Book production in the United States for the year 1917, according to returns just completed, reached a total of 10,060 titles, a falling off of 385 from the count for 1916. The absolutely new books of the year were 8,849, as against 9,160 for the year before. American authors, who furnished 8,430 of the books of 1916, contributed but 8,107 to the lists for 1917. Imported books fell from 1,648 to 1,324 in the two-year period of comparison; American prints of foreign works rose from 367 to 629, this increase being accounted for by the natural boom in war books.

In fiction, the American output fell from 932 in 1916 to 922 for last year, and native novelists offered 632 new titles in the later twelvemonth as against 703 in the earlier.

Effects of the war can be traced in many directions in the analyses of the publication lists furnished by the Publishers' Weekly. They are shown strikingly in an increase from 1916 of 244 books devoted to military and naval science. Great Britain produced in 1917 a book total of 8,131 volumes, against 9,149 in 1916. The issue of 782 pamphlets last year suggests a widespread tendency to express the British mind in print. --New York Sun