Today, everyone relies on numbers to quantify sales, readership, and "clicks" for books. There is no escaping the parsing and interpretation of data anymore.

However, it is a travesty to authors and readers alike that certain "books" continually remain on the "bestseller lists", touting themselves as "the most popular books of all time". Of course, I'm talking about The Bible, The Quran and The Book of Mormon.

None of these works is technically a book. Authorship is dubious, at best. How would the public feel if I authored a book and insisted it was the true Word of God, that it was actually written by God. Then, how would the public feel if I conned "benefactors" to print millions of copies for free and give them away, all over the world. Then, how would the public feel if I insisted that those free copies be counted as "sales". 

Regardless of your religious beliefs, your adherence or lack thereof to religious dogma and institutions, how can you justify such a position?

I guess authors will just have to settle for Option B: write something controversial enough to get banned and hope you get to join Harper Lee, J D Salinger and Salman Rushdie on the "most notorious books of all time" list.