How many books are there in the world?

Answer 1

The answer to that question cannot be answered, but a rounded estimate would be well over billions. Don't rely on this answer, because the number of books in the world changes every second!
A few months ago Google published an estimate (for their Google Books) that, using algorithms to disregard duplicates, almost 130 million books have been published in all of modern history. Their definition of "book" is similar to that required for an ISBN: all new editions and translations, every obscure academic thesis, et cetera.
The real answer to this question is very hard to find as I have browsed the internet for a long time in several languages and I came up empty handed. According to chacha, there are 18 million books in the Library of Congress (US).

From this information, I'm going to make a rough estimate of the number of books that exist in the world. Users are free to modify this answer in an effort to improve the quality of the estimation:

According to wiki, we have 193 recognised Sovereign States in the world . Some nations have important history going back many centuries before the English settlers set foot in the USA. The first successful settlement was back in 1604. But the printing press really took off in the 18th century with steam powered press. Therefore I conclude that 18 million books per nation is not a bad average considering some nations have probably written up to three times more books than the USA and some a lot less.

Very simply, I suggest that there are 193*18 million books in existence today in the world:

Using the US short scale Standard Dictionary Numbers (http:/enzperiodzwikipediazperiodzorg/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers)

3.474 billion books or 3,474,000,000 books.

Chacha - (http:/wwwzperiodzchachazperiodzcom/question/howzhyphenzmanyzhyphenzbookszhyphenze...)

Wiki - Books (http:/enzperiodzwikipediazperiodzorg/wiki/Book#History_of_books)

Wiki - Sovereign States (http:/enzperiodzwikipediazperiodzorg/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states)

Wiki USA (http:/enzperiodzwikipediazperiodzorg/wiki/United_States#Native_Americans_and_European_settlers)

Previous answer:

"the answer is 1205038252038. 82504925038 of these books come from the ancient Greeks and egyptians"

Google's answer:

Google claims that there are 130million books in the world. epic fail on there part. If that is true then less than half the population of America has 1 book each. *face palm*
nobody knows because books are getting made every day.
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