Facebook: face-to-face with real Books!

By now I’m sure that all of you have heard of Facebook boss, Mark Zuckerberg’s New Year resolution to read more books. But he’s also launched an online book club and the first title on his reading list is The End of Power by Moises Naim. Needless to say, the book has rocketed into the Amazon bestseller list and sold out. Had you heard of it? No, me neither. And I won’t be taking any bets on the number of people who download it but never quite reach the end!

Apparently, after announcing his New Year resolution Zuckerberg said: “Books allow you to explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today”. Nothing like stating the obvious!

This comes on the heels of an interesting article in the Guardian about the number of books published each year – apparently the UK published more books per inhabitant than anywhere else in the word in 2013. UK publishers released 184,000 new and revised titles ( 2,875 titles per million inhabitants) according to the International Publishers Association (IPA). Australia is lower at 1,176 per million inhabitants and the US limped in at just 959. Of the titles published in the UK, 60,000 were digital but the figures don’t take into account self-published books.

So, if you’re in the process of writing a book, don’t despair. If you live in the UK you’ve still got a better chance of getting it published than anywhere else in the world.