U.S. publishing industry keeps the title wave coming

Like an assembly line stuck in high gear, the U.S. publishing industry is churning out ever more books each year, an embarrassment of riches for publishers, reviewers and readers alike.

R.R. Bowker, the company that maintains the authoritative Books in Print database, says the most recent figures show that in 2002, total output of new titles and editions in the United States grew by nearly 6%, to 150,000. General adult fiction exceeded 17,000, the strongest category. Juvenile titles topped 10,000, the highest total ever recorded. And there were more than 10,300 new publishers, mostly small or self-publishers.

No wonder we’re all running out of shelf space.

Depending on whether you’re a producer or a consumer, that’s either good or frustrating.

“Year after year,” says Pat Johnson, executive vice president of publishing for Alfred A. Knopf, “we gasp in horror at the numbers, knowing we have to fight for readers.”

But, Johnson says, “the industry has an amazing capacity for good books to find their way.... The cream usually rises to the top.”

Alexander Taylor, co-director of Curbstone Press in Willimantic, Conn., has a different perspective. “You can never publish too many if they’re of good quality, but for independent presses, it’s getting more and more difficult” to compete, Taylor says.

Jenny Minton Quigley, a former senior editor at Knopf, says that because of the dizzying avalanche of books, “as an individual reader, I’ve lost the capability to discover a good book for myself. There are just too many, so I rely on the media.”

But reviewers feel just as overwhelmed.

Kyle Smith, book editor at People magazine whose debut novel, “Love Monkey,” was published this month by HarperCollins, says, “To be a book review editor is to wade to work in hip boots every day.”

From a bookseller’s point of view, says Suzy Staubach, general manager of the University of Connecticut’s Co-op Bookstore, “there can’t be too many books,” though readers are relying more on “brand-name” authors.

“It would be nice to be able to carry everything and to know what every book is about. But there are too many now,” Staubach says.