You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Publishing output in the US grew only slightly in 2007, according to the US bibliographic provider Bowker, but there was a "staggering rise" in the number of print-on-demand titles published with Bowker now reporting these books separately.
Based on preliminary figures from US publishers, Bowker is projecting that US title output in 2007 increased to 276,649 new titles and editions, up from the 274,416 that were published in 2006. However, the number of short-run books published rose massively to 134,773, pushing the grand total for projected 2007 US book output to 411,422 books. It is the first year Bowker has begun tracking the p.o.d. titles separately: last year it reported a total output figure of 291,920 titles.
The">http://www.thebookseller.com/news/55290-pod-pushes-books-to-new-high.htm... findings echo UK figures published earlier this year by Nielsen BookScan, which found the number of frontlist titles sold last year hit 118,602, up 36% from 2006 (86,984).
"The most startling development last year is the reporting of 'On Demand' [p.o.d.] titles, leading to a stunning five-fold increase of new titles in the unclassified category, which mostly consists of reprints of public domain titles and other short-run books," said Kelly Gallagher, general manager of business intelligence for Bowker. "It will be interesting to monitor this category in 2008 in order to get a sense of whether this is a sustainable trend or a one-year spike."
Overall, according to Gallagher, the statistics for 2007 indicate that the book publishing industry has "regained its footing since the rough year that many publishers experienced in 2005". She added: "Clearly they are still being very selective about which titles they believe have the most promise of achieving commercial success."
There were 50,071 new fiction titles introduced in the US 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. Similarly, there was a 19% rise in new literature books last year to 9,796, which followed a 31% increase in new literature titles in 2006.
Children's title output, which makes up more than one out of every 10 new books introduced into the US market, was down again slightly last year. Bowker also saw fairly steep declines in the Business and Sociology/Economics categories last year. There were slight dips in the Religion (down 5% in 2007) and History (down 3%) categories, both of which had experienced double-digit increases in 2006.