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Abstract

Book publishing in the English speaking Caribbean is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the 1960s there were sporadic attempts by individuals and even large firms like the Gleaner Company’s Pioneer Press in Jamaica, but some semblance of sustained publishing activity did not come to the region until the post-independence period. In that first immediate postindependence period, the initiative to set up publishing operations came from British educational publishers who established either wholly-owned subsidiaries or went into partnerships with local business interests like the Collins/Sangster imprint in Jamaica. For the most part, these were token operations. They were also essentially the companies’ marketing and sales outlets as all publishing decisions, as well as editorial, design and production work, remained in the UK. Consequently there was no skills transfer or structured training in any aspect of book publishing. Once the UK educational publishers realized that it was not necessary to have a local establishment maintain their dominance of the textbook market they withdrew from the region and reverted to publishing directly from their home base, exporting to the Caribbean. Essentially, that remains the pattern today.

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