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The PRESS SYNDICATE beg leave to report to the Council as follows:
During the academical year 1999-2000 the Syndicate met eighteen times, the main business of these meetings as usual being to consider all new proposals for publication, whether of individual books, series, journals, software, or other items, and to have regular reviews of the Press's principal activities.
The Executive Summary from the Report follows. The full Report and Accounts will be posted on the Press website,http://cambridge.org/aboutus/annualreport/, and will be distributed to all subscribers to theReporter.
| Annual income from publishing and printing worldwide, excluding interdivisional transactions, rose to £120m, a growth of 8%. | |
| Publishing income rose to £106m (5% more than the previous year). Gross margin improved to 60% (from 57%) and net contribution exceeded £6m (as in 1999). | |
| Every major Publishing Group achieved sales growth over the previous year; there was particularly rapid growth for Professional (23%), English Language Teaching (11%), and Rights (13%). | |
| In regional terms the fastest growth came from Australia (26%, led by the local Educational publishing), East Asia (16%), and Africa/Caribbean (11%). | |
| Cash collections in Cambridge and North America were exceptionally good, and were £4m higher than sales across the Publishing Division as a whole; stocks were reduced by about a million units on the previous year-end. | |
| Overall cash generation from publishing was just under £4m, about the same as the previous year. | |
| £1.5m was transferred to the Designated Funds held on behalf of the University, as part of a new three-year programme of University Support which also included a range of special local discounts and other benefits. | |
| Over 500 monographs were issued as part of the Academic Groups' commitment to the Press's ongoing and large programme of scholarly publishing. | |
| Other book publishing highlights included: The Cambridge World History of Food, the final volume in the series of The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Noam Chomsky's New Horizons in the Study of Language, The New Chemistry, edited by Nina Hall, a new edition of S. M. Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology, the primary ELT course, Join In, a special Russian version of Cambridge English for Schools, SMP Interact (a new course from the School Mathematics Project), and a major programme of publishing for the OCR examination board's new AS and A2 qualifications. | |
| 2,376 new publication units were issued, from the publishing centres in Cambridge (1,525), North America (569), Australia (177), Africa (62), and Iberia (43). | |
| Printing highlights included the establishment of a new unit, SecurePrint, to consolidate and manage all the printing activities of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate; the investment in digital printing presses to support this work; and the printing and binding of the new Common Worship liturgy for the Church of England. | |
| Printing output included over 3,500 book titles manufactured, about 11.1m books and journals bound, and over 104m sheets printed. | |
| Publishing investment was directed to substantial electronic developments, including website expansion, improved online journal services, new internet ventures, and the establishment of a digital archive for all Press titles. | |
| Over 120 journals were distributed online, with over 35,000 hits on the site every day. | |
| The Cambridge Bookshop had a record year, with more than 30,000 customers and an increase of over 20% in sales. | |
| 20.3m units were shipped from the Press's three principal distribution centres in Cambridge, Port Chester, and Melbourne. | |
| The Press won first place in the UK Booksellers Award for Academic Distributor of the Year, awarded early in 2001 for the past year's performance. | |
| Management restructuring included a further integration of publishing and printing operations and a progressive breaking down of older 'Divisional' structures. |
During the course of the year, a sub-group of the Finance Committee of the Council held their annual meeting, chaired by the Treasurer, with members of the Press Syndicate and senior officers of the Press to consider the accounts of the Press, and they once again expressed themselves very satisfied with the Press's financial situation.
| G. JOHNSON (Chairman) | P. E. EASTERLING | S. OGILVIE |
| H. AHMED | D. F. FORD | O. O'NEILL |
| D. M. BROOM | G. P. HAWTHORN | E. S. PAYKEL |
| T. M. COX | A. B. HOLMES | R. N. PERHAM |
| J. R. CRAWFORD | D. J. MCKITTERICK | J. M. WOMACK |
| C. I. E. DONALDSON | J. S. MORRILL | |
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