News & Trends: Fast Stats

517 Number of weeks that the four books from Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series collectively have been in the top 150 of USA Today's Best-Selling Books Database. (If the weeks ran consecutively, they would span 9.9 years.) The first book in the series, "Twilight," has appeared in the top 150 for 158 weeks; "New Moon" (book two) for 168 weeks; "Eclipse" (book three) for 121 weeks; and "Breaking Dawn" for 70 weeks.

4 The number of months after the launch of new, hardcover titles in 2010 that Simon & Schuster will wait to release the titles' e-book formats. According to a company statement, "This publishing sequence will benefit the performance of all the different formats in which these titles are published, and in the long term will contribute to a healthier retail environment for the greater book-buying public."

$164.58 Billion The size the global book publishing market is projected to reach by 2015. (Currently, it is estimated at $136.1 billion.) Contributing will be North America (projected to reach $51.66 billion by 2015); Europe, Middle East and Africa ($74.73 billion); Asia-Pacific ($32 billion); and Latin America ($6.18 billion).
Source: BizAcumen Inc.'s "Book Publishing–A World Market Analysis," based on retail sales in trade, textbooks and professional books.

84% Percentage of the 19 social networking sites tracked by Google's Ad Planner tool, including Twitter and Facebook, that were shown to have more female users than male. (Bebo was the most female-dominated site, with women comprising 66 percent of its users.) Male users, however, dominate social news sites like Digg (64 percent) and Slashdot (82 percent).
Source: Google Ad Planner/Pingdom