KJV Sales

[bookslover]

A friend of mine told me recently that the "speaker" at her church (must not have been the regular pastor; she didn't elaborate) said that the KJV currently sells about 165,000 copies PER DAY in the United States. She doesn't recall if he cited any source to back up that number.

Incredible, if true.

I guess it kinda makes sense in that, according to CBA statistics I mention elsewhere on the PB, the KJV is currently #2 in sales in the US (after the NIV).

So, maybe the 165,000 per day figure is accurate.

 

[FenderPriest]

I'd be interested in what qualifies as a "sale". The Mormons use the KJV and give it out all the time... does their printing and giving qualify as a sale? I'm usually suspicious of statistics since there's always more information to them than what's said, and there's always a different way to interpret the data.

 

[jfschultz]

One question is sold to whom? If it is from the publisher to the distributor the number could be inflated by the number that end up in organizations that give them out as opposed to sold to the retail purchaser.

There was a back track on some electronic item recently that claimed high sales numbers that ended up just being the initial delivery into the supply chain. The actual retail sales were disappointing.

 

[JM]

This might be helpful.

http://www.cbaonline.org/nm/documents/BSLs/Bible_Translations.pdf

 

[ericfromcowtown]

Let's do the math. 165,000 copies / day = 60 million copies per year, or roughly one copy for every five people in the U.S. That doesn't make any sense.

 

[matthew11v25]

The numbers are iimpossible in my opinion. Although it is hard to know how many KJVs are out there because so many groups distribute them for free.

The link that Jason gave is helpful. I usually check the CBA list every month just out of curiosity. We are dealing with "units" here and looks like the KJV lost 2nd to the NLT for March.