Google: There Are Exactly 129,864,880 Books in the World

Google's data nerds have gone to work building a method to determine exactly how many unique books exist in our world. Turns out, after much figuring, that the count comes up just shy of 130 million. Click through for a thoroughly detailed explanation of how they came to that number.

When you are part of a company that is trying to digitize all the books in the world, the first question you often get is: "Just how many books are out there?"

Well, it all depends on what exactly you mean by a "book." We're not going to count what library scientists call "works," those elusive "distinct intellectual or artistic creations." It makes sense to consider all editions of "Hamlet" separately, as we would like to distinguish between -- and scan -- books containing, for example, different forewords and commentaries.

Read the full story at Google.