Industry Insider: Bible Translation Rankings Are Faulty
04/30/2007 11:28 Filed in: Faith & Reason
Last night, I posted the new May stats for Bible translation market share as reported by CBA member stores. We've had more than one discussion on This Lamp regarding these stats as not reflecting the full scope of actual Bible sales in the US. For instance, CBA rankings don't include Bibles sold on Amazon.com, chain stores like Barnes and Noble, or even copies of the Scriptures sold at Wal-Mart (which must be huge, I would think).
Well despite the fact that we don't get the full picture, the reality of the system in place for CBA stores is even worse.
This morning, I received an email from an industry insider who asked to remain anonymous, but agreed to let me summarize/paraphrase the content of the email.
According to this person--who has been tracking Bible sales for four years--ECPA/STATS figures, which are reported by the CBA, has been having problems with their Bible market share numbers for quite some time. A number of publishers, including the "market leader," have complained for a while now that the numbers simply don't add up to their own calculations--something my emailer confirmed since this person has been tracking these numbers for some time, too.
And my emailer also told me that even if the numbers were correct, the rankings would still be deceptive because two of the Bible market's bestsellers, the Nelson Million Bible Challenge [$1] and the ESV Outreach NT [50¢] are sold primarily based on price and not translation choice. Bibles such as these serve to skew the rankings based on the way the current system works. Evidently, if these two products were eliminated from the stats OR if rankings were based in pure dollar sells, the top ten list would look quite different.
This same person told me that a better system of ranking is coming soon. Stay tuned because I'll let you know more about it as soon as I'm able.
Well despite the fact that we don't get the full picture, the reality of the system in place for CBA stores is even worse.
This morning, I received an email from an industry insider who asked to remain anonymous, but agreed to let me summarize/paraphrase the content of the email.
According to this person--who has been tracking Bible sales for four years--ECPA/STATS figures, which are reported by the CBA, has been having problems with their Bible market share numbers for quite some time. A number of publishers, including the "market leader," have complained for a while now that the numbers simply don't add up to their own calculations--something my emailer confirmed since this person has been tracking these numbers for some time, too.
And my emailer also told me that even if the numbers were correct, the rankings would still be deceptive because two of the Bible market's bestsellers, the Nelson Million Bible Challenge [$1] and the ESV Outreach NT [50¢] are sold primarily based on price and not translation choice. Bibles such as these serve to skew the rankings based on the way the current system works. Evidently, if these two products were eliminated from the stats OR if rankings were based in pure dollar sells, the top ten list would look quite different.
This same person told me that a better system of ranking is coming soon. Stay tuned because I'll let you know more about it as soon as I'm able.