Bowker reports Traditional Print Book Production Dipped Slightly in 2013, as:
Fiction titles (again, remember: these include new editions of previously released titles) increased from 49,853 to 50,498 (still below the 2007 high of 53,590).
What's really striking, however, is that:
Production of print books by traditional publishers slowed in the United States in 2013, declining from 309,957 titles in 2012 to a projected 304,912 titles in 2013(Recall the usual caveats: 'titles' doesn't mean new titles -- any new edition counts, including the many paperback editions of previously-published-as-hardcover books -- and that many of these titles are not 'books' of the sort that it would ever occur to you to read, and include everything from cookbooks to dictionaries, etc. etc.)
Fiction titles (again, remember: these include new editions of previously released titles) increased from 49,853 to 50,498 (still below the 2007 high of 53,590).
What's really striking, however, is that:
The non-traditional publishing sector had a far more significant decline over 2012. Its print output for 2013 was projected at 1,108,183 titles, a decrease of 46 percent from its production of 2,042,840 titles in 2012As they note, most of this is: "comprised primarily of reprint houses specializing in public domain works and by presses catering to self-publishers and "micro-niche" publications". I suspect the reprinters found that it was hardly worth the effort of registering these public domain works -- I wouldn't be surprised if a significant percentage of the 2,042,840 2012-titles failed to sell a single copy (and, since most of them are print-on-demand, never really existed beyond theoretically (since no copies were ever printed)).