Turkey ranks sixth globally in publishing

ISTANBUL

Turkey has ranked sixth among the countries that publish the most in the global industry, according to the country’s publishing body.

The country remained in sixth place in the world ranking with 68,554 new books published in 2019, according to International Publishers’ Association (IPA) data, the Istanbul-based Turkish Publishers’ Association has said.

The Turkish Publishers’ Association prepared the “Turkey Book Market Report 2019” in categories and included industry data.

Some 423 million books were published and put for sale in 2019, while the size of the 2019 retail book market increased by 27.09 percent to 8.85 billion Turkish Liras ($1,27 billion), according to the report.

Total book publishing increased by 3.16 percent compared to last year and reached 577 million, along with the books published by the Education Ministry.

The number of books produced per person was 6.9, according to these figures.

However, the majority of books published in Turkey are exam preparation books.

The number of exam preparation books increased by 6.22 percent compared to last year, with the publishing of 228 million revision books.

The number of exam preparation books increased by 228 million copies, 6.12 percent, compared to last year, as “educational publishing” continued to lead the sector with a share of 53.96 percent in total book publishing.

The category of cultural publications, including research-analysis, literature and children’s publishing, constituted 34.93 percent of the total production with 147 million books, a 5.33 percent increase compared to 2018.

As the publishing of literature books increased by 10.45 percent compared to the previous year, the biggest decrease was seen in religious books, with a 17 percent decline.

Imported publications had a share of 1.25 percent in total publishing, at 5.3 million books, a decrease of 10.35 percent from last year, while academic publications increased by 9.63 percent with 4.9 million.