Specialists providing services within this genre vary widely.
The unique nature of these assets makes investing in them tricky, often requiring expert advice. Amongst rare books, religious books have gained significant interest in auction houses and online sites sales as a result of this trend. Despite lacking liquidity, highly collectible hard assets offer a good way to diversify and minimize the risk in stock and bond return fluctuations. Shortly after the stock market collapsed in 2000, investors have been looking for “hard assets,” such as art, coins, books, and jewelry, to complement their portfolios. It is estimated for example, that in recent years the value of most Bibles has appreciated by 10% to 15% annually with some unspeakably rare collections rising as much as 25% – quite a significant appreciation. Climbing sales of e-books during the same period, may have been a factor also a much less significant one nevertheless.ĭespite slow economic times, prices for rare books of the Religion & Theology category have been climbing, primarily due to the finite quantity of such collectors’ items. In prior years, best sellers including: “The Prayer of Jabez”, “Left Behind”, and “The Purpose-Driven Life,” boosted sales over a prolonged period of time. Such declining revenues from books with religious content, which include all religions as well as New Age titles, seems to be the result of slow economic times at a time that lacked new, blockbuster releases.
The year by year breakdown of revenues reported is as follows: 2010 Since 2007, sales as reported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), have declined by more than 25%.
After several years of unprecedented growth during the last decade, sales of new books in the religion category have declined significantly.