These are some amazing statistics. As I heard tonight from Andy Crouch at the ECPA conference in Dallas, there is a huge shift going on in our culture. People are increasingly dissatisfied with being merely consumers. They want to be creators. I think that huge spike in the number of books published is evidence of this.

Thanks,

Mike

While the U.S. did publish nearly 300,000 new titles in 2006, there were 375,000 new titles published in English worldwide.

The June 2007 Harper’s magazine, referencing Nielsen BookScan, reported that nearly 1.5 million different titles were sold in the United States in 2006, although 78% of those titles sold fewer than 99 copies, while only 483 titles sold more than 100,000 copies.

Certainly, as you report in a separate entry, a few large publishers control a significant percentage of the U.S. publishing industry, but a 2005 report by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) revealed that there are 62,815 active publishers in the United States, and that 46,860 of these publishers had revenues below $50,000 per year.

Meanwhile new “vanity press”-style publishers such as Lulu.com suggest that any title reduction from the large publishers may have little or no impact on allowing the reading public to encounter new and diverse voices: According to a company press release “Lulu.com is the premier marketplace for new digital content on the Internet, with more than 100,000 recently published titles, and more than 2500 new titles added each week, created by people in 80 different countries.”

Lulu does not charge authors to print their books, instead charging a commission on actual sales. A senior sales executive told a Toronto book publishing conference in March 2007 that the average title sold less than two copies, but because of the enormous number of titles sold, the company was profitable.

Like most publishing industries, book publishing is undergoing enormous change, some of that change still very subtle in its impact.

Mainly because I don’t like wearing my faith on my sleeve. Jesus made a point of rebuking those who do their “acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them” (Mt. 6:1). Certainly, we have spent much time in prayer alone and together. But we have tried to follow Jesus’ admonition, “when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Mt. 6:6).

Thanks,

Mike

By all means, raise the bar. If it pushes it over my head, oh well. I don’t want to languish at the bottom of the D pile anyway. If I’m capable of jumping that bar, then I will have a better chance of building a lasting career.

Go for it.

I’m banking on the B.

You said, “Instead of taking responsibility for their own failure, they blame it on publishers whom they believe are more focused on money rather than their ‘work of creative genius.’”

Recently I was rejected by a house which is moving toward the Amish trend. I subconsiously made excuses that if they had been focusing more of their list toward my genre, I might have been accepted. The truth is, no matter how torn they said they were, my manuscript still missed the special something that would make them fight tooth and nail to publish it despite their stated direction.