M. Paul Otlet, the Secretary of the Brussels International Bibliographic Institute, places the total annual book production of the entire globe at approximately 150,000 volumes per annum.
Senor Eduardo Ravarro Salvador, a distinguished Spanish author, has compiled with greatest care statistics of a similar nature which are printed in the Madrid Heraldo, and his estimate quite closely confirms the other, aggregating approximately a little over 160,000 for the year 1911.
A dozen years ago, when book production was smaller than today, Mr. Percy L. Parker, in the New York Independent, gave the total number of books issued by thirteen countries in an average year as 77,250, which would be not as large as the estimates of either Senor Salvador or M. Otlet, but is nevertheless of use in confirming them, and increasing the probability that a mean of the three estimates may be quite substantially near to the truth.
Mr. Joseph B. Gilder, in an article in the New York Times, for January 25, 1914, states that our Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Mr. Page of the publishing firm of Doubleday, Page and Co., said not long before departing for his post, that American men spend less for books than for neckties, and American women less than for the buttons on their frocks. The same article quotes the Boston bookseller, Mr. W. B. Clarke, who is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Booksellers Association, as saying that the per capita consumption of books is less than of any other commodity.
Following Mr. Gilder's article, and using the statistics of the Statesman's Year Book, as to population, and of the World Almanac, as to book production in 1910, we find that in Switzerland there was one book printed for every 872 population; in Japan one to 1,224; in Germany one to 2,075; in France one to 3,809; in Great Britain one to 3,808; and in the United States one to 7,295. In 1911 our showing was not quite so good.
According to statistics prepared for the World Almanac, and to sources indicated above, and others, the number of books issued annually in the United States varies in late years but little either way from 10,000. It would appear that the United States issued roughly only about six per cent of the total, and if we deduct new editions and translations, only about four per cent of the total.
Further, by an examination of these various and varying statistics from the best experts, it is evident that little Switzerland, which is scarcely one-eighteenth the size of our State of Texas, and whose population is less than one-twenty-fifth that of the United States, publishes more than three-quarters as many books per annum as we do; in other words, ten times as many books per million inhabitants per annum are published by Switzerland as by the United States. In fact she leads the world in this particular.
By similar analysis, we find that the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, which in book production are next in rank to Switzerland, have an output of about six times ours. Germany, France, the British Empire, Holland, Italy, Austria greatly surpass us, all running, per million of population, from three and one-half to five times our output. Roumania, with one-thirteenth our population, publishes one-fourth as many books; Japan with slightly more than half our population, publishes four times as many; in other words, eight times as many per million of population; but a large number of these are pamphlets: so instead of publishing in percentages eight times as many, she really issues an average of between three and four times as many, which makes our showing even then bad enough.
In the density of our ignorance, we sometimes think and speak of Russia as a benighted country, forgetting that in her middle and upper circles, she is vibrant with intellectual and artistic energy. In book production, even though the showing on her side is distorted by the countless millions of her ignorant peasant class, who number about 79 per cent of her population, we find that she produces two and three-quarters times as many books as we do, and has a population only one and two-thirds times larger. In other words, she materially exceeds us in book production.
This leaves us to seek in Spain the only one of the civilized nations of the entire globe that publishes so few books per million of population per annum as we do; and it is questionable whether we are able to hold the lead over even her: for an analysis of the statistics of both Otlet and Salvador places us slightly behind united Spain and Portugal, the figures for the two being given in conjunction. Beneath these there is no lower depth.