There seems to have been a bevy of articles lately about the Bible publishing business. Yet another has appeared, this time from the New Yorker: "The Good Book Business: Why Publishers Love the Bible" by Daniel Radosh.

There's not a whole lot that's new here if you keep up with these things. Some folks--publishers and readers alike--still seem surprised at how well the Bible sells:

The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars.

In some ways, this should not be surprising. According to the Barna Group, an evangelical polling firm, forty-seven per cent of Americans read the Bible every week. But other research has found that ninety-one per cent of American households own at least one Bible—the average household owns four—which means that Bible publishers manage to sell twenty-five million copies a year of a book that almost everybody already has.

The article primarily focuses on all the many niche Bibles that are out there for everyone from skaters to surfers and describes the history of modern Bible publishers. I'm not opposed to targeting the Word of God toward niche markets, but I hope that carriers of these specialty Bibles eventually get around to reading the Scriptures themselves. I realize that I'm not the market for these Bibles, since overall I prefer a plain text (with wide-margins, of course), and I usually keep a study Bible close by for quick reference before I hit the commentaries and other reference books. I also wonder sometimes if such specialty Bibles don't over-individualized readers or specific groups of readers. To me what is definitely over the line is the “The Personal Promise Bible [which] is custom-printed with the owner’s name ('The LORD is Daniel’s shepherd'), home town ('Woe to you, Brooklyn! Woe to you, New York!'), and spouse’s name ('Gina’s two breasts are like two fawns')." Yikes.

But all the niche marketing reminds me of an encounter a decade or so ago when I was working at the Baptist Book Store (now Lifeway) on the SBTS campus (forgive me if you've heard this because I'm pretty sure I've related it on this blog before). One of the Old Testament professors walked up to the counter in his usual crotchety manner. "What in blazes are those?" he asked.

Okay, he probably didn't say "blazes," but that's how I like to remember him. He was the kind of grumpy old prof you expect to say something like that. I looked behind me and saw a display with multiple copies of the Experiencing God Study Bible which our company had required us to place prominently behind the counter even though our customers were probably not target audience for such.

I explained to him that this was essentially a copy of the NKJV with notes from Henry Blackaby, the writer of Experiencing God, interspersed throughout the text. The OT professor wrinkled his brow, harumphed, and declared, "Well, I remember a day when the Bible itself was all you needed to get by." I smiled politely and didn't say what I wanted to--namely that "If that were true, you and I would both be out of a job." I also didn't point out the irony in the fact that he required the Oxford Annotated Study Bible in his OT Intro classes.

Anyway, back to the article... I hadn't heard about this before, but evidently in response to the huge success of Zondervan's The Bible Experience audio Bible, "Thomas Nelson is already working on a rival version, in which Jim Caviezel reprises the title role in “The Passion of the Christ.” Jason Alexander, of “Seinfeld,” is signed on for an unspecified Old Testament character."

Interesting. No name was mentioned for this new project. Therefore I propose The George Costanza/Passion Experience.

Tags: NKJV