Books Facts

The Bible is among the most-shoplifted books in the world.

It is estimated that over 5 billion Bibles have been sold or distributed worldwide, making it consistently the best-selling book of all time.

In 2011, Amazon briefly sold more e-books than print books, but the trend reversed—today they sell three times more print books than e-books.

There's a book titled "Everything men know about women" that has over 100 blank pages.

The reason why old books have such a distinct smell is because hundreds of organic compounds in the pages break down over time and release chemicals that smell like almond, vanilla, and grass.

In Brazil, prison inmates can reduce their sentence by 4 days (up to 48 days a year) for every book they read and write a report on.

There's a children's book titled "Where Willy Went" detailing the adventures of a sperm.

Theodore Roosevelt read at least one book every day.

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a 50,000 word book titled 'Gadsby' which did not use the letter "e".

A man with locked-in syndrome, named Jean-Dominique Bauby, wrote an entire book by blinking his left eyelid.

The world’s smallest book, “Teeny Ted from Turnip Town”, is 100×70 micrometers in size and requires a scanning electron microscope to read, as light beams are too large.

Author J K Rowling wrote the final chapter of the last Harry Potter book in "something like 1990", seven years before the release of the first book.

Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, prefers the movie version to his own novel.

Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country in the world, with about 1,500 new titles annually for a population of just 380,000. The tradition of 'Jólabókaflóð' (the Christmas Book Flood) sees most books published in the months before Christmas.

Dolly Parton's father was the smartest man she ever knew. He never learned to read or write. In 1995 she started mailing a free book every month to every child in her Tennessee county. Kids began calling her the Book Lady. Today it sends more than 3 million free books a month and has mailed over 300 million. Dolly died on August 25, 2026, at 80. The books are still going out.

12 publishers rejected J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter manuscript. She was a single mother on welfare. They said it was too long and not suitable for children. Publisher number 13 gave the manuscript to his 8-year-old daughter. She read one chapter and demanded the rest immediately. He paid Rowling an advance of 2,500 pounds. Then told her she would never make money from children's books. The franchise is now worth $25 billion.

The Library of Alexandria held up to 700,000 scrolls. To fill it, guards searched every ship in the harbor, seized any books on board, and kept the originals. It wasn't destroyed in one fire - it died over 500 years. Less than 1% of ancient Greek writing survives. Sophocles wrote 120 plays. Only 7 made it.

Beatrix Potter wrote Peter Rabbit as a get-well letter. A boy she knew was sick in bed. She sent the story to cheer him up. She named the rabbit after her own pet, Peter Piper, whom she had sketched for years. The letter became a book in 1902. It has sold an estimated 40 million copies since.

Those little boxes of books on posts across America started as one man's tribute. Todd Bol built the first in 2009, from wood off his old garage door. He shaped it like a tiny schoolhouse, for his mother, June. She was a schoolteacher who tutored neighborhood kids at her dining table. He filled it with books and staked it in his yard. Neighbors wanted their own. There are now over 200,000, in 128 countries. There's probably one on your street.