3/84Books published in East Germany in honor of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth: 150
In West Germany: 50
8/84Most books on the New York Times best-seller list at one time edited by a single editor (Michael Korda): 7
6/86Number of books checked out from public libraries in 1985: 1,197,000,000
10/87Bibles and hymnbooks the Soviet Union has allowed the Russian Baptist Union to import this year: 20,000
Percentage who cannot name the region of the country William Faulkner wrote about: 67
12/87Number of direct-mail solicitations sent to Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond this year: 90
4/87Copies of Gabriel García Márquez’s new book burned by the Chilean government last November: 15,000
4/87Amount Sotheby’s estimates the Bible President Reagan sent to Iran would bring at auction: $100,000
4/87Bottles of Windex required to clean 355 miles of bookshelves in the New York Public Library: 20,000
4/87Rank of Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Vogue among the best-selling magazines in college bookstores: 1,2,3
5/87Weight of the manuscript of Freedom, William Safire’s forthcoming epic novel (in lbs.): 16.6
2/88Exclamation points in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities: 2,343
9/88Number of months it took Ronald Reagan to read Mikhail Gorbachev’s book Perestroika: 6
1/89Percentage of book reviewers who say it is ethical to review a book without having finished it: 36
7/89Rank of dog, cat, snake, and U.S. president, among World Book Encyclopedia entries consulted most often: 1,2,3,4
1/90Exclamation points in The Bonfire of the Vanities: 2,343
10/90Number of the 6 best-selling extracurricular books in college bookstores that are collections of cartoons: 4
10/90Number of years George Bush has been citing Bonfire of the Vanities as an example of his pleasure reading: 2
11/90Number of Georgia third-graders Representative Newt Gingrich paid $2 for every book they read last summer: 282
2/90Number of times Tammy Faye Bakker mentions crying in her two books I Gotta Be Me and Run to the Roar: 60
4/90Estimated amount Viking Penguin has spent on extra security since publishing The Satanic Verses: $3,400,000
Estimated amount Viking Penguin has earned from sales of the book: $3,400,000
4/90Number of hours after Charles Stuart’s suicide that the first contract was negotiated for a book about the case: 48
10/92Number of pages in Doubleday’s new 7,035-page, six-volume Bible dictionary that are devoted to sex and humor: 10
12/92Chances that an attempt to ban or restrict access to school materials or books last’ year was successful: 2 in 5
3/93Percentage discount a California bookstore offers on maps or guides to any country that has “recently disappeared”: 30
10/94Number of “translators” commissioned last year by a Yale divinity student to convert the Bible into Klingon: 10
11/94Chances that a U.S. teenager has not spoken to either parent for more than ten minutes during the last month: 1 in 5
2/94Percentage of all U.S. paperback-book sales accounted for by romance novels: 47
3/94Amount for which a robber beat a motel security guard to death with a Bible last summer in Georgia: $18
6/94Amount Random House lost on the 29 of its books included on the 1993 New York Times Notable Books list: $698,000
3/95Amount for which a Mississippi man attempted to sue “the Bible” last year, citing it as “oppressive hearsay”: $45,000,000
5/95Number of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays quoted on the Senate floor last year by Robert Byrd: 37
9/95Number of California library books of modern American poetry from which pages have been reported stolen this year: 250
12/96Number of people on the Omaha, Nebraska, Public Library’s waiting list to check out Madonna’s book Sex: 230
2/96Chances that the phrase “you will” appears on a page of Bill Gates’s new book, The Road Ahead: 1 in 5
8/96Minimum price of a line of Al Kracht’s custom poetry, from Limerick Lane Poetryworks of Chappaqua, New York: $7
12/97Number of Squadron Supreme comic books printed this year with ink containing its creator’s ashes: 4,000
2/97Number of Shakespeare’s 37 plays that West Virginia senator Robert Byrd has quoted on the Senate floor: 37
5/97Number of bulletproof Bibles manufactured last year by California’s Innovative Marketing Alliance: 1,000
7/97Lines of Walt Whitman poetry entered as evidence last year in New York’s dispute with New Jersey over Ellis Island: 37
5/98Ratio of whales killed by Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick to people indicted by Kenneth Starr since 1994: 1:1
Ratio of the estimated cost of Starr’s investigation to projected ad sales for the last episode of Seinfeld: 1:1
Percentage of Americans who cannot name the allegation that Starr was initially appointed to investigate: 40
1/99Number of Boston library workers who required counseling last summer after a flood soaked 50,000 cartons of books: 12
7/99Height, in feet, of a scarlet “A” a Sunnyside, Wash., woman put in her family’s yard last fall to protest her father’s adultery: 7
1/00Estimated temperature of Hell, according to two Spanish physicists ‘ interpretation of the Bible: 832° F
Estimated temperature of Heaven: 448°F
10/00Number of novels by a current vice presidential candidate’s wife wherein a vice president dies in flagrante delicto: 1
