BoSacks Speaks Out: Is the UK Leading Publishing, or Just Acting Like a Grown‑Up?

BoSacks Speaks Out: The UK Isn’t “Ahead,” They’re Just Still Sitting Around the Same Campfire

A reader wrote in with a fair question:
“Based only on volume you’ve posted lately, it would seem the UK is the pioneer of the publishing industry. What’s holding back the US? Why does the UK seem so far advanced? Or are they just playing catch up?”

Let me answer the way an old magazine guy answers everything: with a little history and a little scar tissue.

The UK is not magically more advanced than the US. They just look that way because they still behave like an industry. We, meanwhile, behave like a garage sale of independent operators, each guarding our own folding table like it contains the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Back when the US had “connective tissue”

There was a time when American publishing had a center of gravity. You could feel it.

We had trade publications that everybody read. You knew what the “industry conversation” was because someone was actually publishing it, editing it, arguing about it, and putting it on your desk. We had common reference points. Common vocabulary. Common grudges. That mattered.

Then the connective tissue started disappearing.

Folio is gone. Publishing Executive is gone. And when those kinds of trade voices fade, it is not just sad nostalgia; it is structural loss. Without them, the industry stops seeing itself. You can’t coordinate if you can’t even agree on what the conversation is this week.

The UK and Europe still have the campfire

The UK and Europe have a tradition of collectivism in industry. Call it the European headspace, call it smaller geography, call it “we still believe in associations,” but the outcome is the same: they maintain federations, groups, professional bodies, conferences, and forums that keep people talking in the same room.

That creates shared standards, shared research, shared advocacy, and most importantly, a shared voice. When a market has that, it looks like it’s moving faster because it is moving together.

In the US, we have some strong groups, but they’re specialized: IRMA, CRMA, BINS, Niche. Valuable, yes. National unifier coordinating the magazine industry et large, with real gravitational pull, not really.

In the US, we do have solid industry groups, but they live in narrow lanes: IRMA, CRMA, BINS, Niche. Each serves its purpose, and they all do useful work. What we do not have is a true national unifier with the authority and gravity to coordinate the magazine business as a whole. No single organization sets the agenda, rallies the troops, or gives the industry a common direction. Valuable fragments, yes. A center of gravity, no.

And here’s the part people underestimate:
If nobody frames the conversation, you stop having one.

Market size changes behavior

The US is enormous. Big markets breed competition first and cooperation last. Everybody has enough room to run their own playbook, so they do. Europe operates more often at the scale of a country or language market. Smaller markets learn quickly that coordination is not a nice-to-have, it is survival.

So what looks like “the UK is ahead” is often just this:

• They adopt trends in clusters.
• They talk about priorities in shared forums.
• They test models with peers.
• They circulate what works, and what failed, before everyone has to reinvent the same painful lesson.

In the US, experimentation happens publisher by publisher, quietly, privately, and often competitively. Even when the ideas are excellent, they don’t aggregate into visible momentum.

Advanced versus coordinated

This is the distinction that clears up the confusion.

Europe is not necessarily more technologically daring. The US has plenty of innovators. We’ve always had them. I lived through eras when American publishing could turn on a dime, sometimes because we had to, sometimes because somebody in the room was loud enough to make it happen.

But innovation without coordination looks like noise. Coordination makes even modest progress look like a movement.

So no, the UK is not “winning” because they have better tools. They’re winning the perception game because they have better connective tissue.

The BoSacks bottom line

The UK does not look advanced because they are smarter. They look advanced because they are organized.

Coordination looks like innovation from the outside. Fragmentation looks like stagnation, even when good work is happening in pockets.

If we want the US to look like a leader again, we have to rebuild the campfire. That means creating a shared forum where the industry can gather, a set of trade voices that define and challenge the conversation, and a true national-level place where publishers can argue in public, compare notes in daylight, and occasionally admit what is not working. Leadership does not come from silence. It comes from visible debate, shared experiments, and collective learning.

Right now, too many publishers are operating like isolated outposts. Each is solving the same problems in private, each is inventing the same wheels, and each is pretending this is independence rather than inefficiency. An industry does not become strong by hiding its homework. It becomes strong by turning experience into common knowledge.

As someone who has spent a career chronicling this business, I take that responsibility seriously. On a daily basis, I try to start conversations, surface useful information, and provoke the kind of discussion that used to happen naturally when trade journals landed on every desk and conference hallways doubled as strategy labs. I am not interested in cheerleading. I am interested in dialogue. If publishers do not talk to each other, the industry cannot move together. And if the industry cannot move together, it will always look like it is standing still, even when good work is happening in the shadows.