The UK publishing market, which includes newspapers, magazines and books, grew 0.4 percent in 2007, to £18.41 billion, according to the latest Market Review report.

Each sector is dominated by about 12 top companies, with Pearson Plc being the only company with interests in each of the three sectors.

From 2007 to 2012, the Market Review report predicts the UK publishing market will grow 5.1 percent. Book revenues are forecast to grow most strongly, while newspaper revenues are expected to decline in the period, the report stated.

The main concerns for newspapers and magazines are maintaining ad revenues while also gaining new readers, and is more acute for newspapers than any other sector.

“The main reason why newspapers have lost so much ground over the past 20 years is that the adults who grew up reading a daily newspaper with their cornflakes and toast in the 1930s and 1940s (and so made reading a newspaper a daily habit) are dying off, and they are not being replaced. The growth of radio and the Internet are other factors behind the decline in newspaper sales, as is the shortage of time for newspaper reading,” the report states. “To survive, newspapers will have to become as familiar online as they are in print.”

According to the report, although the newspaper industry has seen vast changes in the past year, the book publishing sector “is experiencing greater change than any other sector of the publishing industry,” as some of the larger academic publishers are investing in more digitised content and less in print.