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Business Books Published Worldwide
After an extensive search the research team was unable to find how many business books are published worldwide each year for the past ten years, as this information is not readily available in the public domain. Below are some useful findings that were revealed by our research.
Useful Findings
Data on New Titles Published
- The list of new books publication in 2019 globally is 1,668,333 million.
- In 2010 in the United States 328,259 (new titles and editions) were published while China had 328,387 total books published.
- Data from 2015 shows that U.S. had 330,000 and China had 470,000 new publications in the year. This is excluding reprints and others.
Other details
- Bowker reports show that over one million (1,052,803) books were published in the U.S. in 2009 with more than two-thirds of these books being self-published books, reprints of public domain works, and other print-on-demand books. This is where most of the growth in recent years has taken place. These statistics contain reprints as well and every category.
- The year 2010 had more than 2.7 million “non-traditional” titles published, including "self-published books, reprints of public domain works, and other print-on-demand books." In addition, hundreds of thousands of English Language books are published each year outside the U.S.
- This is based on data from UNESCO making use of statistics from about 123 countries, and the latest available data shows that the total numbers of published book is approximately 2.2 million per year.
Difficulty of classifying data in publication
- The years the data was collected form a spread from 1991 to 2015, and there is always a question whether to count revised editions as new publications or not and this always constitute a challenge while counting published books. It should be noted that if data for new publications such as reprinted books is difficult to come by, it is an indication that data on books specific to business books will be more difficult.
Most Books are Published in USA and China
- Statistics from two years ago reveal that the world’s publishers collectively put out over 1.6 million books in publication and about half of these books came from just two countries — China and the U.S.
- China had 440,000 books published in 2013 and the U.s. had 304,912 books published.
- In 2010 there were 129,864,880 published books in the entire world.
- About 675 million print books were sold last year in the U.S. and there are relatively new book formats such as e-books and audio books whose revenue is in billions of U.S. Dollars each year. A screen shot of this data can be found here.
More findings
- The number of books being published every year is on the rise. Bowker reports that over "3,000,000 books were published in the U.S. in 2010 and the number of new print titles issued by U.S. publishers has grown from 215,777 in 2002 to 316,480 in 2010."
- In 2018, China’s retail book market had a value of 89.4 billion Yuan (US$13.2 billion), and this revenue is based on units sold at listed price and may not reflect discounted sales.
- A list of 76 Best Business Books for Entrepreneurs, Creatives and Professionals to read in 2019 can be found here.
Definition of Business Book or Book Business
- A business book can be defined as a book that provides "relationship management technique used by businesses in order to maintain a closer connection with high-value customers" and these books are majorly focused on entrepreneurship, customer care and skills development.
Research Strategy:
Business Statistics
In a move to find the number of business books that are published worldwide each year for the past 10 years your research team began by going through business statistics databases to see if we could unearth data for the number of business books published worldwide each year for the past 10 years.
We perused through Statista to see if we could get data on the number of business books published worldwide each year for the past 10 years, but we could not find any useful data in this regard. Statista had data on U.S. book industry on the volume of sales without reference to the business books published worldwide each year for the past 10 years.
News and Books Publications
We had to change our strategy to look for news and book publications that may have relevant data pertaining to our research.
BookStr gave us data on new books published in the U.S. and China to a point, without reference to revised editions and other statistics, but these did not provide an answer to business books that are published worldwide each year for the last 10 years, therefore this search was not fruitful.
We searched Mashable and found data on the total books published as of 2010 in the entire world but no data on business books published worldwide each year in the last 10 years.
Data found on Quartz hinted that China and the U.S. account for nearly half the world’s books published worldwide yearly, but this data was not detailed enough to know the total business books that are published worldwide each year for the last 10 years. The data could only be used to triangulate details for the number of new books publish each year. This search also proved futile.
Narrowing Our research To Two Countries
We narrowed our research to the U.S. and China since it is on record that they produce over 50% of the world's new publications. Our objective was to see if we could get details from the two countries and triangulate an answer.
We came across the Publishing Perspective in China but that only gave insight into Chinese sales data for books and no details as to how many business books are published in China each year. We also cross-checked all the news publications aforementioned to see if we could extract data to triangulate, so that we could use mathematical analysis to find figures for the total business books that are published worldwide each year for the last 10 years. However, the data was too limited to derive an answer.
Triangulating
After an extensive search for both global and regional data for both China and the U.S. and also making use of all the global statistics obtained from our research, we came to the conclusion that there is no way to carry out mathematical modeling in which data found could be fixed into various equations to generate data for the total business books that are published worldwide each year for the last 10 years. As such, we concluded that data was not readily available in the public domain, and this lack of data is due to poor classification of book publications globally.