Australia is producing as many as 40% more local books each year than previous industry surveys have indicated, according to new analysis of 2007's publishing output to be published in the September issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.

Australian data drawn from Thorpe-Bowker's Global Books in Print database indicates that 14,258 titles were published last year by a massive 3937 different publishers. This contrasts significantly with the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, which reported in 2003/4 that just 8602 titles were published by 244 publishers.
‘What this analysis shows is that the publishing of local books by Australian publishers has a much larger economic footprint than we could point to previously,' Thorpe-Bowker publisher Tim Coronel told WBN. ‘And a good part of that activity is being done by small publishers.'

The Thorpe-Bowker statistics show that publishers publishing 20 books or less in 2007 were responsible for almost 50% of all book production--about 7000 titles. By contrast, the largest 19 publishing houses, which all published at least 100 local titles each in 2007, were responsible for just 31% of all local titles produced in that year.

The analysis also looked at which publishers published the most Australian books, what subject areas were the most popular (children's fiction was number one, followed by adult fiction, history, autobiography/biography and education), the proportion of revised editions to first editions, the different formats used by publishers, and which months books were published in (October was the most popular for new books, and December the least).

http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2008/07/08838/

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker