In June, RC2 Corp. paid a reported $163 million for the children’s publishing program at Lincolnwood-based Publications International, Ltd. (PIL). What this means for the editors at PIL remains to be seen, at least by outsiders since PIL is privately owned.

That attractive sum makes me wonder, though, if children are the only ones reading these days. There are a lot of books out there, and many of them are for children: Bowker reports that one in 10 books published in the U.S. is a children’s title. But who is reading $163 million worth of children’s books?

Bowker reports that juvenile title output was down in 2007, especially with Harry Potter out of the picture. In the meantime, the title output for adult fiction and literature was up while much of adult nonfiction was down. Overall, roughly 277,000 titles were published in 2007, and Bowker expects about 411,000 titles to be published in 2008. According to the Association of American Publishers, U.S. publishers saw net sales of $25 billion in 2007, up 3.2 percent from 2006. Something seems to be working—at least far as publishers’ bottom lines are concerned—but I can’t help but wonder who is reading all these books.

Title output keeps growing while the number of readers is dwindling. AP–Ipsos has reported that 25 percent of American adults didn’t read a single book during the past year. In addition, the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that adults spend only about seven minutes reading each day (as opposed to two hours watching TV).

The irony is that while people are reading less and less, publishers are publishing more and more. In my experience, the oft-ballyhooed solution to lagging bottom lines is to publish more books. Editors are pushed harder and harder to publish more and more books: If publishing 15 books last year didn’t work, publish 20 books this year. If 20 books doesn’t work, try 25 books.

That strategy might make sense if publishers knew how to publish one best-seller after another. But they don’t. Most books are duds. In fact, the New York Times has reported that 70 percent of titles don’t just fail to make money, they lose money (May 13, 2007). If that’s true, we could expect more than 287,000 new titles to flop this year alone.

With so many publishing flops, it seems there is a disconnect between publishers and readers. As an editor, I understand this only too well. It’s not easy to predict what readers are interested in—especially when the publishing cycle takes so long. From concept to bound book takes months, which is an eternity in today’s world. A 6- or 12-month publishing cycle is a long time during which potential readers’ tastes can change dramatically.

But timing isn’t the only challenge. One of the things I believe many publishers have failed to recognize is the time readers actually spend with books. If the average American spends only seven minutes a day reading for pleasure, how long would it take to finish a book? Forever.

Let’s do some math. A quick glance at the top 10 titles of Amazon’s best 100 books of 2007 shows that books average about 387 pages. My own reading list over the past few months reveals an average of 318 pages per book (see http://www.bibliobibuli.com/p5BeenReading.html). With that, then, let’s say that books average about 352 pages. At seven minutes a day, it would take the average American about 50 days to read a single book. No wonder most people read fewer than four or five books a year: there’s just not enough time to read tome after tome.

So here’s a novel idea: Publish fewer, shorter books. Perhaps if books were shorter, people might actually have time to read more of them. Editors might actually have time to edit them. Publicists might actually have time to publicize them. Booksellers might actually have time to read them so they can hand-sell more of them.

Could this be a publishing panacea? It might well be worth a try. As readers’ tastes change, publishing must keep up. It is unlikely that Americans suddenly will find more time for reading, so it behooves those of us in the publishing world to make reading more accessible for our audience. If shorter books and fewer of them does the trick, then why not?

See:

http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html

http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/indStats_02.htm

http://www.bowker.com/index.php/press-releases/66-corporate2008/526-bowker-reports-us-book-production-flat-in-2007

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20381678/