In the end, what do numbers really mean? Well, if they’re related to book publishing, then the answer is IHNFC (I have no frigging clue). The stats are in, sort of, and the numbers are a little absurd. According to one recent NYT article, there were approximately 4.1 million books published in the United States in 2025, 3.5 million self-published and 600,000 through traditional publishers.
Now, because ISBN numbers are assigned to all “books” — which could range from a full-length novel published by Penguin Random House to a dinky little 50-page collection of crossword puzzles by some yahoo with a printing press in his garage — the aforementioned 4.1 million is clearly a little inflated. Add to that the fact that individual ISBN numbers are assigned to different formats of the same work (e.g., ebook, audiobook, physical copy), and that number shrinks yet again. Still, any way you cut it, there were most likely well more than a million literary works (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, textbooks, etc.) published in the U.S. alone last year.
So, where does that leave us as readers and writers? Somewhere up a very dark, forbidding creek. As writers, it means we’ll have slightly better odds at making a living as a writer than winning the lottery. Slightly. As readers, it means we have so many options to choose from that the sheer number of books available at our online fingertips is nothing short of daunting. This has led some people to ask a question nobody could have imagined even 20 years ago: Are we actually publishing too many books now?
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Richard H. Harris 
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