This page lists the number of book titles published per country per year from various sources. According to
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
, this is an important index of
standard of living
Standard of living is the level of income, comforts and services available, generally applied to a society or location, rather than to an individual. Standard of living is relevant because it is considered to contribute to an individual's quality ...
, education, and of a country's self-awareness.
[Wresch, William. ''Have and Have-Nots in the Information Age''. Rutgers University Press, 1996, p. 39] No standardised way to track the number of books published exists which can make it difficult to compare countries or track the industry as a whole.
One method is to track how many
International Standard Book Number
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition an ...
s (ISBNs) are registered by each country.
List of countries
In descending order of number of new titles per year, as of the latest year available, sometimes "new titles and editions"
TOTAL: approximately 2,210,000
Countries by ISBN
Many published books have an ISBN and it is a useful measure for how productive a country's publishing industry is.
However, this data is not collected for all countries. It may not represent the total number of books a country has published, as not every registered ISBN is then used and as books may have multiple ISBNs.
References
Further reading
*Wresch, William. ''Have and Have-Nots in the Information Age''.
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
Press, 1996.
External links
* Fink-Jensen, Jonathan (2015).
Book Titles per Capita'. (Excel dataset for the period from 1500 until 2010 CE, worldwide)
*IPA
"IPA Annual Report 2014" International Publishers Association, retrieved October 25, 2014
*Alison Flood
"UK publishes more books per capita than any other country, report shows"The Guardian, retrieved October 25, 2014
{{Media country lists
United Nations-related lists
Lists by country
Published Per Country Per Year