There are 129,864,880 books in the world

[beer good]

No, really. Google has counted.

 

[sparkchaser]

Google doesn't know I landfilled about 540 earlier this year.

 

[abecedarian]

Wow. This really brings home that old saying about 'So many books, so little time' doesn't it? We ALL have our work cut out for us. Back to your books citizens!

 

[linlin]

I think it is not exact figure.

 

[beer good]

Looks pretty exact to me. Of course, not everyone agrees.

 

[Fantasy Moon]

Surely that number only accounts for the amount of bad romance novels that have been published!

 

[sparkchaser]

Surely that number only accounts for the amount of bad romance novels that have been published!

That put the image into my head of a used book shop I went to in New Castle, PA. The basement was FULL of those romance novels.

 

[abecedarian]

That put the image into my head of a used book shop I went to in New Castle, PA. The basement was FULL of those romance novels.

Almost makes one a believer in Book Burning doesn't it. Almost.:lol:
My library has a hard time getting rid of donated romance novels.

 

[Libra]

We should send someone to count them.

 

[readsalot]

Cool to know, but that number is always going to change. Many thousands are published each year.

 

[ewomack]

...and many are subsequently remaindered each year.

 

[Wolfy]

Wow, that's a lot... I wonder how long it would take to read all of them?

 

[beer good]

Why wonder? Let's say you can read 2 books per week, on average. That's 104 books a year. That's 1,248,700 years.

Considering that we've only been Homo Sapiens Sapiens for 200,000 years or so, I think it's safe to say you won't be the same person once you're finished.

 

[wolfnoma]

Dang and I only have about 570 listed on my goodreads page. Guess I don't need sleep.

 

[Rhynedahll]

If I understand the article correctly, their estimate is 139 million separate titles.

Wonder how many actualy printed books there are?

I have probably a thousand, myself.

If everyone in the world had at least one, on average, that would be 6.5 billion and growing. Or are there more books than people?