With a 15 times lower economic performance than UK's, Romaniapublishes a similar number of books titles per every billion eurosof GDP. This indicator points to the fact that in Romania the samenumber of new book titles are published as in western Europe,considering the size of the economy.
Amid a gross domestic product of 133 billion euros last year,Romania saw almost 15,000 book titles published, while the UK,which had a 1,949 billion-euro GDP last year, saw 200,000 titlespublished.
If one considers the number of new book titles published lastyear against the GDP, it results that in Romania, 113 new booktitles are published per each billion euros of GDP, which issimilar to the situation on the market of the UK, thesecond-largest country in the EU in terms of GDP size. In Germany,Europe's richest country, only 38 new book titles are published perbillion of euros of GDP.
However, the difference resides in the number of copiespublished, with the value of the book market in Romania amountingto over 100 million euros, i.e. tens of times lower than the valueof Western European markets.
"The number of copies per book title published in Romania isextremely small compared with other countries, even impossible tokeep track of. Although we bring many new titles onto the market,the inefficient book distribution system prevents the books onoffer from reaching its public," said Iren Arsene, owner of theCurtea Veche publishing house, with 2 million euros in turnoverlast year.
Market data reveal that Romania saw 209,000 book titlespublished between 1990 and 2009, whilst a similar number of titleswere published in the UK in 2005 alone.
In terms of average spending on books on the Romanian market,Romanians spend less than 3-4 euros per capita, which would placeRomania at the bottom of the ranking of EU countries in terms ofmoney spent on book acquisitions, according to unofficial data onthe market.
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