Publishing is the activity of commercially producing, distributing, and selling literature or information. It is both a business and cultural-intellectual enterprise that makes the work challenging, exciting, and rewarding. Associated with and crucial to the intellectual, cultural, and educational roles of society, the products of publishing (books, magazines, newspapers, online resources, and so on) inspire different feelings than other commodities produced by industry. Publishing is a business and, therefore, vulnerable to the vagaries of the marketplace of supply and demand, fashion and taste, capital, profit, and investment. The finding, nurturing, and supporting of authors with all of their idiosyncratic needs must be coordinated successfully with the bottom-line business concerns of marketing, competition, profit, and cost. International mergers of publishing houses, the development of the Internet and electronic publishing, and the blending of publishing with multimedia entertainment all point to dynamic growth in...