

The Gallery needs to investigate alternative planning and budget mechanisms – recognising the necessity of internal ‘subsidy’ whilst retaining the overall sense of enterprise – which will support good decision-making and give greater clarity to the success factors for the publishing programme.

Rob Carr-Archer, Head of Trading
Celia Joicey, Publishing Manager
February 2005

Approved at Trustee Meeting, February 2005.