Random Publishing Facts

I always am amazed by this business and often get questions about HOW things work. So I've accumulated a few facts that might answer questions you've had ... or not. Either way, here goes.

Publishers can be categorized as:

• Trade (a source of over half the books in English language -- what we generally think of when we think about publishers.)
  
• Textbook Remember those heavy Biology 101 books at college or the infernal social studies books in high school? This is a pretty profitable market because the books are bought not by choice but obligation available for us at the college bookstore!
  
• Scholarly or Academic: University Presses
• Reference: This shouldn't be confused with textbooks as reference books are found in bookstores across the country -- not only college bookstores. The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music for instance. Reference books cover everything from music to tools to house projects and recipes.
• Self-published: This is pretty self explanatory.
  

The SIX SISTERS of publishing refers to six conglomerates that have control of, from what I understand 80% of the market of the publishing world.

• (Germany): Bertelsmann AG owns 70 imprints including Random House, Knopf, Ballantine, Crown, Pantheon, Vintage, Bantam Dell, Broadway Doubleday, Anchor, and Villard, Del Ray, Fodor's and Fawcett that are divided into three groups
• (US): Simon & Schuster includes Pocket Books, Free Press, Scribner, Touchstone, Fireside, and Atria Books
• (France): Hachette Book Group, USA owns Little Bro, own and Company and Grand Central Publishing, which has ten imprints
• (Australia/News Corp.): HarperCollins includes Harper Paperbacks, Harper Mass Market, HarperOne, HarperBusiness, Avon, William Morrow, and Ecco (United Kingdom/Pearson): Penguin Group (USA) includes Penguin, Putnam, Viking, Berkley, Signet, Plume, Grosset, Ace, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Dutton, Penguin Press, Perigee and Portfolio
• (Germany/Holtzbrinck): Macmillan U.S. includes Henry Holt and Company, St. Martin's Press, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Between the six sisters, midsized publishing houses (that are "independent", not owned by conglomerates, like McPherson and Company and Holloway House) and small houses (university presses), there are more than 86,000 publishing companies worldwide.

Wikipedia has a massive list of publishing houses and links to each house:

RANDOM FACTS:

• Over 70% of all books published sell fewer than 500 copies.
• Only 3% of books sell over 1,000 copies
• Only 1% of books sell over 5,000 copies
• According to RR Bowker (the company that issues and maintains info about ISBN numbers) there are more than 1, 879,000 books available in the world. So, doing my weird calculations, the average person who lives to 85 and starts reading at 5 would have to read 65 books per day to read all the books available. (And yes, I'm adding to that number ... happily!)
• Most of those available books came from small publishers.

That's all for now ... Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Facts and numbers are obscure and hard to come by -- lots of discrepancies, so I took my facts from solid sources ... and cross-referenced them and all that jazz.