11,000 new Swiss books in 2007
Bern, 04.02.2008 - Last year, Swiss publishers launched more than 11,000 new works onto the market, as revealed by the annual statistics on Swiss book production, published by the Swiss National Library.
In 2007, the Swiss National Library recorded a total of 11,410 new titles produced by Swiss publishers and itemised in the National Bibliography, "The Swiss Book". This figure represents a very slight reduction of around 4%, as compared to 2006 (11,875 titles). The apportionment by language shows a reduction of 2% in the number of new German (6,631 new publications) and Italian (361) titles, a heavy fall of 48% in Romanche titles (21), a drop of 29% (663) in multilingual titles and, finally, a drop of 10% in English titles. The only increase to report was in new French titles, which rose by 6% (2,509).
Taking all the languages combined, 1,983 new titles were in the literary field of literature (-1%), musical publications - 1,076 titles (-7%), the Arts - 1’019 titles (-9%) and law - 949 titles (-3%). Then came religion with 948 titles (+14%), languages with 467 titles (-22%), technology with 446 titles (+9%), geography with 412 titles (-15%) and, finally, history with 409 titles (-9%).
The proportion of translated works went down by 8% to 937. 410 titles were translated from English (-12%), 200 from German (-18%) and 157 from French (-1%). Books originating in 31 languages were translated into one or another of the national languages by Swiss publishers (2006: 28 languages).
Since a number of years, Swiss production of books has fluctuated between 10,000 and 12,000 titles per annum. In 2003, the Swiss National Library recorded 10,376 new titles, with 11,061 in 2004, 10,128 in 2005 and 11,875 in 2006.
Address for enquiries
Philippe Girard, Head of Acquistions
Tel : 0041(0)31 322 89 70
philippe.girard@nb.admin.ch
Publisher
Swiss National Library
http://www.nb.admin.ch
