1943 Pocket Books 1,001,000
The Culbertson Summary. 1935 Winston 983,628
The Culbertson Self-Teacher. 1935 Winston 972,079
Canasta, by Josephine Artayeta de Viel and Ralph
Michael. 1949 Farrar Straus and Cudahy 600,000
Point Count Bidding, by Charles Goren. 1949 Simon and Schuster 573,475
How to Win at Canasta, by Oswald Jacoby. 1949 Doubleday 464,655
Canasta, the Argentine Rummy Game, by Ottilie H.
Reilly. 1949 Washburn 238,985
PAMPHLETS
A very special branch of all book sales consists of pamphlets. They are
probably the least publicized and the least important to the retail
bookseller of all printed matter. Yet their volume of production and
sales is very large. The latest available statistics are those issued in
1949 by the Bureau of Census. The figures are for the year 1947. In that
year 402,290,000 pamphlets were sold with a value of $20,656,000. The
comparable figures for books were 487,216,000 sold with a value of
$435,124,000. In that year there were 9,182 new books and new editions
of books published. No complete record of individual pamphlet titles has
been kept, but it seems likely from the census figures that there are
more new pamphlets than new books produced each year. The great mass of
pamphlets issued is probably attributable to the Government Printing
Office, to State printing offices, and to universities.
A pamphlet is customarily defined as paperbound printed matter of 64
pages or less. Usually the subject is very specialized. Pamphleteering
usually means printing or writing material to be printed in support of a
cause or to denounce a wrong. This type of pamphlet publishing makes up
a very small part of twentieth century output, although it does exist.
Typical twentieth century pamphleteering is informative rather than
crusading in purpose. Among popular pamphlets of this sort are the Town
Hall Meeting and Chicago Round Table discussions on the air of current
topics, which are regularly printed and distributed. An original series
is _Public Affairs Pamphlets_ issued by the Public Affairs Committee, a
nonprofitmaking organization which, in its own words, has “revived and
modernized pamphleteering as a primary method of conveying important
knowledge to a wide and diversified audience.” In its nineteen years of
existence this organization has sold over 22 million pamphlets at 25
cents each. Its pamphlets are often co-sponsored and distributed
through other national organizations such as the American Red Cross.
Many are used in large corporations’ employee reading racks. Some are
sold on newsstands.
Public Affairs Committee’s own best sellers are _What About Girls_,
1,188,306; _Races of Mankind_, 966,997; _Blood’s Magic for All_,
747,471; _Facing the Facts About Cancer_, 683,953; _Epilepsy, The Ghost
Is Out of the Closet_, 604,800; and _Building Your Marriage_, 522,031.
The Government Printing Office is probably the leading producer of
printed matter in the United States. Established by Congress in 1895,
the year the first best seller lists were made, it presently sells about
47,000,000 items each year and distributes some 78,000,000 without
charge, principally to libraries. Profits, which have amounted to more
than $1,500,000 annually since 1950, are turned over to the Treasury
Department. All the material is authored by government departments and
agencies.
The Superintendent of Documents has supplied the titles and sales
figures of some representative best sellers issued by the Government
Printing Office, from which the following titles have been selected.
They range in price from five cents to $1.50: _Infant Care_ (Children’s
Bureau), 10,012,934; _Prenatal Care_ (Children’s Bureau), 4,959,321;
_The Child from One to Six_ (Children’s Bureau), 3,893,329; _Your
Federal Income Tax_, 1,838,516; _Your Child from Six to Twelve_
(Children’s Bureau), 1,415,432; _First Aid_ (Bureau of Mines), 771,410;
_Modern Miracle Men_ (Senate Document), 685,982; _Aircraft Powerplant
Handbook_ (C.A.A.), 562,279; _Pilots Weather Handbook_, 520,194; _What
You Should Know About Biological Warfare_ (Federal Civil Defense
publication), 480,246. Other varied subjects are _Lee Mansion_, 181,511;
_Window Curtains_, 69,722; _Pointers on Making Good Lawns_, 207,845;
_Making Cellars Dry_, 153,367; _Prospecting for Uranium_, 330,795.
POETRY AND DRAMA
Poetry is the stepchild of the best sellers. Individual books of poems
seldom appear on the annual best seller lists. In the list following,
_John Brown’s Body_, _The White Cliffs_ (second on the 1941 list), and
_I’m a Stranger Here Myself_, are among the eleven books of poetry that
have made the annual lists during sixty years. The two Pocket Books were
sold through the outlets for paperbound books, sales of which are never
reflected in the bookstore best seller lists.
