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Friday, September 21, 2007

CBA Bible sales ranking changes

Details for rankings of monthly Bible sales at Christian bookstores have changed at the Christian Booksellers Association website. If you click here you can see that there are three categories for Bible sales:
  1. Children's (this seems to be children's Bible story books)
  2. Children's Bible
  3. Study Bibles / Speciality Bibles
There is no category for general Bible sales, as there has been in the past, so that we can see how sales of NIV, KJV, NKJV, NASB, HCSB, TNIV, ESV compare.

On a different matter, one we posted on not too long ago, Dietman continues to plagiarize posts from BBB. I have asked him to stop but he persists. I have contacted the Blogger service and they sent me instructions for contacting their copyright infringement department. That process looks rather intimidating. Someone commented on Deitman's most recent post "Nice blog". It will be interesting to see how Deitman posts these comments. He often changes a few words here and there. For instance, Suzanne's recent post titled "Heads, you win!" was changed by Deitman (or his language translation software, perhaps changing our posts to another language then back to English) to "Chiefs, you gain!" (They might like that headline in Kansas City!) So, Dietman, if you read your own posts, and read this one, please translate these sentences for your copy of this blog post: "My name is Deitman. I am copying posts from the Better Bibles Blog."

9 Comments:

At Fri Sep 21, 09:06:00 AM, Blogger R. Mansfield said...

I noticed the absence of Bible rankings, too, and I wondered if this was going to be the standard from here on out or if there were major problems in the reporting figures for the last month. We've often heard, even from the publishers, that there are serious problems in the way that versions are tracked by the CBA. Maybe someone is attempting to address this or maybe the errors were so noticeable this time that they opted not to post that list at all. The way some translations bounce all over the charts from month to month is surely reflective of inaccurate reporting.

Regarding your plagiarizer, it will be interesting to see if he copies THIS post as well!

I would suggest following up on the the reporting of his posts. The plagiarism is so egregious and so blatant that I would think it would be an open and shut case to the PTB at Blogger.

 
At Fri Sep 21, 10:16:00 AM, Blogger Trevor said...

I notice that Deitman/Dietman has made no attempt to modify internal links in your blog posts. So his version of your 5th headship poll article contains a link to the 4th article - which takes the reader to the original site.

Although I guess this is a good thing, it isn't without its downside; unfortunately some readers might think that you really did write the awkward prose that appears on his site.

Perhaps you should sign off the next few articles with a "to read a copy of this article as written by its original author, go _here_". I'd be curious to see how long it takes him to notice.

Cheers
T

 
At Fri Sep 21, 10:22:00 AM, Blogger InHim said...

Deitman also has a knack for posting in the future--the latest post as of now being Tuesday, September 8, 2009

 
At Fri Sep 21, 10:42:00 AM, Blogger Iyov said...

Rick hit the nail on the head, I think. I've heard the same feedback as Rick (from a publisher associated with a well-known British university.) Furthermore, it not at all clear that CBA members are at all representative of broader Bible sales.

Moreover, I'm not sure the "horse race" matters at all. With Amazon and similar online booksellers, all of us have a chance to purchase any translation in print; and the successful publishing of special "boutique" translations (e.g., relatively esoteric translations such as Targum translations; multiple republication of classic editions such as the Geneva Bible) shows that a canny publisher can keep a Bible in print even with limited sales. Zondervan and Nelson may not be set up to handle small Bible print runs, but other (in my opinion, better) publishers can handle that.

In the end, what matters is what translation are people reading, and how influential those translations are -- not sales figures from a particular distribution channel.

 
At Fri Sep 21, 01:16:00 PM, Blogger Suzanne McCarthy said...

Regarding Dietman,

Maybe he is spoofing the entire notion of translations. By inserting our posts into a translation program and back out, maybe he is experimenting with the validity of translation. I find it somewhat funny, as long as no one takes it for real.

It must be his/her post modern way to particpate in our forum!

 
At Fri Sep 21, 09:59:00 PM, Blogger R. Mansfield said...

Well, that didn't long. This very post is already up: http://bible-translation.blogspot.com/2007/09/sales-of-bible-of-cba-arranging-of.html

Here's what I think after looking at the site. It's VERY heavy with advertising. It wouldn't surprise me if this isn't some automated site that is trying to make money through ads and for whatever reasons BBB was targeted as the source for new posts.

 
At Fri Sep 21, 10:27:00 PM, Blogger Wayne Leman said...

Trevor, thank you for spotting my misspelling of Dietman's name. I have corrected it in the post.

Should anyone wonder, I mostly put this post up as another test of Dietman's copying system. I'm not going to obsess about it, though.

 
At Mon Sep 24, 10:59:00 AM, Blogger Aslan_kin said...

Someone in charge at Blogger must've taken action. I tried to follow the link and got this message in the header: "This blog is in violation of Blogger's Terms of Service and is open to authors only."

 
At Tue Sep 25, 07:06:00 AM, Blogger Peter Kirk said...

The other blog seems to have reappeared now.

 

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