A Surprising Spurt in Self Publishing
April 19, 2010
Short honk: I read “Self-Published Titles Topped 764,000 in 2009 as Traditional Output Dipped” and was surprised by this factoid:
A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers, according to statistics released this morning by R.R. Bowker. The number of “nontraditional” titles dwarfed that of traditional books whose output slipped to 288,355 last year from 289,729 in 2008. Taken together, total book output rose 87% last year, to over 1 million books.
Quite a treasure trove of uncurated content. If I were younger, there might be some useful information tucked in these publications.
Stephen E Arnold, April 19, 2010
A freebie.
Comments
One Response to “A Surprising Spurt in Self Publishing”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
Formal wake up calls include “Research Libraries, Risk and Systemic Change”
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2010/2010-03.pdf
and “The stm report: an overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing”
http://www.stmassoc.org/images/STM_Images/thestmreport.jpg
WorldCat, based as it is on voluntary library participation is not up to the task of finding all books in all libraries. Even Google Books uses this site for “Find in a library” so the upshot is that between one that is based on voluntary participation and the other which depends on an opposite default, the right of creators to remove entries – there is plenty there but clearly a lot (what exactly?) missing. How much is missing? There are 72,000 libraries in WorldCat out of 1M (a little more than 7%). There are nearly 1.6B holdings in WorldCat out of an estimated 16B (10%) .
http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/statistics/default.htm
http://www5.oclc.org/downloads/community/librariesstackup.pdf (2004)
Bottom line: Chances are probably pretty good you can find a particular book or monograph in WorldCat but only well after publishing date so don’t expect to find “Google: The Digital Gutenberg”, although trilogy parts 1 and 2 are there This would appear to be the potential lag micro-niche published works have as compared to the jobber titles. Based on the R.R. Bowker stats, that could be a tall pile of unrecorded library records on the way to getting recorded. How do you find the needle in that haystack? By checking to see if it is in Google Scholar? Maybe. But even that takes time.
What grabs me is this: If my take is good enough then anything trendsetting – let’s call that the needle in the haystack – that is published in the current year – that is not in the so-called reputable book and journal channel – will be found on the net first whether or not it is free or not, open source or not. It may then be found in a magazine or journal, hardcopy or digital – but the title or mention will most likely be found on the net first. But maybe not in Google Scholar. And how does this impact the measurement of new research and university rankings, for instance?
Used to be when someone made the cover of Time Magazine, their time was up. Looks now, when the book, monograph or periodical finally finds its way to the research library or information center that it is already pretty late. Or is it? The stm report, mentioned above, has some interesting points to make about that. Usage continues.
Just one non-measurable is the difficulty is defining perishable content. And how many artists and writers let alone scientists and others have been appreciated only way way late in some musty dusty archive or library or private attic? For that possibility to happen, the hardcopy format is wanted. Or some new PB.