Vera Verba

It is often said that the The Holy Bible is the “best selling book of all time” but is this the gospel truth, or just mythology? In the spirit of the TV show “MythBusters” (one of our favorites) we set up an arbitrary pseudo-scientific experiment to evaluate this claim. Half way through that experiment, it is not looking good for Jesus.

Our first task was to decide exactly what was meant by “all time best selling.” Was it just a claim that the Bible has sold more copies than any other book? Or that the Bible still sells better than any other book? And which version of the Bible? Many of the same biblical texts appear in holy books of many religions, and many different publishers print many different versions of the Christian Bible. Deciding on the exact proper definition of this claim was a very hard problem, so in true MythBusters style, we just opted for an experiment we thought would be fun.

We decided that the most fun would be to test the sale of biblical content against atheistic content. We set up an ongoing experiment involving a new translation of the Bible offered for sale by a new publisher, and a new atheist book from the same publisher. To be fair to both books, we decided to make them as similar as possible in all ways other than their content - size, shape, number of pages, price - and a marketing budget of as close to zero as we could manage.

Step 1. Create the Books

It was our assumption that “The Bible” meant the Christian Holy Text, so to remove the issue of the same texts appearing in the books of other religions, we chose to re-publish just the content that gave birth to Christianity - the New Testament. Additionally, we wanted it to be as readable as our competing book, so we chose to remove all the verse numbers and put it in an easy to read paragraph form. (The way it was originally written before in became important to add verse numbers so people could hold them up on large cardboard signs at major sporting events.)

Our title for our bible translation: Jesus - The New Testament.

To compete with Jesus, we wrote a brand new over the top atheist book that not only slams organized religion, but also takes on just about anything that anyone, anywhere, anytime, has ever thought to be sacred.

Our title for this ultimate atheist’s handbook: God Wants You Dead.

Writing one book, translating another, and formating both for printing was about a one year task, so the total time for this experiment is about 2 years. (Don’t try this at home kids, we are professionals with too much time on our hands!)

Step 2. Create the Publishing Company and Start Marketing the Books

Having finished creating the two books, we incorporated, arranged to be able to process credit card orders, and set up a website with Zen Cart shopping cart software and the WordPress blog you are reading now. We arranged a printer, secured ISBN numbers, and got our books listed for sale on Amazon.com in addition to our own website. We also included several other books of different sizes and prices that seemed worth publishing. (These might be thought of as the control group if we were actually being scientific here.)

In keeping with our almost zero dollar budget target, we kept our marketing to a minimum, just sending out emails to various people and publications we thought might be interested in religious and/or anti-religious books.

Results:

Six months into the trial, this myth is well on its way to being busted.

“God Wants You Dead” is currently outselling “Jesus - The new Testament” by a considerable margin. But perhaps it is still too early to call it. Jesus may yet have some big sales over the months to come. The Bible might just be a slow starter.

To view the current rankings for yourself, and maybe even cast your own vote by buying a book, visit our online bookstore at: http://www.veravera.com/