Scotland’s first printing press in was established in 1507, by a grant of Royal Patent from James IV to Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar of Edinburgh. After this relatively late start – more than half a century after the Gutenburg Bible – development of the trade remained sporadic until well after the Reformation, although it’s clear that much early published material has been lost.

By the later 18th century, however, Scotland could boast a number of significant indigenous publishers, many of which calso doubled as booksellers The original Encyclopaedia Britannica (1768), edited and published by William Smellie of Edinburgh, dates from this period, while the hard-nosed acumen of publisher William Creech (1745-1815), who published much of Robert Burns's work, had amassed a reputed net worth of £30,000 by the end of the century.

Creech’s commercial success helped pave the way for further expansion in the ensuing decades, when many of the historically great houses in Scottish publishing first set up shop. With the emergence of names such as William Blackwood, Adam Black, William and Robert Chambers, Thomas Nelson and John Bartholomew, Edinburgh came briefly to rival London as an influential publishing centre, although William Collins and the educational specialist Blackie were based in Glasgow. Periodicals including the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood’s Magazine achieved a UK-wide impact and readership, with their proprietors also publishing novels by the key Scottish authors of the day: Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, Susan Ferrier and John Galt.

A century or so later, nonetheless, the long-term trend was one of retrenchment, rationalisation and decline, as economies of scale and the pursuit of international markets saw many leading Scottish firms relocating to London and/or being subsumed by larger conglomerates. The same pattern, of course, has prevailed throughout the industry worldwide in recent times, latterly accelerated in a UK context by the demise of the Net Book Agreement, which gave publishers the legal right to set minimum prices for their books, in 1997.

Amidst the renewal of Home Rule energies during the 1970s, however, two new home-grown imprints, Canongate and Mainstream, were founded, going on to play a key role – along with the former Edinburgh University student imprint, Polygon – in the then-nascent revival in Scottish writing that would accelerate during the 1980s and 90s. Under its founder, Stephanie Wolfe Murray, Canongate’s contribution included not only the publication of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981) but the establishment of the Canongate Classics series. This pioneered the resurrection of many neglected and half-forgotten Scottish authors, both through individual reissues and the seminal collection The Devil and the Giro: Two Centuries of Scottish Short Stories (1991).

Mainstream’s key titles included the landmark studies Scotland’s Music (1992) by John Purser and, four years later, Duncan MacMillan’s Scottish Art 1460-1990, each of which balanced scholarly reappraisal with generalist approachability, thereby resonating potently with Scotland’s overall cultural mood during this time.

Today, the Scottish Publisher’s Association (SPA), founded in 1973, comprises almost 80 members, from general to specialist and academic presses. The Literature Department, Scottish Arts Council’s independently-conducted review, Needs of Scottish Publishing in the 21st Century (2004), found the sector to be worth £188m - although the multinational HarperCollins accounts for 84 percent of that figure, the remainder being largely comprised of relatively small-scale, independent firms.

Nonetheless, despite the central problems of chronic undercapitalisation and proximity to the megalithic London industry, Scottish publishing today shares broadly in the buoyancy of Scotland’s literary scene in general, as indicated by the recent decision of two major London-based international houses, Penguin and Hodder Headline, to set up editorial offices north of the Border.

Among the leading Scottish independents, Canongate’s recent achievements have commanded the most attention, building on those early successes with several spectacular coups. Besides vastly expanding its list’s international reach, these include winning the Man Booker Prize in 2002, with Jann Martel’s Life of Pi, while other recent hits, such as Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room and Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, saw Canongate named UK Publisher of the Year in 2003.

A full decade earlier, Polygon was named as the Sunday Times Small Publisher of the Year, having helped launch the careers of authors including Janice Galloway, A.L. Kennedy, Tibor Fischer and Gordon Legge. Amicably bought from Edinburgh University Press by Birlinn in 2002, it has enjoyed remarkable recent success with the multi-million-selling Alexander McCall Smith, and his Botswana-set No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which has been translated into nearly 30 languages.

Gaelic publishing since 1968 has been supported by the Gaelic Books Council (Gaelic Books Council), with its evolving programme of production subsidy and author commissions. As the language base currently continues to shrink, however, it seems a niche market increasingly under threat, although the effects of ongoing educational initiatives, such as Gaelic-medium schools, remains to be seen. The demise in 2003 of the longstanding and highly influential magazine/publisher Gairm was a major setback, although Acair, based in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, continues to hold its own, alongside the annual An Guth volume, edited from Skye and featuring both Scottish and Irish Gaelic writing, together with translations of international work.

Also in 2003, however, a major double boost for the sector was announced, promoted by the Gaelic Books Council and the Bòrd na Gàidhlig. Ur-Sgeul ("New Story") is the series title for a two-year pilot project publishing Gaelic prose fiction for adults, while Gath ("Sting") is a new quarterly Gaelic literary magazine. Ur-Sgeul's debut volume, the short-story collection At-Aithne ("Reacquaintance"), by Martainn Mac an t-Saoir, went on to win that year's Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year award. Younger readers, meanwhile, are catered for by another new magazine, Am Gath ("The Mole").

The continued health of Scots-language publishing is due partly to the ongoing efforts of the Scots Language Resource Centre in Perth, and also to the runaway success of the Scottish Arts Council-funded Itchy-Coo initiative, an award-winning new imprint specialising in Scots language books for children and young people.

On the periodicals front, as with publishing - and as with the UK market as a whole - the present picture may seem overshadowed by past glories, but while small, the Scottish literary magazine sector is certainly lively. The longest-standing and pre-eminent titles, publishing original poetry and fiction alongside a varying mix of reviews, essays, reportage and political commentary, are Chapman, Cencrastus and Edinburgh Review, the last of which was originally founded in 1802, and resumed publication in the late 1960s.

In a less traditional, often outspokenly anti-establishment vein, Kevin Williamson’s Rebel Inc. magazine and Duncan McLean’s Clocktower Press pamphlets provided an early outlet for many of today’s Scottish literary luminaries, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Janice Galloway, with the former title surviving today as an imprint of Canongate. Other newer contenders include the Glasgow-based Cutting Teeth and The Drouth, while Edinburgh’s Product often features literature and new writing among its contemporary culture/politics blend. Flying the flag for regional voices are such titles as Markings, based in Dumfries and Galloway, while Lallans leads the field in Scots-language work. Online publishing remains at a fairly early stage of development, although a good many publications are experimenting with the format, given the economic exigencies of print production with a small subscriber base. A detailed list of literary-oriented journals can be found on the Scottish Poetry Library’s website.