Bob Shepherd: The Decline of Education Publishing
Bob Shepherd, polymath, wrote this:
When I started to work in educational publishing, many years ago, there were some two hundred or so companies dividing up the textbook market in the United States and about twenty with significant market share. Now there are four.
Four.
Over the decades, there has been considerable consolidation of the industry. There were many, many mergers and acquisitions. And while this was happening, something else, more insidious, was occurring.
Most of those small publishing companies had been run by people who had started out in education, had entered educational publishing, and had risen through the ranks as editors. Some were started by editors or teachers turned entrepreneurs. But as the companies grew, often via acquisition by outside entities with no background or expertise in education, the old editorial managers were replaced by financial types.
Let me give you an example. Years ago, two publishing CONTINUE READING: Bob Shepherd: The Decline of Education Publishing | Diane Ravitch's blog