The Global Publishing Industry in 2021

Authors

World Intellectual Property Organization

Date of this Version

10-2022

Document Type

Article

Citation

Imprint: Geneva, Switzerland: World Intellectual Property Organization, 2022

Version: Preliminary release October 2022

Also available at https://tind.wipo.int/record/47033

Comments

Copyright 2022, World Intellectual Property Organization. Open access material

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Abstract

Mixed forces shaped global publishing activity in 2021. The spread of different COVID-19 variants throughout the world still caused hardship and widespread social distancing. At the same time, the rollout of vaccines helped to contain the pandemic’s impact and enabled a recovery of the global economy, which grew by around 6 percent in 2021. The preliminary release of data from WIPO’s global survey of publishing activity shows that recovery extended to the publishing industry. Still, industry performance varies by country, reflecting the nature of book markets and other local economic forces.

The highest number of books published and deposited in a national repository in 2021 was recorded by Germany (413,158), followed by the United States (197,931), the United Kingdom (152,355), Japan (116,914) and the Republic of Korea (100,242). China’s 2021 data are unavailable, but in 2020 the National Library of China received 414,409 books, similar in magnitude to Germany. Data for all countries where available are presented.