Internet Claims Another Victim

Late last week, Bowker announced that US book publishing numbers were going to be down 18% from '04 to '05.

My first reaction upon hearing this was to think that some of the leading self-publishing firms were responsible for the hit, since they'd gotten plenty of credit for the increased numbers in '02, '03 and '04. But looking at the detailed chart provided by Bowker, it appears that there is no silver bullet to be found: we're just buying less books of all kinds.

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