Last year, 1000 fewer books were published in the Czech Republic than the year before last

Prague - Last year, approximately a thousand fewer books were published in the Czech Republic than in the previous year, totaling 17,598. This halted the annual increase in newly published books since 1993, the year from which the National Library has been tracking this data. The Czech book market reached a record high in 2008, when 18,520 publications were released. However, beautiful literature is doing well, with 4,475 works of fiction published last year, about 300 more titles than two years ago. The number of children's books did not significantly decline, unlike textbooks and college scripts.
    Last year, 374 school textbooks were published, which is almost 200 fewer than in 2008. In fact, the number of college scripts published was 442 lower than two years ago, totaling 1,115. Of the total of 17,598 books, 15,541 were published for the very first time last year.
    As in previous years, last year saw the most translations from English (3,005, up from 2,969 in 2008). There was a significant increase in the number of translations from Slovak. While 76 titles were translated from Slovak to Czech two years ago, last year it was 225. The number of publications published in Slovak in the Czech Republic also rose last year (209, compared to 180 the year before).
    According to the Czech Booksellers and Publishers Association (SČKN), the best-selling book in the Czech Republic last year was Tomáš Sedláček's Economics of Good and Evil. The publication by the young economist even sold better than the bestsellers of Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, American author Dan Brown, and popular Czech writer Michal Viewegh. By the end of January, Sedláček's book managed to surpass the threshold of 33,000 copies sold.
    
The number of published non-periodical publications in the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2009:

Year	Number of titles
1993	8203
1994	9309
1995	8994
1996	10,244
1997	11,519
1998	11,738
1999	12,551
2000	11,965
2001	14,321
2002	14,278
2003	16,451
2004	15,740
2005	15,350
2006	17,019
2007	18,029
2008	18,520
2009	17,598