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In The Beginning There Was The Bestseller

To the Christian faithful, the Bible is the absolute, incontrovertible word of God. For centuries, the Good Book has been celebrated, revered and wielded by men and women of the cloth.

Today, the sacred text is being sold in an assortment of designer colors.

In the beginning, there was the King James Bible: 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,173 verses — usually bound in sober black leather. The King James Bible was the English language standard for more than 400 years.

Bibles used to be made and sold in limited quantities. But in recent years, more translations and versions have become available. The demand for new and different Bibles grew, and publishers looked upon the Bible market and saw that it was good.

Simply put, the Bible is pretty much the best-selling book of the year — every year.

"The Bible always sells well," Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, told Saturday Early Show anchor Tracy Smith in an interview for Sunday Morning. "If it were a traditional book, we'd call it a backlist blockbuster, because it sells year after year after year — and it's been selling for 2,000 years. So it's not necessarily the top 10 on people's top 10 lists of sales in any given year, but it is a consistent seller."

"It's the best seller of all times," Abyssinian Baptist pastor Dr. Calvin Butts said. "It has to be. It's got everything you would want in a book: sex, violence, intrigue, mystery, the supernatural — it's all here."

In the book business, consistency pays: In 2006, sales of the Bible — in all of its different versions and translations — amounted to nearly half a billion dollars worldwide. Not bad for a book that many potential customers already have.

"Well, it's amazing that people seem to have an unquenchable thirst for having more than one Bible," said Rolf Zettner, who runs the Christian book publishing house, Faith Words, "that people aren't content to have just the one Bible that they have on the coffee table or on the bookshelf. But they seem to want to have several copies of Bibles. And so I've seen statistics as high as 10 — 10 Bibles in an average household. So it does have the opportunity for a publisher such as ours to look at ways to be that second, third and fourth Bible in the home."

The notion of owning several Bibles is relatively new: For more than 400 years, the King James version was the first — and for many, the only — Bible.

"Now of course many scholars and others will laugh at me when I say this, but it just sounds more like the Bible to me when I read the King James Version," Dr. Butts said. "It's what I was raised on."

The formal language of the King James had always been a stumbling block for some readers, and in September 1966, an alternative was created with today's English version, known as "Good News for Modern Man," published by the non-profit American Bible society.

"Well, I think it was huge," Nelson said. "I think it was maybe the beginning of the democratization of Bibles — and at the beginning of the understanding that there were a lot of different ways you could publish a Bible."

Bible publishers like Wayne Hastings of the Thomas Nelson company began to explore new markets and target non-traditional customers.

"A few years ago we had an editor who was working on a Bible project for teenaged girls," Hastings said. "And she walked in the room and she threw out on the table in front of many us, a group of teenaged girl magazines. And then she threw on the table a black bonded Bible. And she said, "If you were a teenaged girl, which one would you rather read?"

The result was an invention called the Bible-zine: Actual scripture in a glossy magazine format. Bible marketers have come up with an astounding array of Bibles, different versions, translations and formats for every purpose under heaven.

"It isn't just your grandmother's black bonded leather Bible anymore," Hastings said.

There are Bibles for kids, for brides, for grooms, butterfly Bibles, duct tape Bibles, fat ones, skinny ones — in sparkling vinyl and in gold leaf or fine Corinthian leather. And for those who might like to read in their pool — or maybe try parting the waters themselves — there's a Bible that's completely waterproof.

Denzel Washington is involved in a Bible project that seems to have caught fire: He and wife Paulette are among 300 actors and musicians who recorded an audio Bible, "the Bible Experience," one of the fastest-selling Bibles of any kind in the country.

"I thought it was a good script," Washington said. "It was fun."

Even though some people are intimidated by the Bible, Washington said that's all the more reason to listen to it. He says the reason it sells so well is because, fundamentally, people want to believe in something larger than ourselves.

"I think we're born with that," he said. "I think that's natural, that's the God in us. Some people get misguided and start believing in playing cards or whatever they're going to believe in. But that thing that's gnawing at us, we all have that, so we all search. This is actually the answer people are looking for, they just don't know it. Listen to it, give it a shot, is all I'm saying."

The response has been nothing short of miraculous, according to producer Robi Reed.

"It's doing amazing, it's the fastest selling audio Bible ever. It has sold 300,000 copies in four months," Reed said. "It has far surpassed all of our expectations."

We can expect more and different versions after this. It seems that while the lesson of scripture hasn't changed, the last word on selling the Bible has yet to be written.

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