In case you're interested

Book publishing stats just came out (how many books are published per year, etc.)

Notable parts of this release:

"Based on preliminary figures from U.S. publishers, Bowker is projecting that U.S. title output in 2007 increased slightly to 276,649 new titles and editions, up from the 274,416 that were published in 2006."

[This is all books (textbooks etc.) published in a year. It does not include "on demand" self-published books.]

"There were 50,071 new fiction titles introduced in the U.S. last year, up 17% from 2006, and the number of new titles in the category in 2007 was almost twice what it was as recently as 2002." 

"Similarly, there was a 19% rise in new literature books last year to 9,796, which followed a 31% increase in new literature titles in 2006."

"Adult fiction continues to be a reliable category in the U.S. book publishing industry and one of the niches that a number of publishers have counted on through the peaks and valleys of the past several years," said Gallagher. "On the other hand, it's noteworthy that juvenile title output, which makes up more than one out of every 10 new books introduced into the U.S. market, was down again slightly last year and has now seen steady erosion in each of the last three years since its Harry Potter-influenced peak in 2004."

Okay, so if you've got a novel, it could be one of the 50,071 titles published next year.  However, I guess that includes romances and paperbacks...so I'm not sure which chunk of that number includes regular mainstream fiction.  And what does the separate "9,796 literature books" mean?  New editions of The Sound and the Fury?  Or regular (non-genre) adult fiction?  I'm not sure.  In any case, there's room for new books, but even though the numbers may seem like a lot, they're not.  Because there probably are five zillion people working on books right now...