The other books which have appeared on the annual best seller lists in
the course of sixty years, and for only some of which sales figures are
obtainable, are chronologically, _Poems of Alan Seeger_, 1917; _Rhymes
of a Red Cross Man_, by Robert W. Service, which headed both the 1917
and 1918 lists; _Over Here_, by Edgar Guest, 1918; _Treasury of War
Poetry_, by G. H. Clark, 1918 (67,860 sold); _In Flanders Fields_, by
John McCrae, 1919 (17,000 sold); _The Years Between_, by Rudyard
Kipling, 1919 (35,805 sold); _The Light of Faith_, by Edgar Guest, 1926
and; _Fatal Interview_, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1931 (64,450 sold).
It is obvious from these annual and overall lists that it is war poetry
which has had the popular bookstore sale.
Estimates of the total sales of all the works of modern poets put Edgar
Guest and Robert W. Service in the lead. There have been, however,
substantial bookstore sales of individual titles and collected works of
poets not previously mentioned, among them, Robert Frost, Edwin
Arlington Robinson, T. S. Eliot, and Carl Sandburg. Poetry anthologies
are also standard volumes sales-wise in the stores, such as those edited
by Louis Untermeyer and Oscar Williams.
* * * * *
The Pocket Book of Verse, ed. by M. E. Speare. 1940
Pocket Books 2,127,000
A Heap O’ Livin’, by Edgar Guest. 1916 Reilly & Lee 1,000,000
The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash. 1955 Pocket Books 930,000
John Brown’s Body, by Stephen Vincent Benét. 1929 Doubleday 612,000
The White Cliffs, by Alice Duer Miller. 1941 Coward-McCann 344,338
I’m a Stranger Here Myself, by Ogden Nash. 1938 Little, Brown 149,727
Drama
Plays in book form have a small but devoted audience. In sixty years
only three books of plays have appeared on the annual best seller lists,
none on the overall lists. The three books are _Three Plays_ by Eugène
Brieux, in 1912, _Saint Joan_ by Bernard Shaw in 1924, and _Strange
Interlude_ by Eugene O’Neill, a best seller of 1928, which sold between
100,000 and 150,000 copies. More recently, in 1950, _The Lady’s Not for
Burning_ by Christopher Fry has appeared on bookstore lists, although
its sales were not large enough to place it on any list of the year. New
American Library has announced that its sales, in paperbound editions,
make Tennessee Williams the leading modern playwright in terms of book
sales. About 750,000 copies of his plays have been sold in the 25-cent
editions. A recent development in the selling of plays in book form is
the Fireside Theatre. This is a book club started in 1949, which selects
plays in book form for its membership. In the past few years its average
circulation of individual plays has been 11,000 copies. Most popular of
its selections have been _Teahouse of the August Moon_ by John Patrick,
_Bell, Book and Candle_ by John Van Druten, _Wonderful Town_ by Jerome
Chodorov and Joseph Fields, and _The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial_ by
Herman Wouk. All through this book are a great many books from which
plays and motion pictures have been made.
REFERENCE
Reference books, strictly speaking, are the dictionaries, encyclopedias,
atlases which comprise the first list in this section. They are chiefly
concerned with words and language usage or are compendia of facts.
There are almost as many editions of dictionaries as there are of the
Bible. In many cases it is impossible to collect sales statistics for
specific volumes. Unfortunately this situation results in some notable
omissions from this list. The G. & C. Merriam Company, one of the oldest
dictionary publishers, established in 1831, was the first publisher of
the Webster dictionary after Noah Webster himself. This first
Merriam-Webster dictionary was issued in 1847, and has gone through many
revisions. The principal twentieth-century editions are the _Webster’s
New International Dictionary_ and _Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary_. The
publisher will not release sales figures, but it is evident that they
run into many millions. The only figures that have been available are
scanty, but they give an inkling of the rest. This is the four and
one-half million copy sale of _Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary_
between 1936 and 1949 when the sixth edition was issued.
Other large publishers of dictionaries have given some general figures
about their sales. The World Publishing Company, with eight separate
dictionaries, has averaged a total of about 1,800,000 copies a year for
the past five years. All the Funk & Wagnalls dictionaries have sold well
over the half-million mark.
One of the best-known American reference works is _Robert’s Rules of
Order_. First published in 1876, it has sold close to a million and
one-half copies. Another important reference work originally published
in the nineteenth century is Bartlett’s _Familiar Quotations_. In the
years 1937-1955 during which it has been a Little, Brown & Company
publication, that firm has sold 807,632 copies.
