The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-06-09

If you want to get at the real best sellers," said tho manager of one of the largest bookstores in New York to a Times reporter you will have to turn from the new books to the old favorites --and the further back you go for com parisons the greater the record for sales to-day of the standard works in literature.'
 The statement has been made in one , of the current magazines that the best ceiling book in the world to-day Is the Bible. and that next to the Bible in popularity ranks Shakespeare. No facts have been given upon which thds esti- mate Is based, and the current impress sion that the record for being the best seller ts won from time to time by various novels would seem to disprove 1t. The sale of standard work is dfffkcaIat to gauge with accuracy since it is not controlled by one publishing ~1irm. The sale of new novel. on the ochcr hand, owing to its copyright, can bas told with absolute exactness. In spite, however of this lack of deft- nite figu as a means for comparing the two classes of books. publishers and booksellers do not hesitate to give the palm of popularity to standard works.
 There, are about 2.500 new novels issued every year in the United States" explained the manager already quoted, "and of these the average sahe is some 2 InlnR Dktt 0UU copies edCn. A mover that reach es a sale of 25.000 copies is doing extr emely well. Some novels, of course. have gone much beyond this. Probably hhe sale of The House of Mirth,' for instance, has reached some- thing like 75,000 copies. Tn six years s00,000 or more copies of David liar am having been sold, while Ben Hur' in the tweilty-eight years of its ex- istence has gone way beyond 100000 copies. Uncle Toms Cabin.' the best seller of comparatively recent fiction, probably doubles this. Nevertheless. Robinson Crusoe,' 'Gulliver's Travels or such juvenile literature as the Oliver Cutie series. or Louisa NJ Aicott s stories, have steady sales much beyond the noted fiction of the day. and prob- ably rank next to Shakespeare in popu- lairity.
 How many volumes of Shakespeare are sod annually? That would be hard to tell In this single store we rarely go below 5000 volumes of his plays every year. and there is not a boekstore fin the world that does not keep them fin stock on account of the constant de- mand for them. Judging by our ex- perfence and the experienct of booksellers, a conservative average es- innate of the annual sales of Shake speare all over the world would be easily in the neighberhood of 2.e00.0 900 vol umes But what is that compared with the alrno st incredible record of the sale of the Bi ble?"
 There are three leading societies in this country and Great Britain that are engaged exclusively in the work of tranlslatina, publishing, and selling the Bible Taking the last annual reports of thtse societies. together with the re- port tsf smaller organizations of similar. character. and with the work .hat is done in the same field by the Roma., Catholic Church, the yearly sale of the Bible reaches figure that yields more than a million volumes a month. Thus. the oldest society. the British and Fol 'eign Bible Society. sold in 1905 BIT Asa volumes; the American Bible Society 2.236.755, the National Bible Society of Scotland, 1,59o,sS1; thu Catholic Church, 1.250.000; twenty-five e smaller European societies, i'ZZl .Ieo; making e total for the year of IF, 2,276.- 855 yoIum es. This total instead of gig- ing an exc essive figure for the numter of Bibles s, Dld in 1905, really falls shcTt of the full amount. since there gre many publt shing houses, such as the Oxford Univ srsity, which makes a spe- cialty of the Bible. and those sales are not inelu ded on the above list It is estimated that from these sources something like 2.000, 900 volumes a year should be added to the above total making the annual sale of Bibles be- tween 1A,000,0 ,00Q ana 15,O0OO0O VOL i uuies. That is. the daily average num- Der of Bibles sold-40. .O00-is equal to the yearly sades of 'best seller" in fiction.
 '"rhese phenomenal sales of the $ Bible," said Dr. Henry O. Dwight, the recording secretary of the Amer lean Bible Society, to Times repo rter. date from the foundation of the Brit fish and Foreign Bible Society 103 wears ago Our own society is in Its ninety first year. Since we were organized swe have sold 76273,7 ITO Bibles The two British societies have sold since their foundation Z62.53T746 Bibles Taking those figures together with the estimates of all other societies and publishing houses. 1t would not be far out to calculate that something like half A billion Bibles were published and distributed throughout the world dur ing the nineteenth century Of course, fin the history of the world there has never been such a record of the sale of one book, and judging by the steady Increase that has marked this sale from year to year. 1t is safe to say that a far greater number of Bibles will he issued In this twentieth century, For instance the total issues of this society in the five years ending March 31, 1905, reached a total greater by more than million copies than the aggregate issues of the society in the first thirty five years of it's existence
 ''There is no such thing judging by our experience, as reaching the limit of the demand for the Bible. Even in
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