Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Bowker Reports on the Book Publishing Industry

Yesterday we talked about the Zogby report on how and why readers shop. Today, it’s Bowker’s report on U.S. Book Production. Bowker compiled its statistics from its Books In Print® database.

Like the Zogby report, the Bowker report is interesting reading. Here are some of the stats:
While traditional book publishing was basically flat last year, there was a staggering rise in the reported number of "On Demand" and short-run books to 134,773, pushing the grand total for projected 2007 U.S. book output to 411,422 books.

As you read the report, keep in mind that Bowker excludes the On Demand segment from it’s traditional reporting -- it tracks that segment separately.
"Our statistics for 2007 indicate that the book publishing industry has regained its footing since the rough year that many publishers experienced in 2005, when the numbers showed a nearly 9% decline in new titles, but clearly they are still being very selective about which titles they believe have the most promise of achieving commercial success," said Kelly Gallagher, general manager of business intelligence for New Providence, N.J.-based Bowker
.
There were 50,071 new fiction titles introduced in the U.S. last year, up 17% from 2006, and the number of new titles in the category in 2007 was almost twice what it was as recently as 2002.

According to Gallagher:
… it's noteworthy that juvenile title output, which makes up more than one out of every 10 new books introduced into the U.S. market, was down again slightly last year and has now seen steady erosion in each of the last three years since its Harry Potter-influenced peak in 2004.

It would appear that, like most reports, there’s good news and there’s less good news.

SPECIAL NOTE: Tomorrow, we have a guest blogger. Author Mike Cox is going to stop by for a Q&A. Mike is the author of multiple nonfiction books, magazine articles and essays.

So, come by and hear what he has to say about writing!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...