Please help me find these numbers so that I can use for my business
estimate as we're going to launch a somewhat disruptive product that
deals with books.

1. How many books, and book titles are sold per year (you can answer
just the recent years) in the USA, China and the world?

2. How many books and book titles (total, all years combined back to
recorded history, maybe Library of Congress have some numbers) that
have ever printed in the USA, and in the world?  I understand that no
one would know the exact figure.  But please give me your best
estimates and explain the process that lead to such answers. The more
convincing, detailed and accurate, the better.

Thanks.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 24 Nov 2004 19:22 PST

neoportal-ga,

Your best bet for getting some perspective on this might be the "How
Much Information" reports that come out of Berkeley, where they
attempt to estimate the total amount of information stored and flowing
in the world.

Here's what they have to say about both the total numbers of books,
and the numbers of individual book titles:

==========
A. Books
1. The flow of books. 
World. We calculate that the total world flow of book copies was
approximately 4.0 billion books, extrapolating once again from U.S.
production figures [???]. This is equivalent to about 32,000 TB of
digital data. In our last study, there were 2.75 billion books sold
worldwide, which was equivalent to about 22,000 TB of digital data.
This represents growth of over 45% since 1999.

United States. About 1.62 billion books were purchased in the United
States in 2001, according to Barrie Rappaport at IPSOS-NPD. Using the
8 MB/book estimate, this is equivalent to 129,600 TB. In our last
study, there were 1.6 billion books sold worldwide, which was
equivalent to about 128,000 TB of digital data. This represents a
growth of 1.25% since 1999.

2. The stock of books. 
United States. In March 2003, 2,078,051 book titles were available and
for sale in some form. In all there were 4,123,094 book titles,
including the "out of print" books according to the Books in Print
records provided by Andrew Grabois of R.R. Bowker. These numbers
include only books made for commercial publication, not books or other
materials meant for private circulation. During our last study in
1999, Books in Print had about 1.66 million titles for sale and 3.2
million titles in all listed. This marks a 25% increase in books
available for purchase and about a 30% increase in the number of
listed books. Increasingly out of print book titles are available from
publishers through 'just in time' printing, which may account for some
of the increase. This represents a fraction of the total number of
books ever written. That there has been an increase in the number of
books in Books in Print's universe indicates that even the data on the
total number of books being retroactively catalogued is changing
constantly. If one wished to more fully address the universe of book
titles in the United States, including government publications, books
that are no longer in print, and some books that were written and
submitted for copyright but never published commercially, one could
look to the holdings of the larger national libraries and copyright
repositories. For example, the Library of Congress print media
collection includes 26 million titles (208 terabytes).

World. To estimate the international stock of books currently
available for purchase, we extrapolate from the United States
production figures. The U.S. engages in the world's largest trade in
printed products, producing about 40% of the world's printed material,
according to the U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook 2000. However, in the
past, the U.S. has not been as dominant, though production was also
significantly less. It could be speculated then that somewhere less
than 40% of worldwide stock of books exists in the U.S. - more
specifically, it could be speculated that this number is probably in
the range of 15% and 35%, more likely on the lower end.

Using the same ballpark estimates, we can also estimate the worldwide
stock of books (including those out of print). The national library
and copyright repository of the United States - the Library of
Congress - contains about 26 million books. Therefore, the world stock
of original books might be between 74 million books and 175 million
books (the lower figure if the U.S. represents 35% of world's
published books, the upper figure if the U.S. is closer to 15%)
==========

Does that get at what you need?  If not, what other specific figures
would help to fill in the blanks?

Let us know,

pafalafa-ga

---

Clarification of Question by neoportal-ga on 24 Nov 2004 20:56 PST

pafalafa-ga, your answer is helpful.

Let me frame question so that u can answer with more precision if you
could add some.

1. Because of the nature of my product, we are only interested in
hard-format books.  We are not interested in soft format digital files
or info available on the net, or music, DVDs, that could be translated
into KB,MB, GB,or TB.

What concerns us is how many books have been in print format in USA,
China, and the world combined.  You have answered USA, and the World. 
Do you have answers of China as well?  Some guidances on where I could
find data on other countries (the European Union, Japan, Korea and
Taiwan) would be appreciated.
 
2. Could you provide citations, or actual URLs of the sources that you
are referencing?

For example, in your response "In our last
study, there were 1.6 billion books sold worldwide". It's not quite
clear from where this study come.

All in all, your answer is great, makes sense, and almost complete.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 25 Nov 2004 09:38 PST

Hello neoportal-ga,

I've been looking into the data on worldwide books, and I can tell
that the Berkeley folks have done an awfully good job on their study. 
So much so, that it would be hard to improve upon or expand the
numbers they provide.


The bottom line seems to be that the US is far more information-rich
-- in terms of available publishing statistics -- than other areas of
the world.  So the best one can do is summarize the US data, and then
guesstimate what's happening elsewhere.  This how the Berkeley study
created its worldwide estimates.


