The bible makes up a large portion of religious book sales and revenue. In order to better understand its place in the book market, we researched, analyzed, and collected X bible sales statistics covering everything from how many bibles are sold, how many bibles are printed, and more.
Bibles printed each year
- On average there are 100 million bibles printed each year
- It’s projected that there are more than 6 billion Bibles currently in print – 140% more than the estimated 2.5 billion copies in print as of 1975
Bibles sold per year
- The number of bibles sold on average has more than doubled in the US since 1950 with:
- 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
- 2,289 bibles sold per hour
- 38 bibles sold per minute
- 6.4 bibles sold every 10 seconds
- In addition to the bibles sold, another 115,055 bibles are given away or distributed everyday
- The US accounts for a quarter of newly printed bible sales every year
Bible sales revenue per year
- Bible sales revenue per year is approximately $430 million as of 2020
- In the world today, there are more than 80,000 different versions of the Bible that generate at least 1 sale annually.
Bible sales by publisher
- Gideon’s sold and distributed approximately 100 bibles per minute, or 59.5 million, in 2016
- The Good News version of the bible sold 18 million copies alone in 1995
- The Bible publisher Thomas Nelson sold for $473 million in 2005
- One Bible publisher, Zondervan, lists nearly 400 versions of the Bible as being in print and for sale
Bible sales by version or translation
In the US, when Bible readers were surveyed as to which version or translation of the Bible they purchased and read, the data showed:
| Bible Version | Percentage of Bible readers purchased |
| King James Version | 31% |
| New International Version | 13% |
| English Standard Version | 9% |
| New King James Version | 7% |
| Amplified | 7% |
| Christian Community | 4% |
| New American Standard | 3% |
| New Living Translation | 2% |
| Revised Standard | 2% |
| Contemporary English Version | 2% |
| New American Bible | 2% |
| All others | 9% |
| Not Sure | 8% |