* * * * *
Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary. 1947 Pocket Books 6,000,000
The Pocket Dictionary, by W. J. Pelo. 1941 Pocket Books 2,075,000
The Thorndike Century Beginning Dictionary, by E. L.
Thorndike. 1952 Scott, Foresman 2,000,000
The Thorndike Century Junior Dictionary by E. L.
Thorndike. 1952 Scott, Foresman 2,000,000
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary, by Wilfrid Funk
and Norman Lewis. 1942 W. Funk 1,766,454
Roget’s Pocket Thesaurus. 1923 Pocket Books 1,725,000
The American Everyday Dictionary, ed. by Jess Stein.
1953 Random House 1,710,000
The English-Spanish, Spanish-English Dictionary, comp.
by Carlos Castillo and Otto F. Bond. 1948 University
of Chicago Press 1,299,711
English Through Pictures, by I. A. Richards and C. M.
Gibson. 1945 Pocket Books 1,245,000
New American Webster Dictionary. 1951 New American Library 1,239,121
Thorndike-Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary,
ed. by Clarence L. Barnhart. 1951 Doubleday 1,150,621
The New Century Dictionary of the English Language.
1927 Appleton-Century-Crofts 1,100,000
Thorndike-Barnhart Handy Pocket Dictionary, ed. by
Clarence L. Barnhart. Rev. ed. 1953 Garden City Books 1,037,750
Appleton’s English-Spanish, Spanish-English Dictionary,
by Arturo Cuyas. 1903 Appleton-Century-Crofts 800,000
Nature Atlas of America, by E. L. Jordan. 1952 Hammond 750,000
The American Vest Pocket Dictionary, ed. by Clarence L.
Barnhart. 1951 Random House 655,000
The American College Dictionary, ed. by Clarence L.
Barnhart. 1947 Random House 625,000
Winston Dictionary: College ed. 1926 Winston 529,480
Goode’s World Atlas. 1922 Rand, McNally 500,000
The Columbia Encyclopedia, ed. by William Bridgwater
and Elizabeth J. Sherwood. 1935 Columbia University Press 500,000
Anthology of Children’s Literature, by Edna Johnson and
others. 1935 Houghton Mifflin 500,000
Rainbow Dictionary, by Wendell W. Wright. 1947 World 500,000
Winston Dictionary: Encyclopedic ed. 1926 Winston 480,900
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H. W. Fowler.
1926 Oxford University Press 400,000
Technical Reference Works
Lines of demarcation in the field of technical reference works are not
well defined. In some cases it is a matter of opinion whether a
technical book is a reference work or a textbook; it may be both.
Probably the only large area of book sales not covered, for many
reasons, in the present book is that of textbooks. Soaring enrollments
in elementary and high schools and in colleges and estimates of future
school population at an even greater increase than that of the past
decade make textbooks among the books most in demand and most necessary
for the future. There are not many textbooks that have, so far, sold in
the millions. Though they are often revised they also frequently become
out of date comparatively soon after publication. One of the problems of
defining textbook sales has been expressed by a college textbook
publisher who writes, “ ... it is not possible for a publisher to know
how many copies of one of his best sellers have actually been sold.
Since 1942 we have sold about 100,000 copies of a literature
anthology--but at least five times as many sales of this title have been
made through the second-hand facilities on college campuses all over the
country.... Although not every college student sells every one of his
textbooks, the overwhelming majority sell the overwhelming majority of
the books that they buy new and as many of the second-hand volumes as
they can dispose of. For these reasons there is often little
relationship between the number of books that a college publisher
_sells_ of a given title in a given year and the total number of copies
of this same title that are sold during that year.”
Fields of textbook publishing, vary as well as their sales. For example,
a very different type from the regular elementary or college textbooks
are the publications of Berlitz Publications, Inc., known
internationally for its book and record language teaching methods.
Charles F. Berlitz calls attention to three of the basic Berlitz books,
the _Libro Español_, the _Premier Livre_ and the English _First Book_.
Since 1880 they have sold, respectively, about 4,200,000, 6,100,000, and
5,300,000 copies. One of the oldest American textbook lines, in the
elementary field, is the _McGuffey Readers_, remembered, often fondly,
by those who were school children in the late nineteenth, early
twentieth, centuries. The first _McGuffey Reader_ was published in 1836.