So, as far as the specific items you mentioned:

>>1. Because of the nature of my product, we are only interested in
hard-format books.  We are not interested in soft format digital files
or info available on the net, or music, DVDs, that could be translated
into KB,MB, GB,or TB.<<

Understood.  The Berkeley study focuses on bytes, but bases their
calculations on the numbers of hard-copy books in existence, so their
information is highly relevant to your question.

>>What concerns us is how many books have been in print format in USA,
China, and the world combined.  You have answered USA, and the World. 
Do you have answers of China as well?  Some guidances on where I could
find data on other countries (the European Union, Japan, Korea and
Taiwan) would be appreciated.<<

Sorry...but I am not finding data for other countries/regions, and
neither did the Berkeley study.  Their worldwide figures are simple
extrapolations of US data.
 
>>2. Could you provide citations, or actual URLs of the sources that you
are referencing?<<

Of course.  That sort of information would be part of any answer I provide for you.


>>All in all, your answer is great, makes sense, and almost complete.<<

Glad to hear it.  My question to you now is...How can I best complete
this answer for you?


What I can offer is:

--More information and links to the Berkeley study, to reference the
estimates I provided earlier.

--Links to other sites that update US book publishing statistics -- in
terms of total numbers of books (not titles) published -- and also
break out these figures into major categories -- children's books, and
books for adults.  For 2004, it is expected there will be 2.25 billion
books printed in the US.



Let me know if that information would suffice as an answer to your
question, even without the detailed breakouts from other countries.


Thanks.

pafalafa-ga

---

Clarification of Question by neoportal-ga on 25 Nov 2004 11:15 PST

Ok, it suffices.  I think it's the best anyone can do.  
I understand that it's hard to get info from other countries.

Thanks again. You did a great job.

neoportal-ga,

Thanks for giving me the go-ahead on this.  I have a bit of good news
-- I did manage to find some additional data that takes us a bit
beyond the Berkeley report.

I've summarized the available information in the answer, below. 
Before rating the answer, though, please let me know if you need any
additional information.  Just post a Request for Clarification, and
I'll be happy to assist you further.

Best of luck with your "disruptive" product.  

pafalafa-ga


==========

First off, a summary of the Berkeley data from their "How Much
Information? 2003" report.  You can find the full report segement that
discussed books at:


http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/print.htm


They found the following:

For the world:

--4.0 billion books were published in 2003

--Between 74 million and 175 million individual titles exist in the world

--About 950,000 titles were published in 2003


For the US:

--1.62 billion books were purchased in the US

--2.087 million book titles are available for sale in the US

--4.12 million book titles are available in total -- current "for
sale" + "out of print" books

-- 141,901 new titles publised in 2003



==========


The worldwide figure of 950,000 for the number of titles in a year
comes from UNESCO statistics which -- although very incomplete, and a
bit dated  -- are probably your best source of country-by-country
comparisions.  The data through 1999 can be seen at:

http://www.uis.unesco.org/TEMPLATE/html/HTMLTables/culture/book.htm


and show that the largest book-publishing countries (with statistics
available) include:


Canada and Brazil, each with 20,000-25,000 new titles a year.

France, 40-50,000 per year

Germany, 71-78,000 per year

Iran 10-15,000 per year

Italy 30-34,000 

Japan, about 56,000

Poland, 12-19,000

Russia, 33-36,000

Spain, 46-59,000

Switzerland, 15-18,000

UK, 101-110,000

US, around 68,000 [much lower estimate that the Berkeley figure]


==========

The UNESCO data doesn't give figures for China, but there are some
available around the web.

This article from China.org provides some figures:


http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/38320.htm
By the end of 2001, a total of ... 6.35 billion books were published
nationwide. ...China now has over 560 publishing houses, which offer
new and established books of about 100,000 titles to the market every
year.



A similar perspective --but different numbers -- can be found in this
posting from the Chinese Embassy:






http://www.chinese-embassy.org.uk/eng/sgsm/t27145.htm
The Chinese people also enjoy broad accesses to information. In 1998
...7.24 billion books of over 130,000 titles were published.


[Note that the Chinese figures for total number of books, alone, are
larger than the total World figures provided by Berkeley.  Without
knowing where the Chinese data actually comes from, it's hard to know
how seriously to take the numbers]


==========

Lastly, this report from the Book Industry Study Group provides very
up-to-date figures for book publishing in the US:



http://www.bisg.org/publications/trends2004info.pdf
Book Industry TRENDS 2004


US book publishers printed 2.222 billion books in 2003, and projected
2.249 billion for 2004.

These figures include 536 million books sold in the "Adult Trade" and
another 535 million  in the Juvenile Trade in 2003.


==========


I hope this information fully meets your needs. But again, just let me
know if there's anything else you need.


All the best,

pafalafa-ga


search strategy -- Mostly used bookmarked sites for information and
book industry stats, but also searched on Google for [ "3..300 billion
books" ]

Already good answer but even more fantastic with most recent answer added.

Thanks so much for your kind and generous feedback -- it adds to my Thanksgiving!

All the best with your project.

paf

US, around 68,000 [much lower estimate that the Berkeley figure]

make that 68,001 since i just got my new book published, Cymbal
Technique 101 which can be found at www.cymbaltechnique101.com