A Study of the Impact of the Current Economic Situation on the Publishing Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

However, the National and Social values of the Book Publishing Industry are not reduced at all. The only happen is to ignore its values. Accordingly, the Book’s Publication directly affects the country's economic, social, political, cultural, and educational aspects. At present, the book publishing industry has become a sector that contributes to the development of the country, which has an impact on all sectors. This study mainly considered the impact of the Sri Lankan publishing industry under the current economic situation. In the early days, book publication in Sri Lanka was a very advanced process through the contribution of one of the four modes of publications like author publications, commercial publications, public sector book publications, and non-governmental corporate book publications. Until the middle of the 18th century, this situation was mainly carried out for domestic purposes without commercial purposes. After that, the local needs that have gradually changed to suit various social, political, and economic changes have been seen several times since the beginning of the twentieth century until today. Among them, it can be mentioned that the process of local book publishing has also started giving importance to commercial needs. It can be mentioned that in the publishing industry, the entire book publishing process has taken a new face with the current COVID-19 epidemic situation and the current economic depression. It can be pointed out that the recent process of book publishing giving a prominent place to the opportunities of market and financial provision, has greatly impacted writers and publishers in view of the current climate in Sri Lanka. Thus, it can be stated that this study is an important contribution to a process to take the impact of the current economic conditions on book publishing in Sri Lanka to a qualitative and quantitative growth level. In order to achieve these objectives, a questionnaire was used to collect information in this study. In this regard, only the Western Province was selected for this purpose among the existing provinces of Sri Lanka, and three main publishers were selected from among the existing publishers in that province and data was collected. Here, primary and secondary data were used to obtain information, and the data belonging to the respective masters were computerized and then turned into a written report. After that, the greats analyzed and presented the nature of the impact on book publishing under the current economic conditions through graphs and tables. Therefore, whether the book publishing industry in Sri Lanka has been affected by the current economic situation, a fair investigation was done based on all the data obtained.