The sales of all have been estimated at over 122,000,000. Even older was
the “blue-black speller,” Noah Webster’s _The American Spelling Book_,
sales of which have been estimated at over 60 million.
The following list has been confined to technical reference works, some
of which may be used as textbooks, but most of which are mainly
purchased for use outside regular educational courses--by craftsmen,
technicians, amateur or would-be technicians, homeowners, and others.
Mention may be made here of the large sales of a series of year books in
a specialized technical field. The Spectator has published nearly 90
yearly editions of the _Life Index_ and _Fire Index_, giving annual
insurance statistics. In the aggregate, 3,600,000 of the _Life Index_
have been sold, and 1,900,000 of the _Fire Index_.
* * * * *
The Radio Amateur’s Handbook. 1926 American Radio
Relay League 2,000,000
Telefixit, by John P. Kenneally. 1951 Coleman Publications 1,125,000
Elements of Radio, by Abraham Marcus and Ralph E.
Horton. 1943 Prentice-Hall 1,075,000
Machinery’s Handbook. 1914 Industrial Press 1,000,000
How We Live, by Fred G. Clark and Richard S.
Rimanoczy. 1949 Van Nostrand 961,300
Motor Service’s New Automotive Encyclopedia (Dyke’s
mobile and Gasoline Engine Encyclopedia). 1921
Goodheart-Wilcox 950,000
Physics, by E. Hausmann and Edgar P. Slack. 1935 Van Nostrand 676,765
American Machinists’ Handbook, ed. by Frank Colvin
and F. A. Stanley. 1909 McGraw-Hill 500,000
How to Become a Radio Amateur. 1930 American
Radio Relay League 500,000
Measuring Intelligence (A Measurement of Intelligence),
by L. M. Terman and M. A. Merrill. 1916 Houghton Mifflin 500,000
Modern Electric and Gas Refrigeration, by A. D. Althouse
and C. H. Turnquist. 1933 Goodheart-Wilcox 400,000
The Boy Mechanic. 1913 Popular Mechanics Press 355,000
Henley’s Twentieth Century Book of Ten Thousand
Formulas, Processes and Trade Secrets. 1907 Henley 350,000
General Leathercraft, by Raymond Cherry. 1940 McKnight
& McKnight 344,000
Home Mechanics Handbook, ed. by Ray E. Haines. 1945
Van Nostrand 257,325
The A.R.R.L. Antenna Book. 1939 American Radio Relay League 250,000
An Atlas of Human Anatomy, by Franz Frohse and others.
1942 Barnes & Noble 250,000
Learning the Radiotelegraph Code. 1942 American Radio
Relay League 250,000
Practical Electricity and House Wiring, by Herbert P.
Richter. 1952 Drake 250,000
Manuals and Guides
Here is an assortment of manuals for the use of individuals in specific
fields and for students working for specific goals. Most of them are
published annually. The date of the first year’s publication is given.
At the top should be the _American Red Cross First Aid Text Book_, best
seller of World War II. Its complete sales record is not now available,
but it can be estimated at about 20,000,000. A World War I best seller
from the 1917 list is _The Plattsburg Manual_.
* * * * *
Boy Scouts Handbook. 1910 Boy Scouts of America 14,975,000
Your Income Tax, by J. K. Lasser. 1939 Simon and Schuster 12,000,000
Girl Scout Handbook. 1916 Girl Scouts of America 4,500,000
Practice for the Army Tests, by David Turner. 1942 Arco 1,152,000
The Radio Amateur’s License Manual. 1930 American
Radio Relay League 1,000,000
The Officer’s Guide. 1932 Military Service 609,000
Your Personal Income Tax Guide, by David B. Chase.
1942 Simon and Schuster 600,000
New Drill Regulations (Infantry Drill Regulations). 1932
Military Service 527,000
Company Administration and Personnel Records. 1933
Military Service 523,000
Reference Works for the Home
These books differ from the reference works listed previously in that
they are primarily intended for guidance in domestic affairs. Cook
books, which are generically in this group, are treated under their
separate heading. The bulk of the sales in the very large figure for
_The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care_ are those of the
paperbound edition, entitled _Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care_. The
_Vest Pocket Calorie Counter_ is an inexpensive little book for
practical use by people who wish to lose or to gain weight. All the
other books have appeared only in regular size, hardbound editions.
