Number two in the world
Whatever kind of book you may want, for whatever logical or emotional reason, all you have to do is go to a bookstore, and you can rapidly find something that meets your needs. Books can take us far from home, or be the best companions on inner spiritual journeys. Readers living in Taiwan should definitely feel fortunate, because on the global publishing map, Taiwan ranks number two in the world in publication of new books per capita, trailing only the UK.
Generally speaking, the more prosperous the economy and the more advanced the civilization in a given country, the more books that country will produce. France and Italy each come out with about 50,000 titles a year, Japan 60,000, and the US, with a population over 250 million, 80,000. In the UK, with a population two-plus times that of Taiwan, the number of new books published in a year is an amazing 120,000, putting that country at the top of the global list for publishing volume.
The number of new books is an indicator of the level of culture of a society, but given the size of Taiwan's market, is the publication of 40,000 new books each year a cultural miracle, or a social disaster? There are different interpretations. But how is it that even in an economic downturn, when the publishing industry is in turmoil, the number of new books is rising, not falling?
According to the International Standard Book Number Center of the National Library, in 1996, Taiwan published 38,000 new books, in 2001 the figure surpassed 40,000, and last year it reached 43,000.
"Each year 40,000 new books fill the bookstores till they burst, eat up resources, and make it impossible to tell the wheat from the chaff. Readers can't even begin to read them all, and society cannot absorb them. It's a four-way losing proposition: for the industry, readers, society, and the forests," writes Chen Ying-ching, deputy editor-in-chief of the Owl Publishing House and an advocate of the "disaster theory," on his personal epaper Reference News for the Publishing Industry.
"From this year's Taipei International Book Fair, you can see that publishers are under tremendous pressure to get rid of stock. Everyone was trying to clear out their warehouses, which somewhat distorted the meaning of the book fair," says Chang Huei-fen, editor-in-chief of the Big Tree Culture Enterprise Company, which specializes in nature books.
Compared with the past, the economy is highly developed, and there is much greater freedom of speech. Moreover, costs for publishing are very low, so there are few barriers to entry. "There definitely are too many new books. Anybody can publish a book these days," says Lynn Chen, chief editor at the China Times Publishing Company. "But an excess of books leads to mutually destructive competition, and books that do not sell right away are immediately taken off the shelves. The shelf life of some books is even shorter than a monthly magazine."
Choosing a suitable posture and location for reading enhances the pleasure of your knowledge feast.