Enjoy almost tourist-free London, or crowded Lisbon and Athens when airports open in Europe

lisbon, portugal by celine colin
Lisbon city view by Celine Colin.

The pandemic that triggered restrictions both for international and regional travel is still dangerous in some countries, but a number of European countries have opened their borders and airports for travelers. In June 2020, WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council) and ForwardKeys tallied up … Read >

Trends in book business: small publishers win big traditional publishers in specific ebook genres

A new report on the state of the ebook, audiobook and print book markets in the US was recently delivered by the number-crunching wizard Data Guy at Digital Book World Conference 2018. The statistics – that cover almost the entire online books sales in the US – indicate that … Read >

China is the largest book market in the world: together with USA, more than half of all titles published

China has rapidly become the largest market for books in the world. Of all the 1.6 million new book titles published in 2015, 28% of them were published in China. The second largest market, the U.S., published 20% of new titles launched to the global markets in 2015.

The vast … Read >

Vast majority of Europeans read at least one book a year, publishers claim

The whole media industry, including books, is in fundamental transformation from traditional media to digital products. It is fascinating to follow how some parts of the world adopt new media products faster than other regions. Cultural reasons, traditions, legislation, and the book industry itself affect the pace of change. Many … Read >

Plenty of bookstores per capita in Asia, and plenty of libraries in Europe

World Cities Culture Forum collects culture related data from large cities across the world. The organization publishes the data annually as statistics that describe what kind of cultural services the cities have and how citizens use them. One of the published statistics compares the number of bookstores and public libraries … Read >

Readers adopted fiction ebooks quicker than non-fiction: Non-fiction ebook market has room to grow

Book market statistics provided by publishing organizations are often quoted as the only authoritative numbers that reflect what is going on in the book trade. Many industry analysts have disagreed with these “official” numbers for years saying that they only represent a portion of the market: sales of big publishers. … Read >

Top 20 tourist regions in Europe: Spain, France, Italy have the most popular destinations

Europe is the world’s number one tourist destination, but anyone who has traveled in the culturally rich continent knows how different the countries are. Which countries and which regions exactly are the most visited destinations in Europe? The European Union has vast databases of information on tourism that reveals interesting … Read >