┆Subjects include (transcript page numbers given in brackets; first side of recording ends on page 21): changes in social and educational background of people in publishing, including small number of female senior managers (1); increased emphasis on planning and more commercially rigorous approach to commissioning books following the economic crisis of the early to mid-1970s (1-5); importance of peer reviewing proposals for academic books (5-6); need to supply more information to colleagues in overseas markets, particularly the United States (7-8); examination of existing operations by Alan Miles on his appointment as UK managing director (8-9); formal and informal means of communication between different levels of management (9-10); differing styles of senior managers (10-11); criteria used in recruitment of staff (12-13); responsibilities of editors (13); criteria for judging successful editors and individual commissions (14); reasons for authors wishing to be published by ABP imprints (14-15); criteria for accepting or rejecting authors' proposals (15-16); sales figures of various types of book (16-17); review of book synopses by outside advisers (18-19); submission of commissioning proposal to editorial committee and then the full board (19); differing ways of assessing academic book proposals used by ABP and other publishing houses (20); difficulties in getting academics to complete manuscripts on time (21-23); dealing with manuscripts which turn out longer than initially agreed (23-24); copy editing, design, printing, proof-reading, jacket design and distribution processes (24-26); sending sales information and reviews to authors (27); comparison of actual sales figures with pre-publication projections (27-28); sale life-cycle of the average book (28); need to carefully monitor stock levels so that they correspond with demand (28-29); adoption of cheaper printing methods and loss of printers' proof-reading staff because of economic pressures from around 1973-1974 (29); consequent need for editors to do more proof reading (29-30); difficulties in printing process caused by creation by authors of word-processed text on discs (30-31); continuing need to produce sellable books as desktop publishing reduces production costs (31); attitude to risk in publishing, as illustrated by the development of a market for academic sociology books about women (33-34); anxiety of inexperienced editors about not achieving satisfactory sales figures (34-35); need to balance quality with profitability (35-36); recent growth in market demand for 'boring' books (36); success of Croom Helm in the field of quick and profitable publishing (36-37); need to attract and retain good authors in the face of competition from other firms by making them feel part of the publication process and convincing them that it will be done competently (37-40); nature and extent of competition faced by ABP from other academic publishers (40-42).