"Authorgeddon" refers to the hypothetical date when the number of books published in a given year will exceed the number of people who have read even one book during the same year.

History and Background

A study by print on demand company Lulu.com pinpoints 2052 as the year when Authorgeddon will arrive. The study arose from statistics published by R.R. Bowker, the company that controls ISBN distribution in the U.S., which reported that the number of books published in America in 2004 hit a record 195,000 -- a 14% increase over the previous high of nearly 175,000 recorded the year earlier. Bowker reports that the average annual rise in published titles over the last three years has been 14.6%.

This announcement follows a survey published in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts on reading , which showed that the percentage of Americans who read books has steadily declined over the last 20 years. In 2004 only 57% -- 164 million Americans -- of the U.S. population reported having read even one book that year; a drop of 4% in a decade.

The arrival of Authorgeddon in 2052 follows from an extrapolation of current trends showing that by the year 2052 148.4 million books will be published in the U.S., while just 129.4 million Americans will actually read a book. 19 million new books, in other words, will not find a single reader, presumably including their authors . <!-- Unsourced image removed: -->

While the notion of this many books published in a single year is deliberately absurd, it serves to emphasize a truth about the proliferation of information in the modern age. The human race as a whole now publishes a book every thirty seconds, according to writer Gabriel Zaid. Some observers see the flood of content as presenting a crisis in book publishing, and some, like open source entrepreneur Bob Young, see it as revolution on par with the rise of the Internet itself.

Assumptions Underlying the Calculation

The calculation of the date for Authorgeddon is true if you make several assumptions.

Every person reads exactly one book.

Every person reads a different book.

Every person reads a new book.

People have more complex reading habits than these assumptions describe. For example:

Many people read multiple books. Thus the total number of books read could be larger than the number of people reading them.

Many people read the same books (for example, bestsellers). This could make the total number of books read lower than the estimate.

Many people read books published in previous years. This could make the number of new books read lower than the estimate, but also means that a new book might be read in a year after the year in which it is published.

Also, what does it mean to "read" a book? If you were responding to a survey, you might consider only books that you sat down and read cover-to-cover. However many books are designed as reference material, and people will use the book, reading selected portions, even if they do not read the entire book. Thus, the number of books that people read at least a part of is likely to be higher than the number of books that they report reading in a survey.