3/00Number of Playboy centerfold models since 1959 whose bios claimed their favorite book was by Ayn Rand: 12
9/00Ratio of the number of copies of The Great Gatsby sold each month in the U.S. to the number sold in the author’s lifetime: 5:3
12/01Date on which the first contract for a book about September 11 was signed: 9/13
2/01Number of poets scheduled to attend a literary conference in China last year before the government banned it: 200
9/01Percentage change since 1999 in U.S. sales of hardcover books for adults and children, respectively: -12, +13
10/02Number of bookies arrested in India in March on charges they took bets on Hindu-Muslim riots: 101
4/02Months that a Denver bookstore has been refusing court orders to identify a buyer of a book about making illegal drugs: 22
6/02Number of books to which a national reading program has assigned points that students can accumulate for rewards: 50,000
Points assigned to Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, respectively: 78, 40
3/03Percentage of Shakespeare’s sonnets that contain at least one economic metaphor: 30
8/03Number of books by Henry Kissinger found in Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion in April: 2
Number by New York Times reporter Judith Miller: 1
9/03Percentage refund that Laura Bush’s office sought in June for a $15.95 children’s book that it bought for a TV reading: 100
9/03Percentage of the first month of British sales of the new Harry Potter book accounted for by “adult” editions: 11
9/03Estimated acres of forest Henry David Thoreau burned down in 1844 trying to cook fish he had caught for dinner: 300
6/04Minimum number of the brand names mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses that are still extant: 28
Number of the brand holders that are sponsoring Dublin’s centennial Bloomsday celebration this month: 2
6/04Number of Library of Congress book collections it would take to hold the data created worldwide in 2002: 36,764
10/05Number of different stories offered for sale at any one time on a Dutch dial-a-fairytale service: 4
Price to listen to a seven-minute story: $1.70
11/05Number of erotic Harry Potter fan-fiction stories posted on a website run by an Illinois woman: 1,750
Average number of hits the site receives each day: 198,000
6/05Number of books published last year in Iceland and the United States, respectively, per 100,000 residents: 212, 63
6/05Number of books registered at BookCrossing.com, so the books can be left in public places and found by others: 1,935,000
Number of the books left behind that have been from the Left Behind series: 2,047
7/05Amount slated to be spent by 2007 to build a theme park in honor of Charles Dickens: £62,000,000
7/05Number of free copies of Don Quixote being distributed by the Venezuelan government this year: 1,000,000
7/05Total value of bets taken by a U.K. bookmaker this spring on the identity of the new pope: £50,000
9/05Total annual spending controlled by functionally illiterate U.S. consumers: $414,000,000,000
11/06Average number of books written by each French president since World War II: 8
Average by U.S. presidents: 4
Number written by Jimmy Carter: 20
3/06Average percentage decline in U.K. child injuries during weekends when a new Harry Potter book is released: ‒46
3/06Number of books published in Britain since 2004 that have “shit,” “shite,” or “ crap ” in their titles: 23
3/06Number of copies sold in Japan since last summer of a comic book about the worthlessness of China: 180,000
5/06Number of times that Mary, Jesus’ mother, is referenced by name in the Bible and the Koran, respectively: 19, 34
5/06Number of Harlequin novels published last year that feature love between a Western woman and an Arab sheikh: 15
Number by 2008 that will feature NASCAR races: 22
7/06Number of books that Art Garfunkel has read since June 1968, according to a comprehensive list on his website: 948
7/06Length, in hours, of a book appearance that author Lawrence Lessig made in January inside an online fantasy world: 2
Minimum number of different characters who showed up: 100
9/06Months that an Idaho man has checked out his library’s copy of The Joy of Gay Sex, to prevent others from seeing it: 7
Number of additional copies that the library has received unsolicited since this was first reported: 7
10/07Number of copies a book of poems must sell per week to make the Poetry Foundation’s bestseller list: 50
10/07Rank of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion among Amazon.co.uk’s top-selling “Religion and Spirituality” books this year: 1
10/07Number of copies Pope Benedict XVI’s book Jesus of Nazareth has sold in the United States: 68,000
Estimated number of pieces of silver that could be bought with the royalties: 21,250
Percentage of African Americans who have not: 20
6/07Minimum number of different books sold in the U.S. last year, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan: 1,446,000
8/07Cost per minute last spring for callers to the Vienna public library to have literary erotica read to them: 49¢
10/08Rank of Obama’s primary victory among the greatest events in U.S. history, according to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in May: 1
Factor by which this exceeds the total sales of the seventeen books by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee: 4
1/09Date on which the first contract for a book about September 11 was signed: 9/13/01