I’ve heard the claim, “The Bible is always automatically excluded from the bestseller lists, otherwise it would always be No. 1” (and I assume this refers to bestselling books in the USA,) but is that really still so? Because you would think that a place like America would have hit its saturation point with the Bible by now (almost everyone who wanted to buy a Bible would/could have gotten one by now, and Bibles are books people use for many years, not something that needs regular replacement.)
Is it counting all the Kindle or app downloads of the Bible, as Bible sales too?
Are hotels a major buyer of Bibles? (since most hotels stock every room with a Gideon Bible)
But I am asking “still” - and specific to the USA. Is the Bible ***still ***selling more than any other book? It has sold 5+ billion copies worldwide over millennia, yes, but is it still going at that torrid pace in America?
Hotels don’t buy those. Gideons International are an evangelical organization, which distribute Bibles, free of charge, to hotels, as well as to hospitals, prisons, and military bases, among other places.
I believe that the Gideons have their own Bibles custom-printed, so I’m not sure if they would count under “sales” numbers.
(Also, parenthetically, hotels in the Marriott chains often have a Book of Mormon as well as a Bible, as the Marriott family are members of the LDS Church.)
Why would it be? Once most households have a copy, there’s not much need to for people to keep buying it. It’s not like it dissolves and you need a replacement copy.
Sources there seem to focus on all-time sales. “Bestseller lists”, as used by the OP, are about how many books were sold this week or this year. The OP specifically mentioned “saturation”, indicating that the question is about NEW sales.
The Bible might still be on top, especially if one would combine different versions and different languages. I don’t know.
OTOH, Google found me this thread from 18 years ago.
I can’t speak about it being the best selling book or not, but most serious Christian families that I know have many Bibles. Each person in the household has their own. Sometimes multiple versions are owned for different perspectives on wording.
And like I said, if you open/read a large book several times a week, take it to church every week, take it on trips with you, it gets worn out. You could buy a new one every few years or every decade.
Right - that’s my question - I wouldn’t imagine that many American private households are buying many new Bibles these days, unless one counts Bible-app downloads. Possible saturation.
If there are still many Bibles being sold in America, I would imagine they would be organizations, not private individuals - since U.S. churches often stock their pews/chairs with Bibles in their back compartments, etc.
Notice that that’s a list of how many copies of a book has sold over all time over the whole world, not currently in the U.S. One webpage says that Fifty Shades of Grey was the best-selling book over the period 2010-2019. I find conflicting news stories about whether it sold better than the Bible in that time period:
Cartoonist Robert Crumb’s top-selling work–and this guy has moved a LOT of product in the last 55 years–is his BOOK OF GENESIS. I wonder if his sales get lumped in with the KJV’s for the purposes of this discussion?
Hermitian is absolutely right. Although I suspect that resources like biblegateway.com have cut down on the need for people like pastors and amateur Bible scholars to keep numerous different translations on hand for comparison purposes.
There are still plenty of people for whom reading traditional dead-tree books (instead of words on a screen) still holds some appeal, and I assume that applies to Bibles too; so I don’t expect apps and online resources to have completely done away with the marker for printed Bibles.
It’s good question, and I may have some insight, as there are so many aspects to this. First the Bible is a fascinating book in many ways. It’s a book that can be read over and over for decades and always find something new in it. So it does have longevity going for it, people will wear it out and need to retire that one and replace it over time.
It’s also something that is frequently gifted, even when the recipient may not be interested in it, and/or already has a bible. This is also tied into the evangelistic and charitable natures of Christianity, so gifting may also be part of it (including to related children - who might get several versions as they mature), along with the overall number of people who are christian. New versions, and perhaps bible studies which specify a particular version, may prompt people to buy a different version or if they change churches they may decide to get their version. Also usually a person interested in biblical studies will perhaps have tried several versions before finding ‘their Bible’. That person may have another one for family heirloom purposes or one for casual reading and markup’s and hold another one as a more sacred on for special events. What other book has a person buy several copies of it for themselves?
What about sales of the Quran in the Middle East? Is it safe to guess that the Quran is the best selling book in the Middle East, year in and year out?
Do Muslims raise a fuss over Qurans being sold for too high a price, like some Christians might if a Bible were too pricey? (thinking it is shameless profit off of a religious text)
Bibles are also very often given as gifts, particularly for rites like first communion, baptism, marriage, etc. I think as I went through the (year-long) Catholic initiation period I received at least four of them, as part of a rite or as gifts from church friends and sponsors. They accumulate. It is nice to have a small one to travel with, and a study bible with lots of annotations. There are thousands of versions even just in English.
It also is one of the books which is probably least often superseded by an internet version.
(oops, didn’t see Kanicbird’s reply which this rather duplicates)