A $74.5 billion business shared among countries with less than half the world population.
Compiled by PW Librarian Gary Ink from Euromonitor and Subtext statistics, with population & literacy rates from World and Information Please Almanacs. All figures are as of 1996 (1997 figures are not published yet, except for US); all book sales figures are given in US$.
Total world population: Combined literacy rate: Total dollar sales for the top 20: Population in the top 20 countries: | 5,789,662,862 82% $74,575,000,000 2,494,000,000 (less than half) |
World's Top 20 Book Markets |
| $26,127,000,000 266,476,278 97.9% $9,773,000,000 83,536,115 98% $9,126,000,000 125,449,703 99% $4,772,000,000 58,489,975 99% $3,306,000,000 58,317,450 99% $2,981,000,000 38,853,397 97% $2,742,000,000 45,482,291 96% $2,678,000,000 162,661,214 81% $2,500,000,000 57,460,274 97% $1,867,000,000 1,210,004,956 78% $1,296,000,000 28,820,671 99% $1,243,000,000 18,260,863 100% $1,155,000,000 15,531,940 95% $1,083,000,000 10,098,264 99% $820,000,000 95,772,462 88% $786,000,000 7,124,745 99% $726,000,000 8,013,614 98% $678,000,000 148,190,419 100% $664,000,000 21,465,881 93.4% $640,000,000 34,672,997 95% |