Traditional Book Output Up 5%; Nontraditional Soars - somersault

Traditional Book Output Up 5%; Nontraditional Soars

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) reports “the number of books produced by traditional publishers rose 5% in 2010, to a projected 316,480, according to preliminary figures released from R. R. Bowker (@Bowker). That number, however, is dwarfed by the growth in output of nontraditional titles, which jumped 169% to 2,766,260. As Bowker notes, the majority of nontraditional titles consists largely of print-on-demand editions of public domain titles. Self-published titles are also included in the figure. Based on the preliminary figures, the combination of traditional and nontraditional books totaled a projected 3,092,740 in 2010, up 132% from 2010.

The Religion category of publishing ranked 5th overall in 2010, behind Fiction, Juveniles, Sociology/Economics, and Science.

Since 2002, the production of traditional books has increased 47%, while nontraditional titles have risen 8,460%.

Read the Bowker news release.

Another report, this one by the AAP (@AmericanPublish), says ebook sales increased 169% in the first two months of 2011 and 146% in March (to $69 million), bringing the total sales for the first quarter of 2011 to $233 million. Religion ebook sales were up 27% in March and up 14% for the quarter. Digital audiobook sales rose 9% in the quarter. Read the Publishers Weekly article.

And Amazon (@amazon) just announced it now sells more Kindle (@AmazonKindle) ebooks than pbooks – paperback and hardcover – combined. Since April it’s sold 105 Kindle editions for every 100 print books. Read the PW article.

Somersault Group

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