About 150,000 to 190,000 titles are released each year in the United States, according to Bowker, the world's leading provider of bibliographic information. About 1.4 million titles are currently in print. The number of new titles dropped about 10% in 2005 from the record high of 195,000 in 2004, but still 172,000 titles is quite a few books.

Let's try to put this number into perspective. If the books were shelved side by side one would need two and three quarter miles of shelving. If the books were stacked one atop the other, they would reach almost nine times higher than the world's tallest building, the Taipei 101, which measures 1,671 feet. To transport one copy of each title, the vehicle would have to be capable of hauling 21 full grown elephants. Laying the books down in a straight line would require a little over 16 miles of railroad tracks.

182 cords of wood would be required to manufacture the paper to print one copy of each title. If the cords were laid side by side they would be four feet wide, four feet high, and 1,536 feet long.

If an average person read a copy of each title, it would take them 163 years to get through the entire pile. If one cup of coffee was drunk while reading each book, nearly 29,000 gallons would be consumed by the time the last book had been read.

If a copy of each title was purchased at retail, the total expenditure would be enough to send one student to Harvard for 70 years.

If each author received a $5000 advance, the total would nearly approach $1 billion. Oddly enough, if the author was paid ten cents per word the total would approach $1 billion. And most interesting of all, if one author wrote all these books, consecutively, he or she, would have had to start writing during the time of Neanderthal Man, nearly 100,000 years ago.

But not all of the 172,000 titles are meant for readers who shop in bookstores and online. The type of books not suitable for bookstore placement is about 50% of the new titles and include: medical resources, text books, school books, and corporate publications. When someone tells you bookstores aren't where the majority of books are sold, it's true but not exactly straightforward.

Over Time, the novel

Brian Hill and Dee Power's author's site

Capital Connection, The Entrepreneur's Resource for Success

Weddings on a Shoestring Budget">

Private Label Reports

58 Ways to Find Money For Your Business, an Ebook

Business Plan Basics, an Ebook

Ways to Find Money

Barnes and Noble is the largest chain with 799 stores. Annual revenues from those stores are $4.4 billion which translates into sales of almost 445 million books per year. A typical Barnes and Noble store offers 150,000 - 200,000 titles to shoppers.

Oddly enough Barnes and Noble is re-instituting the old fashioned idea that booksellers are also publishers. Its wholly owned company, Sterling Publishing, has the publishing or distribution rights to 10,000 titles and has actively published 5000. They own a chunk of IUniverse, a publish-on-demand company. The CEO of Barnes and Noble, Stephen Riggio, is the Chairman of the Board for IUniverse.

Borders Group owns about 1100 stores in the United States and has revenues of about $4 billion. It operates Borders Books and Music and Waldenbooks. The chain is the outgrowth of two independent bookstores. Walden Books was established by Lawrence Hoyt in 1962. Borders Books was established by Tom and Louis Borders in 1971. K-Mart Corporation purchased Walden Books, which in turn purchased Brentano's Books in 1984. In 1991 K-mart purchased Borders Books and formed Borders-Walden Group and renamed it Borders Group, Inc. Borders Group Inc. then went public in 1995.

BooksAMillion was founded in 1917 as a news stand and has grown to 205 stores, primarily in the Southeast. They own a book distribution company, American Wholesale Book Company. Revenues were just a bit over $.5 billion in 2005.

Books are sold in a myriad of other locations besides bookstores, such as grocery and drugstores, at the airport, and in the big box stores like the aforementioned K-Mart.