Prophet Sharing: The Good Book Is the Best Seller

• DECEMBER 23, 2008

WSJ

The Bible, Long a Commercial Hit, Gets Repackaged for Market Niches from the Homespun to the Fashion Forward

By STEPHANIE SIMON

Mobile, Ala.

Upstairs in the Mobile Museum of Art, there's a Bible on display -- a majestic hand-drawn edition a decade in the making, and not yet finished. Presented as a work of modern art, its oversized pages are filled with ornate calligraphy and rich illustration, shot through with gold and silver leaf.

Taylor Umlaf for The Wall Street Journal

The Manga Bible retells biblical stories in the form of a graphic novel, with comic-book sound effects like "Biff!" and "Pow!"

Downstairs, in the museum foyer, another Bible lies open -- this one so homespun as to be homely. An earnest young couple is carting it cross-country in an RV with a bobble-head Jesus on the dash, asking tens of thousands of ordinary Americans to each hand-write one verse. Blotches of white-out mark corrections.

The two editions on display this drizzly morning are as different as can be, yet they represent an essential truth: God's word is good business.

Throughout history, the Bible has been an object of commerce as well as of reflection. That's especially true in the modern era.

It's an astonishing fact that year after year, the Bible is the best-selling book in America -- even though 90% of households already have at least one copy. The text doesn't vary, except in translation. The tremendous sales volume, an estimated 25 million copies sold each year, is largely driven by innovations in design, color, style and the ultimate niche marketing.

There's Scripture as accessory, wrapped in hot pink fake leather or glittery psychedelic swirls -- or sporting a ladybug on the cover for no particular reason other than it's cute. There's Scripture as political statement: A new Green Bible, printed in soy ink on recycled paper, highlights passages with an environmental theme.

There are gross-out Bibles for boys, which dwell on scenes of mayhem, and glossy teen-magazine-style Bibles for girls, complete with beauty tips. One of the latest entries, Bible Illuminated, offers an art-house take on the New Testament, juxtaposing the gospel with glossy photos of Angelina Jolie, Al Gore and anonymous victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Kurt Fredrickson, who directs the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary, found the selection boggling when he went to buy a Bible for his wife's Christmas present the other day.

He found himself drawn to a edition bound in fall colors of pumpkin and green. "I thought, oooh, that's kind of nice!" he said. Then he caught himself; his wife wanted a new Bible for study, not so it would look chic sticking out of her purse. He went with classic burgundy leather binding.

The Bible "should be able to stand on its own" without adornment, said Mr. Frederickson. "It's a pretty amazing book."

But publishers across ages have recognized that the Bible can also be a profit center.

The monastic scribes who spent their lives copying religious texts in the Middle Ages threw themselves into their work as a measure of devotion -- but also to generate income for their monasteries.

By the 13th century, interest in the Bible had inspired a new industry of commercial publishing houses, which hired armies of scribes to crank out portable handwritten copies for university students. These publishers were the first to promote a sense of the Bible as a single book, with the chapters presented in fixed order.

"It was an essential text. Students would invest in it the way people today buy a computer or a car," said Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the manuscript library at the abbey of Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minn.

The Bible was the first book to roll off Johann Gutenberg's printing press in the mid-15th century. By the late 17th century, the ancient text was being printed in several languages and translations across Europe and the American colonies.

"Whether the Bible has got any transcendental truth in it or not, it is the most popular book, the most circulated text, of all time. It has never not been a No. 1 best-seller," said Christopher de Hamel, a British scholar of biblical manuscripts.

Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at Saint John's University

An excerpt of a Bible commissioned by Saint John's University is handwritten on calfskin.

The modern era of niche marketing began in the 1980s, when Bible publishers hit upon the idea of appending commentary aimed at particular audiences, such as women or teens. They highlighted the verses most likely to appeal to those groups and wrote volumes of supplemental material -- study notes, prayers, even advice-column-style questions and answers.

That format proved wildly popular; these days, you can buy Bibles tailored to alcoholics, archaeology buffs, fans of Japanese comics and any number of other interest groups. The Soul Surfer Bible, aimed at teen girls, sprinkles tips on catching a good wave, lists of surfer slang such as "tubular" (meaning, more or less, awesome) and life lessons about hope, faith and hard work into the traditional Biblical text. The Golfer's Bible draws on passages about steadfastness and contemplation to advise duffers on their swings. The Japanese Manga version retells biblical stories in comic-book form, complete with sound effects like "Biff!" and "Pow!"

In recent years, publishers have also taken to rolling out new covers for their basic Bibles each season, with colors carefully chosen to match the latest fashions.

Amid this flood of trendy Bibles, the two handwritten versions on display at the Mobile Museum of Art stand out.

The illuminated version was commissioned by Saint John's University in Minnesota. Calligrapher Donald Jackson -- who calls the project "a fearful challenge" -- etches each verse on calfskin with a hand-crafted quill and saturates his illustrations with pigments hand-ground from minerals and precious stones. The project will be completed in 2011 and reproduced for sale in seven volumes, priced at about $65 each.

The handwritten Bible Across America edition will also be sold commercially, for a price yet to be determined.

The Christian publishing house Zondervan -- which is owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal -- came up with the project to generate interest in the 30th anniversary of its popular NIV Bible translation. Zondervan put up $250,000 to fund a cross-country RV tour that invites anyone and everyone to copy a verse from the NIV.

Men, women and children have waited as long as two hours in some cities to copy ancient phrases they hold sacred. Some weep as they write. Others freeze, feeling pressure to make it perfect. Little ones labor over wobbly R's and backwards S's. Adults slowly copy out nettlesome Old Testament names like Jehoshaphat, letter by letter.

Harriet Horn, a security guard, grinned broadly after she wrote her lines one recent day at the Mobile museum. "My spirit has been touched this morning!" she exclaimed.

Jim Bodman, a retired FBI agent, was more subdued. "It was humbling," he said.

The Bible will eventually be bound; for now, it's being written on thin sheets of loose 11-by-17 paper. The result looks a bit like a patchwork quilt: A verse written in a slanted hand flows into several lines of flowery letters. A college student misspells Israel and writes over her mistake in darker ink. It's a democratic, populist take on a book often regarded with awe.

"There's no paraphrasing going on, but it's going to be a unique read," said Steve Sammons, an executive vice president at Zondervan.

Mr. Fredrickson, the seminary theologian, said it's easy to get cynical about the way Scripture is pushed and packaged these days.

But the more he thinks about it, the more he's come to believe that presentation does matter; a new look can draw in new readers, or inspire fresh thinking about a familiar passage. This season, for instance, he's spending time with the Bible Illuminated, which uses photojournalism to illustrate the New Testament in ways he finds extremely provocative. That's valuable, he says, because "it gets people talking."

Others aren't so sure. Dominick Matranga, a retired judge, stopped by the Bible Across America table in Mobile and wrote a verse to help out the cause. But he said he saw little point in putting the age-old words in a new format.

"I don't think it would be on the top of my list of things to do," Mr. Matranga said. "What's the reason for it?"

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com