Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at [email protected]. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
In 1885, 4,500 book titles were published in America.
By 1989, 45,000 new book titles were published.
In 2009, 1,335,000 new titles were released in the U.S.
· There are over 7,000,000 books available for sale.
· 52% of all books are not sold in bookstores – they are sold by mail order, online, through book clubs, or in warehouse stores.
· A decade ago, in 2004, 1.2 million book title sales were tracked by Nielsen Bookscan and only 25,000 titles sold more than 5,000 copies each. Some 950,000 sold fewer than 99 copies.
· First-time authors write 75% of the new nonfiction books published each year.
· 85% of all new titles published each year are non-fiction and 15% are fiction.
· Chicken Soup for the Soul, with sales of over 8,000,000 copies, spawned a series that includes more than four score best-selling books. It was rejected by 144 publishers.
· Ray Bradbury received 700 rejections before any of his work was published.
· A Time to Kill by John Grisham was rejected 45 times. Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie, was declined 30 times. Even J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was rejected – 14 times! Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was declined by 38 publishers.
· Sales of romance books top any other genre by far, within fiction. Women make up 90.5% of the romance readership. In 2014, romance books brought in $1.438 billion in revenue. Mystery brought in half of that. Classic literary fiction revenue is a third of what romance generates.
· In Book Publishing 101, Martha Marda notes this about book publishing’s history:
· “Until around 1439, when Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press using a winepress and movable type, books were copied by hand and were owned by churches, monasteries, and wealthy families. Most books were copied on animal vellum (usually treated calfskin). The concept of paper, a much more suitable material for mechanical printing presses, was imported from Asia, where books were printed using hand-carved wood blocks. By 1500, 1,000 printing shops in Europe had produced 35,000 titles and 20 million copies. The Frankfurt Book Fair, today the world’s largest trade fair for books, originated during the 1400s as a medieval fair where booksellers and printers could display their wares and buy the supplies they needed for their print shops.”