According to Guinness World Records as of 1995, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time with an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed.
It has been printed in just about every known language (including braille) and each year, since it was first written, it has been the world's greatest bestseller year after year. As time marches on it is continually printed in yet more languages. Collectors of rare books treasure it in every form.
At the top of the list, unsurprisingly, is the Bible. The Guinness Book of World Records estimates that more than 5 billion copies of the Bible have been printed. Other religious texts are also high on the list: the Quran with 800 million copies, the Book of Mormon with 120 million.
The Lord of the Rings series is one of the best-selling book series of all time having sold approximately 150 million books around the world.
The Bible. Easily the most read book in the world is the Bible for obvious reasons. It is estimated to have sold over 40 million copies in the last 60 years. You can even find it at most hotels.
Of the 500,000+ books that are published each year, less than 20 books sell a million copies (and that includes fiction novels!) Upon hearing that, you might think your odds are 1 in 25,000… But your odds are even lower than that.
And now, particularly thanks to TikTok, Colleen (43) has become one of the most successful authors in the world. Last year the author, who's from Texas in the US, sold more books than James Patterson and John Grisham combined and outsold The Bible by more than three million copies.
Don Quixote was published in 1605, so it is very old and sales figures are hard to track. Although the exact number of copies sold is unknown, it is thought to be over 500 million and certainly more than any other non-political or non-religious book on the list.
20 million bibles sold each year. 1.66 million bibles sold each month. 384,615 bibles sold per week. 54,945 bibles sold every day.
The earliest portion of the Bible was written over 3,500 years ago. The first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses and are commonly called the Pentateuch (literally meaning “five scrolls”).
A number of biblical canons have since evolved. Christian biblical canons range from the 73 books of the Catholic Church canon, and the 66-book canon of most Protestant denominations, to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon, among others.
The Bible contains the sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity and has long been the most available, familiar, and dependable source and arbiter of intellectual, moral, and spiritual ideals in the West.
A Buddhist holy text, the Diamond Sūtra is considered to be the oldest surviving dated printed book in the world. Found in a walled up cave in China along with other printed materials, the book is made up of Chinese characters printed on a scroll of grey printed paper, wrapped along a wooden pole.
While Shuruppak's fatherly wisdom is one of the most ancient examples of written literature, history's oldest known fictional story is probably the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” a mythic poem that first appeared as early as the third millennium B.C. The adventure-filled tale centers on a Sumerian king named Gilgamesh who is ...
Unlike Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, Buddhism has no single authoritative book; there are multiple Buddhist canons in multiple languages.
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Arabic: The Most Holy Book) is the central religious text of the Baháʼí Faith, written by Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the religion, in 1873.
They are meant to immortalize historical events, unique stories, and fantastic worlds. To ban a book is to ban creativity. The American Library Association recently released a study showing that the Bible has become the most banned book for the first time in history.
Ron Hubbard the world's most published and most translated author, having published 1,084 fiction and non-fiction works that have been translated into 71 languages.”
In the first, Elohim (the Hebrew generic word for god) creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh (i.e. the Biblical Sabbath).
Up to 1500 is good and beyond that is excellent and generally unexpected. With bigger publishers, and in certain genres, sales can be much higher, but not always as high as you might think. Once at a conference, someone told me that in some genres, if an Australian book sells 5000 copies it is considered a bestseller.
After the first year, you'll have 12 books published. To make $100k with those 12 books, you'd need to sell 348 copies of each book each month. After the second year, you'll have 24 books published. To make $100k with those 24books, you'd need to sell 174 copies of each book each month.