2005: It was a very good year, by the books

For years now, the doom-and-gloom pundits have been warning, "the book is dead." But every year, more books are authored, printed and purchased than ever before. And we're not talking e-books, we're talking regular books printed on paper. The one new wrinkle in the past decade is that lots of folks have been buying used books online: see this summary at Cork University Press.

Sales were up an extremely healthy 9.3 percent in 2005. Sales of new books apparently haven't been hampered by the growth of online used book sales, which were also up substantially.

Online sellers of used and rare books are ringing in the new year with great expectations. At ABE.com, 19 of the 20 bestselling books in 2005 were published before 2005.

-- Steve Weber