[LINK] Book numbers

[Jan Whitaker]

Fwd: Publishers Lunch
>
><http://click.publisherslunchdaily.com/cp/redirect.php?u=NTAwNnwzNDQ4OXxqd2hpdEBqYW53aGl0YWtlci5jb218NTU0MDI3fDc2MDIyMjM2fDc4MjQ1Mg==&id=8434642>When 
>Anything Can Be A “Book,” Anything Is A Book–At Least 3.1 Million In 2010 Alone
>
>It’s time for the reporting of annual publishing 
>statistics and as usual, the most profound 
>numbers for us are the unreported ones. The 
>bigger and more technologically-fueled book 
>publishing gets, the less we actually know about 
>the universe in which we all work. It all comes 
>back to the metadata mess, in which many newer 
>players do not use standard identifiers at all 
>for their books, and even traditional players 
>have not agreed on a single practice.
>
>The “known universe” clearly continues to 
>expand, and we infer that the darker “unknown 
>universe” is doing the same. Today, Bowker’s 
>Books In Print reports their preliminary 
>estimates of print books published in 2010. The 
>big number is the continuing explosion of 
>public-domain reprints and self-published works 
>that exist primarily as files promoted on the 
>web in case someone wants to pay to print one. 
>These “nontraditional” books published with 
>ISBNs last year grew to 2.776 million works, 
>well up from 1.033 million such titles in 2009.
>
>Though we’ve been told that traditional 
>publishers are cutting their lists, the 
>statistics show continuing growth there as well. 
>Bowker projects 316,480 new traditional titles 
>in 2010, up from 302,410 in 2009. Note that the 
>final 2009 numbers are substantially revised, 
>upward. This time last year, Bowker estimated 
>271,851 traditional books for 2009, so the 
>“final” number was over 11 percent higher than 
>the preliminary tally. Bowker says they see the 
>“significant change
as an anomaly
because of the 
>significant number of print on demand titles 
>from traditional publishers after last year’s 
>initial release.” Similarly, the preliminary 
>2009 estimate for non-traditional books was roughly 750,000.
>
>Fiction remained the largest category in 
>traditional publishing, with 47,392 titles, 
>followed by juveniles (at 32,638), 
>sociology/economics, science, and religion. 
>Major increases were shown in computers (51%), 
>science (37%) and technology (35%).
>
>Self-publishers monitored by Bowker are growing 
>at over 10 percent. CreateSpace led the field, 
>with about 34,000 titles. Lulu was in second 
>place with 11,000, followed by Xlibris at 10,700 
>and AuthorHouse with 8,500 (or about 64,000 
>titles as group). Last year the top 5 
>self-publishers, also including PublishAmerica, 
>accounted for 57,500 titles. Remember that 
>self-publishers who do not use ISBNs for all 
>(Blurb) or some (Lulu) of their books are not included in these totals.
>
>Also still not included at all are ebooks, 
>whether self- or independently-published, or 
>digital-only works from traditional publishers. 
>We know that means the published counts are 
>“missing” works in the six-figures, but we don’t 
>know anything more than that. As an example, 
>Barnes & Noble’s PubIt launched in October 2010 
>and already has 90,000 titles or more. Bowker’s 
>Kelly Gallagher says that they are “working on 
>addressing the ‘e’ book quantification challenge 
>and hope to share perspectives in the coming 
>year.” He notes that “even while making 
>tremendous strides to collect ‘e’ data, Bowker 
>faces this challenge due to: 1. Lack of 
>consistent application of identification 
>standards; 2. Proprietary numbering schemes 
>[such as Amazon's ASIN]; and 3. Deliberation on 
>other metadata aspects not previously considered 
>for print–such as how to determine the pub date 
>for an e-book.” 
><http://click.publisherslunchdaily.com/cp/redirect.php?u=NTAwNnwzNDQ4OXxqd2hpdEBqYW53aGl0YWtlci5jb218NTU0MDI3fDc2MDIyMjM2fDc4MjQ1Mg==&id=8434643>Release 
>


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the 
world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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