The industry, and especially the publishing segment of the industry, is very labour intensive. Salaries and general compensation were higher in larger publishing houses, but remained lower than those in many other economic sectors which required comparable skills and responsibilities. The profile of the workforce in the book publishing industry in Canada resembled that of the cultural sector. The technologies currently used in the industry may be broken down into three groups, those impacting on how the product is made, how it is distributed and those changing the end product itself. They generate catalogues, book covers, typesetting, illustrations and electronic transfer of print ready material to the printer.
Some publishers supply computers to authors to eliminate the re-keying of manuscripts.
Order entry, scheduling of picking, inventory control and generation of invoices is in most cases entirely computer based. Order entry are still often received by mail, fax and telephone, but tele-book ordering service, based on EDI, is increasingly being used. Automation of receiving, shipping, storage facilities, and inventory control comprises uses technologies as carousels for storage and retrieval, bar code readers, wire controlled fork trucks, automated packing, etc.