Rare Book Monthly
Articles - January - 2008 Issue
AbeBooks Lists Its Top Sellers, Most Expensive Books for 2007
Einstein was the scientific genius who discovered the theory of relativity.
Rounding out the top 25 were three more Harry Potter books, placing all seven titles within the top 19, the inexorable Tuesdays with Morrie, South Beach Diet, and Who Moved My Cheese, and a couple of classics, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. Only the Covey and Warren books were top 10 repeats from a year ago, while last year's winner, The Da Vinci Code, disappeared completely from the top 25.
Next, we look at the highest priced books sold on Abe this past year.
9-10. A tie of two books by Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. $10,500.
8. Biologia Centrali -- Americana, by Godman and Salvin, a Central American butterfly book with 133 color plates. $11,500.
7. Musurgia universalis, by Athanasius Kircher, a circa 1700 encyclopedia of music. $11,728.
6. Relativity: The Special And General Theory, by Albert Einstein, a book you and I will never understand, but we know is important. This is a signed first American edition. $12,500.
5. The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, by David Roberts, a first quarto edition of this work by the artist Roberts who traveled to the Holy Land in 1838. $13,000.
4. Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae in X Libros Digesta, another work by Athanasius Kircher, this time dealing with optics and astronomy, published in 1671. $14,375.
3. Navis stultifera a domino Sebastiano Brant primum, edited by Jodocus Badius, a 1497 translation of Brant's "Ship of Fools," with woodcuts by Albrecht Durer. $16,028.
2. The Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera, by Doubleday and Westwood, another beautifully illustrated butterfly book, published in 1852. $16,750.
1. Supplementum summae Pisanellae by Nikolaus de Osimo (Nicolaus De Ausmo). Number 1 goes to an item of incunabula, a 1479 edition of a popular update on canon law by an Italian brother of the Franciscan order. $24,941.
Finally, the bestselling authors list reveals the following at one through three: J.K. Rowling (no surprise), Nora Roberts, and William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare!!! Will Nora Roberts be on such a list 400 years from now?
To see all of AbeBooks' top lists for 2007, follow this link: 2007-year-review.
