News & Trends: Fast Stats

Six Approximate number of titles HarperCollins expects to produce as video books, or v-books, which will be available for download on iPods and iPhones. The publisher released its first v-book, “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis, last month; the print version of the title was released in January. The “Google” v-book, which retails for $9.99, features a 23-minute video of Jarvis discussing the basic concepts in the book.
Source: paidContent.org, Feb. 3, 2009

5,000 Number of e-book titles Springer Science+Business Media plans to add to its collection each year. In January, the science, technology and medicine publisher reached a milestone by publishing its 30,000th e-book.

47.1% Increase in Rodale’s 2008 revenues from online book sales over the previous year. Total sales at Rodale Books increased 3.5 percent over 2007. “Eat This, Not That!” and “Flat Belly Diet!,” which sold more than 2.8 million copies last year combined, contributed to the publisher’s gains.

675 Approximate number of book reviews The Washington Post will run annually now that it has eliminated “Book World”—one of the few remaining stand-alone book sections in American newspapers—as a separate section in its Sunday edition. The coverage has been moved to the “Style” and “Outlook” sections, a change that took effect last month. Previously, the newspaper published about 900 reviews per year in its “Book World” section.
Source: The Washington Post, Jan. 29, 2009