Quote:
Originally Posted by poohbear_nc
One disturbing trend I've noticed (esp. in Sci Fi titles) is the publication of short stories - are these padding the numbers and being counted as "books"?
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Sure, as are self-published books if you don't want to count them as "real". On the other hand, millions of books in Amazon's physical book database are not in print; they exist only as placeholders or as venues for selling used copies. And with vanity publishing, one could easily inflate the pbook numbers as well.
I agree it's an imperfect measure, but the fact remains it's accelerating. It is unlikely that "real" books are growing steadily but the "books we shouldn't count" are accelerating at twice that rate. And then who decides what books should be counted and what books should not?