The publication of new books in Taiwan reached a ten year low last year. That’s according to Dr. Li Ling-yi of Academia Sinica.
Li was speaking Friday at the 2016 Taipei International Book Exhibition, where he was speaking on the current state of Taiwan’s publication industry. He said the number of new books published in Taiwan has been in decline over the last few years. The number of new titles fell below 40,000 for the first time in 2015. He said the number of local publishers also shrank by 57 in the last year.
According to his research, the government publications have seen the sharpest reductions, possibly due to shrinking budgets. Children’s literature, arts books, and books on applied science have seen minor increases. And the proportion of books translated from other languages continues to grow, accounting for 23% of new books last year.
Despite a growing trend towards mobile reading, Taiwan’s publishers are still wary about publishing e-books: there was less than 2% increase in Taiwanese e-book released from 2014-2015.