Locus Magazine is familiar to a lot of us in this forum. For those not, it's a monthly magazine published since the late '60s about happenings in the world of SF, fantasy, and horror. It includes a couple of interviews or guest articles each month, mostly by authors, occasionally by editors and publishers. It has a couple dozen review articles a month, often covering several books. And it has lots of news. The section I like most is about books sold or delivered, which helps me keep an eye out for them.
http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/
On February 1st each year it also includes an extensive overview of SF/F/H publishing in the previous year. This has lots of statistics: numbers of books published, their breakdowns by genre, new or reprint, hardback or trade paperback or mass-market paperback, by publisher, and so on. For the last few years they've grappled with ebooks, but that's a tough market to get numbers on. So far they're still struggling.
The amount of data is overwhelming. Here are a few things I discovered, and you should take them with a grain of salt. Partly because I'm imperfect, partly because Locus is. Getting information about some parts of the publishing world is hard. My guess is their numbers are maybe 10% low, but it's just a guess.
The number of SF/F/H books published each year has gone upward, from about 1000 in 1981 to 3000 in 2011. It dropped for the next three years but rebounded last year to 2625.
That's from 318 publishers, including about a hundred micropresses. The "Big 5" accounted for 1030 of those books, but there's a big middle ground of medium-sized publishers who put out several dozen books each.
Reprint numbers were about 70% the size of new book numbers. Until the mid-2000s when the new titles began to pull ahead and reprints drop. Last year there were 1820 new titles, 805 reprints.
Until around 2000 the number of SF and fantasy books were about even. Then the number of fantasy titles began to increase. Today they outnumber SF about 2 to 1.
The genre numbers (adult & YA) are
If you want to get a copy of Locus Magazine go to the following web site.
http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/Digital.html
http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/
On February 1st each year it also includes an extensive overview of SF/F/H publishing in the previous year. This has lots of statistics: numbers of books published, their breakdowns by genre, new or reprint, hardback or trade paperback or mass-market paperback, by publisher, and so on. For the last few years they've grappled with ebooks, but that's a tough market to get numbers on. So far they're still struggling.
The amount of data is overwhelming. Here are a few things I discovered, and you should take them with a grain of salt. Partly because I'm imperfect, partly because Locus is. Getting information about some parts of the publishing world is hard. My guess is their numbers are maybe 10% low, but it's just a guess.
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The number of SF/F/H books published each year has gone upward, from about 1000 in 1981 to 3000 in 2011. It dropped for the next three years but rebounded last year to 2625.
That's from 318 publishers, including about a hundred micropresses. The "Big 5" accounted for 1030 of those books, but there's a big middle ground of medium-sized publishers who put out several dozen books each.
Reprint numbers were about 70% the size of new book numbers. Until the mid-2000s when the new titles began to pull ahead and reprints drop. Last year there were 1820 new titles, 805 reprints.
Until around 2000 the number of SF and fantasy books were about even. Then the number of fantasy titles began to increase. Today they outnumber SF about 2 to 1.
The genre numbers (adult & YA) are
- 682 fantasy
- 396 SF
- 183 horror
- 111 paranormal romance
If you want to get a copy of Locus Magazine go to the following web site.
http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/Digital.html
