Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
No, there is the same number. The difference now is that they don't just give up at the first rejection letter. There's no knowing how many good writers were lost to society forever because of traditional publishers and their profit driven agenda.
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While it may be impossible to determine an accurate number....the population has grown exponentially over the past 100 years. (
http://newsgarden.org/chatters/homep...llieblog/?p=26 has one chart that shows the common guess). As such, even if we decided that 10% of the population wants to write and could produce something here and now, and apply that to the historical population at any time, the numbers suggest that the current number of writers is significantly higher than it has been in the past. When we factor in changes in literacy rates, barriers to recording you thoughts (paper/writing instrument availability and cost), it is a fair assumption that more may be getting produced these days that in the past. In the US alone, now, over 275000 books are published yearly these days, and the UK is up there as well at over 200000 books yearly. While it's possible that that many books were published in the past, it's not likely.
On a numbers basis alone, it is reasonable to estimate that currently more books are produced on a yearly basis that have been in the past (if we average each 25 year period).