China publishes the most books

Did you know that China publishes more books per year than the US? Or that it's in India that people devote the most time to reading books?

Some interesting but rather bald figures from Goodreader.com show that the US with 304,914 books published a year comes second to China's 440,000, the world's highest number. Russia is third with 120,000, followed by the UK, but in 2014 UK publishers released more books per inhabitant than anywhere else in the world, with more than 20 new titles every hour coming out over the course of the year.

It's easy to say that these figures are not important, but actually for authors it is vital to be publishing their books in a country where there is an active publishing industry and readers and book-buyers to support it.

The number of books being published is one thing, but according to World Culture Score Index, India is the strongest market in terms of people devoting the time to reading books. The average person spends 10 hours a week reading, followed by Thailand with 9 hours and China ith 8 hours. It's notable that this does not equate with income to buy books, as all these countries have low per capita income. In the US an average of only 05.42 hours is spent reading, whilst the UK is even worse with only 05.18.