News
Thursday - 7 March 2013
No. 42/2013
Book publishing 1999-2010
In the year 2010, 1,506 book titles were published (including booklets of 5–48 pages). This equals 4.7 books per 1,000 inhabitants. The number of books published has declined somewhat since 2008, or by 203 titles, equaling 5.4 books per 1,000 capita (see Figures 1 and 2).
Most books published are works written by Icelandic authors or written in Icelandic. In 2010, seven books of every ten books published were written in Icelandic. The share of translation has though gradually increased in recent years. Translations were 27 per cent of all books published in 2010. Six out of every ten translations are translations from English.
In 2010, 70 per cent of titles published were generalities, some 21 per cent were books for children and youth, and nine per cent were textbooks (see Figure 3).
Statistics Iceland publishes annually information about published books. The figures are derived from the Icelandic National Bibliography which is compiled by the National Library and University Library of Iceland . The inventory is based on information contained in the central Icelandic library system, Gegnir. The bibliography is dynamic in the sense that a revised edition appears regularly. Figures presented here date from 27 February this year.
The bibliography records only works published from 1999 and onwards. Information about published books from earlier years is available from Statistics Iceland’s Web site, covering the period 1965–2000. The figures are derived from the previous version of the Icelandic National Bibliography. Figures from earlier years are not totally comparable to the present data, ranging from 1999–2010.