I just returned from the Novelists Inc conference in St. Pete, Fl. It was a wonderful experience and I hope I am able to attend every conference in the years to come. I learned so much and came home energized to follow all the wonderful suggestions I heard. I plan to blog about several aspects of the conference, but first I thought I’d relate a few interesting statistics.

Almost 130,000,000 books have been published since the dawn of publishing

Almost 300,000 books are published each year. That’s a lot of eye strain if you’re determined to read them all

780 of those books reach the NY Times best-seller list.

The odds of any one author hitting the “List” is 2 in 10,000 – so my heartiest congratualtions to those who have.

One of the most interesting statistics I learned was that 28% of all books purchased are still selected through a brick and mortar bookstore. Even though I am a fan of my Kindle I still say hooray for the traditional sellers. Bookstores are still some of my favorite places to visit.

How do you choose your books? Do you go to the bookstore? Are you happier to browse digital titles? If you go to a bookstore, where is the nearest one? Is it a chain store or a section of a big value store like Wal-Mart?

All this info is very interesting to me at this point in my career. I hope you’ll share your preferences.

Happy reading and writing.

Heather Graham, Theresa Davant, Me, Mary Stella, Kathleen Pickering, Allison Chase

Cynthia