Bowker released its annual report on U.S. print book publishing today and declared that print isn’t dead.
Bowker is projecting that despite the popularity of e-books, traditional U.S. print title output in 2010 increased 5 percent, from 302,410 in 2009 to a projected 316,480 in 2010. There was a 4 percent increase the previous year based on the final 2008-2009 figures.
The non-traditional sector, which includes on-demand titles produced by reprint houses specializing in public domain works as well as self publishers, increased 169 percent from 1,033,065 in 2009 to 2,776,260 in 2010, according to the company’s press release. These titles are mostly marketed on the Web.
Springer, with 16,517 titles, was the only traditional publisher among the top publishers of books with ISBN numbers. The leader was BiblioBazaar which produced 1,461,918 titles, followed by General Books LLC (744,376), and Kessinger Publishing LLC (462,480). These top three publishers accounted for nearly 87 percent of total titles produced in 2010.
Science and technology were the leading areas of growth. Books about computers increased 51 percent over 2009, science was up 37 percent, and technology was up 35 percent. The major decliners were literature, down 29 percent, and poetry, down 15 percent. The statistics report is here.
Fiction remained the top production category, representing 15 percent of the total, but it declined 3 percent from 2009 (48,738 versus 47,392). The next four largest categories were juveniles (32,638), sociology/economics (28,991), science (21,414), and religion (19,793).
About Michael Kelley
[...] Bowker Declares Print Isn’t Dead [...]