Curious Christian

One response to “Best Selling Books on Religion and Spirituality”

1. 

   philjohnson

   2007-07-03

   I wonder if you could interpret these results from Amazon by way of comparison with other Internet-based sales such as from Barnes & Noble to see if there are any similarities in the titles purchased. It would also be interesting to know just how many customers are buying books over the Internet and also comparing these with local sales lists furnished by booksellers like Dymocks, Borders, Kinokuniya etc.
   Leaving those suggestions to one side, the popularity of these titles does not necessarily tell us what consumers think of these titles, whether they like or dislike them, are they “true believers”, the “curious” etc. In the case of Christopher Hitchens I would surmise that his book rides the crest of the wave of chatter generated by Dawkins and Da Vinci Code books. Some find it appealing as it reconfirms a prior view; some read it to investigate matters; some are already in disagreement with Hitchens and reading his book to be informed and to dispute his views.
   I suspect that similar kinds of motivations and opinions will be discerned among cosnumers of the other texts. I know that books can go through short sales cycles because a title is “the latest thing”. Are they here today and gone tomorrow, is a question to keep in mind. Sustained sales of a book that last more than a half a year and go on for more than a year are indeed noteworthy.
   If you recall Redfield’s Celestine Prophecy it hung around between 1994-96 as a large selling title worldwide. It was a talking point for many people. Of course not everyone believed in it, in much the same way that Von Daniken was a talking point in the very early 1970s with his “Chariots of the Gods?”. Lots of people had their curiosity aroused, his book generated criticisms from people he interviewed and from scholars in various disciplines (anthropology, religion, science etc) who pointed out appalling errors, dubious interpretations of data etc. The fact that something is selling well has to be located in a wider context other than number crunching.
   On the Roswell book I would venture to say that it is a topic that goes through cycles of interest, and that like a “who shot JFK” topic, it provides endless opportunities for conjectures and fanciful interpretations. In effect the topic becomes a commodity that can be exploited; or maybe compared to oil exploration … sooner or later one will find a reserve somewhere that might be industrially viable.
   On another tack, I would also suggest on a wider canvas that the “let’s check it out” attitude ensues in book buying and reading habits. Alongside this my hunch is that as informality and de-institutional approaches to acquiring information continue, people outside both the academy and high culture will navigate all kinds of peculiar by-ways. On the spirituality tack there is the proverbial Flip Wilson comedic line “The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now”: whatever is the latest fad is where a % of readers will head. Then I perceive that as others find it hard to grasp what is formal religious belief, a corresponding trend is to look at the exotic, the unusual, and perhaps even what seems more tangibly immediate. It might be easier to think about body-piercing and “my spirituality”, than it is to follow even a dummies guide to theology. If “God” is a confusing idea in the minds of many, then don’t be too surprised if folk religiosity arises to fill the apparent vacuum. It is probably easier for some people to connect with ghosts, aliens and angels than it is to conceptualise God. Moreover if the only place left to put “trust” and “authority” is the self, then self-interests will often be measured on the book commodities market as being very odd at times.

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