The Book Design Review blog picks his favorite cover designs of 2006
The current issue of the New Yorker has an article on the best selling book of the year, wait make that every year- Here is a snippet:
The Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book
There is a short post on Metroblogging San Francisco on visiting a Barnes & Nobel titled “Retail Hell”– The most telling quote:
“As a friend who recently retired after ten years as a Borders general manager told me: “It’s not bookselling any longer — it’s just retail.”
Amen!
Finally, in case you were worried that there was no money to be made in books check out the 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States released by the U.S. Census (Tables 1118, 1119 and 1120). They offer projections through 2009.
Some Projectoids:
Amount of books bought in 2009-3.22 billion (up from 3.150 projected for 06)
Total projected expenditures on books in 2009-58.8 billion!
That’s a lot of bibles. Also keep in mind, the projections do not include 1 penny of sales in the used or resale market.
Thanks to kottke.org for the lead on book design review and beSpacific for the abstract lead