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This partial quote from the Southern Review (first article, scroll down):
(And forgive me if this isn't new news; couldn't find it elsewhere in the forums...)
Bibliographic data provider Bowker's preliminary data for books published in the U.S. in 2008 shows that output from traditional publishers declined by about three percent, and that the number of "on demand" books grew 132 percent to exceed for the first time ever the number of traditional titles published during the year.
The significance: More people are likely now publishing books than there are people who want to read them.
Bowker released the statistics, compiled from its Books In Print® database, on May 19. Based on preliminary figures from U.S. publishers, Bowker is projecting that U.S. title output in 2008 decreased to 275,232 new titles and editions, down from the 284,370 that were published in 2007.
Despite this decline in traditional book publishing, there was another extraordinary year of growth in the reported number of "on demand" and short-run books produced in 2008. Bowker projects that 285,394 on demand books were produced last year, a 132 percent increase over the 2007 final total of 123,276 titles.
This is the second consecutive year of triple-digit growth in the on demand segment, which in 2008 was 462 percent above levels seen as recently as 2006.
The biggest declines for traditional publishers came in travel (down by 15 percent, with 4,817 new titles), fiction (down 11 percent, with 47,541 new titles) and religion (down 14 percent, at 16,847 titles).
"Our statistics for 2008 benchmark a historic development in the U.S. book publishing industry as we crossed a point last year in which on demand and short-run books exceeded the number of traditional books entering the marketplace," said Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publisher services for Bowker. "It remains to be seen how this trend will unfold in the coming years before we know if we just experienced a watershed year in the book publishing industry, fueled by the changing dynamics of the marketplace and the proliferation of sophisticated publishing technologies, or an anomaly that caused the major industry trade publishers to retrench."
(And forgive me if this isn't new news; couldn't find it elsewhere in the forums...)