Quantities of Books Offered by Platform
Hopefully you know there are alternatives to Amazon
A few years ago I wrote this piece about “Mammoth Nation” wherein I mocked their paltry book selection, among other things.
A new reader and subscriber recently commented on that piece, and it got me thinking that it was time to go back and check those book title counts, a book inventory audit if you will, and see how they have changed.
I also take it for granted that most everything is available on Amazon, except when it isn’t. I have had quite a few books on my Amazon wish list “disappear” over the years due to Amazon’s penchant for deplatforming ideas they dislike.
Google’s track record is so bad on this score, that one wonders whether they should be allowed access into historical libraries.
Book banning is alive and well, and denying access and platforms is the left’s first step to the Gulag. The availability and access to information, the presence of boutique book sellers, is truly not just a matter of taste and vanity, it is also a good canary in the coal mine for when the neo-NKVD is truly on the march again. They will surely come for the dissident right booksellers first.
Worth injecting here is the pathetic state of American book-buying and owning.
A December 2024 survey said the average American adult owns between 20-30 physical books. In my house, no exaggeration here, I think there are 30 books within arm’s reach of every spot in the house.
I consider myself to have a small personal library. That number, I suspect, is about 1,500 books. I also serially abuse the Interlibrary Loan system at my local library. There’s no excuse for not owning and reading way more books than the typical American does. It ought to be a source of national shame and disgrace that so many of our people are choosing to be ignorant illiterates.
Here are the statistics broken down even further:
In any case, onto the audit.
As of 2010, Google estimated there are 129,864,880 books out there in the world.
Here’s the basic title count by platform, in descending order, using their own self-reported numbers as to their title counts:
Alibris.com - 60,000,000 books
Anna’s Archive - 51,064,327 books
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) - 50,000,000
Jeff Bezos’s “Amazon.com” - 44,000,000 books
Z-Lib - 22,525,200 books
Better World Books - 20,000,000 books
ThriftBooks - 19,000,000 books
IndieBound - 10,000,000 books
Google Books - 10,000,000 books
Apple Books - 8,000,000 books
Kobo - 6,000,000 books
Internet Archive - 5,800,000 books
Google Play - 5,000,000 books
AbeBooks - 3,500,000 books
Scribd - 1,500,000 books
Barnes and Noble - 1,000,000 books
Smashwords - 731,100 books
Unz.com - 1,788 books
Politically Incorrect Bookstore.com - 257 books (up from 142)
Arktos Media - 147 books
Counter-Currents - 105 books
Mike Lindell’s “MyStore” - 91 books (up from 40)
Antelope Hill Publishing - 82 books
Imperium Press - 67 books
NineBandedBooks - 65 books
Mammoth Nation - 6 books (down from 23)
BannedAmazonBooks.com is defunct and no longer offers their 73 titles
A friend and subscriber relates that 50 years ago it was a challenge just to find the names of dissident titles. You were excited to find a book list that you could copy, so that you could find hidden knowledge.
It appears that we are slowly reverting back to that dynamic, and perhaps the future will hold increasing ease at which we can be served up meaningless drivel in the form of books, movies, and more, but none of it will have any substance or resonance in the actual needs and desires of the public.
