Bowker has finally started to widen it’s definition of "books" when measuring the size of the publishing market – by doing so, we now see almost 300,000 new books in 2005 rather than the previously talked about 175,000 as published recently on Publisher’s Weekly
Some interesting categories seeing growth…
1. Business jumped to more than 8,000 titles with growth of 12%
2. History demonstrated high growth of almost 17% – no doubt a reflection of the aging population along with major global conflicts which typically drive some to understand the history.
3. Philosophy and Psychology – growth of 18% to more than 12,000 titles – one can only assume this includes the category of self-help and personal development which are not officially included in the study.
Other healthy segments include travel and personal finance.
Perhaps most notable though is the staggering increases in other forms of publishing, self-publishing, ebooks, courses and other information delivery mechanisms. While these are not measured, looking at leading ebook directories and having first-hand involvement in that market, you would have to believe there are many times more titles available under self-publishing and self-marketed schemes.
All in all, a very healthy outlook for those of us who continue to research and bundle information for a living.
Jeff