* * * * *
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, by
Benjamin Spock. 1946 Duell, Sloan & Pearce 7,500,000
Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book. 1943 Meredith 1,766,284
Vest Pocket Calorie Counter. 1935 Garden City Books 1,300,000
Etiquette, by Emily Post. 1922 Funk & Wagnalls (est.) 1,000,000
Better Homes and Gardens Handyman’s Book. 1951 Meredith 840,888
Expectant Motherhood, by Nicholson J. Eastman. 1940
Little, Brown 794,052
Better Homes and Gardens Garden Book. 1951 Meredith 779,975
The Book of Etiquette, by Lillian Eichler. 1922 Nelson
Doubleday 756,432
Modern Medical Counsellor, by Hubert Swartout and
others. 1943 Review & Herald 638,116
Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette. 1952 Doubleday 500,000
The Complete Book of Interior Decorating, by Mary
Derieux and Isabelle Stevenson. 1949 Hawthorn 500,000
The Complete Book of Mothercraft. 1952 Hawthorn 500,000
The Complete Book of Sewing, by Constance Talbot.
1949 Hawthorn 500,000
The Home Doctor (The Family Physician), by Herman
Pomeranz and Irvin S. Koll. 1951 Hawthorn 500,000
RELIGION
Any discussion of best sellers in the field of religion must start with
the Bible, which is listed in this book only among best sellers first
published in the United States before 1895. Unquestionably it is the
best seller of all time in this country, most certainly the best seller
in the mid-twentieth century. A new version of the Bible, first issued
in 1952, has outsold everything else on the best seller lists of the
’50’s. This _Revised Standard Version_ topped the year’s list in 1952,
1953, and 1954, and sold over four million copies in a little more than
three years. This, however, is only one Bible. Beginning with John
Eliot’s translation of the New Testament into the language of the
Massachusetts Indians in 1661, the Bible has been issued by very many
different publishers, in different editions and translations, and in
parts.
How to find the sales figures for all these volumes through the years?
Shall the complete Bible only be estimated or shall its various
portions, published separately, be included in its overall sale? Such
questions are academic since the exact measurement of Bible sales even
for the past sixty years is an impractical task. Its continuing
widespread sales in its variety of editions, and the sales figures that
_are_ available prove its predominance as _the_ best seller in this
country.
My own estimate of average yearly sales of the complete Bible in the
United States is in the neighborhood of seven million copies.
In 1956 there were editions of the complete Bible available from
fourteen different regular Bible publishers, including Catholic, Jewish,
Episcopal, and Protestant versions. Some of these publishers had more
than one edition of the Bible; most of them had, in addition, portions
of the Bible bound separately, commentaries, concordances, Bible
dictionaries and atlases, Bible helps and lesson books, prayer books,
hymnals and missals. Beyond these there are certain other versions of
the Bible which are produced occasionally by the trade publishers, those
who are not ordinarily considered Bible publishers. They swell the total
although the sales of their Bibles are small in comparison with sales of
the standard versions such as the _King James_. Examples of volumes of
this type are _The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature_,
which has sold 194,929 copies since 1936, _The Dartmouth Bible_, which
has sold 31,000 copies since its publication in 1950, and _The Runner’s
Bible_, which has had a sale of 158,000 since 1915.
My seven-million estimate of Bible sales is based upon figures submitted
by some of the regular Bible publishers (not all are willing to give
them), aided by estimates made by two experienced men in the field of
Bible publishing. One is David H. Scott, Manager of the Bible department
of Harper & Brothers, who estimates the total number of _King James
Bibles_ sold through commercial channels at about five million copies a
year. The other is Ben D. Zevin, President of the World Publishing
Company, who puts the figures at seven million. Mr. Zevin gives an
approximate figure of fifty million for the number of Bibles sold by
his company in its fifty years of publishing. Most Bible publishers do
not know and only a few are willing to hazard an estimate of the number
of Bibles sold in their firms’ existence.
In addition to the Bibles sold commercially in the United States, many
are given away or sold at cost by such organizations as The Gideons and
the American Bible Society, which is “primarily a missionary
organization interested in the distribution of the Holy Scriptures as
widely as possible.” In the years from 1809 through 1954 it has
distributed over thirty-eight million complete Bibles in the United
States. The majority have been sold at or slightly below cost; in some
cases they have been given as free grants. The Society also provides New
Testaments and Bibles regularly to members of the armed forces, without
charge. The government, during World War II, for the first time in
American military history, issued a Bible to every man and woman who
entered the Armed Services, A _King James_ or _Douay New Testament_ was
given to those of Protestant or Catholic faith and a condensation of the
Old Testament to those of Jewish faith, 17,000,000 volumes in all.