Is Bible Really All Time Best Seller?
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.
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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/
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January 20th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I have received several comments on this post, saying that when people call The Bible the “All time Best Seller” they are only referring to the “fact” that the Bible has been printed more times than any other book - not that it is currently a best seller. I disagree in a couple of ways.
When people use the phrase “All time Best Seller” to describe the Bible, it is in contrast to the concept of a book that makes a “Best Seller” list today. The implication is that it is a better book than anything on modern best seller lists, not just that it has sold more copies in the past. (Or that the later somehow proves the former.)
To make the claim that the bible has been printed more than any other book, one need not use the modern term “Best Seller.” There is no reason to use this phrase if one is not trying to compare biblical content to that of modern books. But since today’s best sellers were not available a thousand years ago, considering historical “sales” certainly isn’t a fair basis of content comparison.
Who knows? Maybe Harry Potter would have done much better historically than the Bible, if it had been published at the same time.
Additionally, the Bible might still make best seller lists today if we combined the figures for all versions and all printings by various publishers. But even if we decide that it is fair to count all versions of a book as being the same book, the Christian Bible still does not deserve the title. All historical Jewish, Christian and Muslim Holy texts include some version of the original Jewish Torah. The bible preserves it as the “old testament” and the Quar’an contains it as the “Tawart.” So if we are counting all versions of a book printed, each Bible printed must also count as a Torah, as must each Qur’an, and (of course) each Torah.
So the original Book of Judaism has a much greater claim to the title of “All Time Best Seller” than does the Book of Christianity.
(Although, I personally think the New Testament is a much better book; superior plot line, better character arcs, and the overall theme is a lot more appealing.)
July 28th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Both “God Wants You Dead” and “Jesus - The New Testament” have been posted on the Legal Torrents website:
http://beta.legaltorrents.com/books
So you can take this experiment into the world of file sharing.
October 18th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I have to admit that I have no real way of verifying that the Bible is an “all time best seller,” but can we be realistic about this “test.” First, Jesus does not catch many peoples attention in and of itself now days. If we just turn on the TV His name will be said many times just as a cuss word. Second, I would be interested in finding out what you have to say in your God Wants You Dead, so I might buy it. I own many Bibles (Some I paid almost $100 dollars for) so just one more does not necessarily catch my attention. Not all translations hold as true to the manuscripts as others, so I don’t just go out there and buy all and any “Bible”. Third, How many people that bought your book (God Wants You Dead) have a Bible that they bought in their home or office? Just thought I would throw in another way of looking at it.