
Iceland: Where one in 10 people will publish a book - jamesbritt
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24399599
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danso
Be warned...this is from BBC News Magazine, which IIRC, is BBC-Lite, and
sometimes publishes some fluffy but boneheaded things. Case in point, not a
single statistic or data source is cited here...it's just "One in 10
Icelanders will publish one." in one of the early paragraphs...I guess since
that's the title, that makes it a fact?

I found a 2008 Guardian story that cites this statistic and sources it to
"Recent research":

[http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/oct/03/1](http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/oct/03/1)

Doing some more Googling, I found this NPR story from Dec 2012:

[http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167537939/literary-iceland-
rev...](http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167537939/literary-iceland-revels-in-
its-annual-christmas-book-flood)

No source cited, but I assume it comes from the "Iceland Publishers
Association", who is quoted in the lead. And the statistic is different:

> _Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country in the
> world, with five titles published for every 1,000 Icelanders._

So, more like 1 in 200, according to NPR, which likely got that number from a
publishers' association, a group that has an incentive to promote such a
statistic.

~~~
eli
I read that as "One in 10" as within their lifetime and the NPR stat as per
year, but they're both pretty ambiguous.

~~~
davej
I presume they are sourcing their statistics from here:
[http://utgafuskra.is/statistics.jsp?lang=1](http://utgafuskra.is/statistics.jsp?lang=1)

About 5 per 1,000 in a given year seems roughly correct. I don't know how you
would calculate the figure for publications in a lifetime, especially since I
presume many authors write multiple books in their lifetime.

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drx
If you're curious how other countries fare in books published per capita, I
took some data and made a sortable table here:
[http://lukezapart.com/books_adjusted.html](http://lukezapart.com/books_adjusted.html)

Sources:

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year)

[2]
[http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm](http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm)

~~~
ars
This data is per year?

It does show that Iceland is an outlier, but only because they publish so few
books that every additional one really changes the numbers.

Also, can you add a graph (just of the frequency column)?

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klausjensen
Complete and utter _undocumented_ nonsense from an untrustworthy source.

~~~
talmir
Very true. I live in Iceland and, while we do publish lots of books, it is not
even close to one in ten. It is much closer to 1 in 100 maybe.

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qwerta
Technically every university graduate produces thesis, those are published and
stored in university library. So for many countries this rate is more like 5
in 10.

~~~
pavel_lishin
For Master's and Doctorate programs, sure, but not for undergraduates. What
country has half of its populace graduate from an advanced degree program?

~~~
lgieron
Poland (and probably a lot of other European countries as well).

~~~
Theodores
That's plumbing for you...

~~~
lgieron
Plumbing?

BTW. I now realised I misread the parent poster. It's not true that more than
50% Poles have an advanced degree, what I meant was that more than 50% of
people with a degree get an advanced degree.

