The Bible

The Bible is the most printed and distributed book ever, with estimates of about five billion copies over time.

Totals are estimates across centuries.

Context

No central body records every printing of the Bible, so the figure of about five billion is an estimate pieced together from publishers, Bible societies and historical research. It combines complete Bibles with parts of it, in hundreds of languages, and it is generally considered a conservative, approximate total.

The book's printing history begins in Europe around 1455 with the Gutenberg Bible, the first major work printed with movable metal type there. Printing lowered the cost of copies and, with translations, helped the text reach far more readers than hand-copied manuscripts could.

Rankings of best-selling books are inexact because other widely printed works, such as religious or political texts distributed free of charge, are hard to count. The Bible's place at the top is nonetheless widely accepted, since it has been printed continuously for over five centuries.

Because no single organisation audits Bible printing, several totals circulate, and some are higher. Guinness World Records has described the Bible as the best-selling book, with an estimate of around five billion copies, and the figure here follows that approximate scale rather than claiming exact precision. Counts also differ depending on whether partial editions, such as single books or New Testaments, are included.