Just how many new books are being published, anyway?

November is the month when a lot of amateur writers make a push to start and finish writing a novel. While I applaud the effort, I also question whether we need that many new manuscripts.

Again, definitive figures turn out to be elusive. Still, focusing on the United States, here’s what turns up:

1. A conventional view places the output at 600,000 to 1 million new titles every year. That’s between 1,700 to 2,700 published every day – or more than 100 books an hour. Not all of it’s fiction, of course, not by a long shot. But if you’re writing, the competition is stiff.
2. Another view puts the number at 4 million new books a year, three-quarters of them self-published. Under the radar, as it were.
3. Hard cover and paperbacks account for just half of the books being sold in America. Ebooks get 36 percent, and audiobooks and “other” formats take up the rest. (When compared by the amount spent on each category, printed-on-paper editions skewer the picture.)
4. A third of all ebooks are self-published.
5. Two-thirds of the top-rated, self-published books are written by women, compared to just 39 percent of conventionally released books.
6. The number of self-published books has increased by 264 percent in a five-year span.
7. Of authors who released their first book in the last ten years, 1,200 traditionally published authors have earned $25,000 or more a year, compared to 1,600 self-published authors. That’s an eye-opener.
8. The global publishing market is expected to grow at 1 percent a year, while the self-publishing market is expected to grow at 17 percent. I’m unclear if the figures are based on sales earnings or on the number of copies sold. Still, it’s a trend worth watching.
9. Not every non-fiction book is read cover-to-cover.
10. Fiction is for escape.