The Goal book by Eliyahu Goldratt The path to publishing The Goal book was difficult. In 1984 there
were no business novels. Eliyahu Goldratt or Eli would tell a story about publishers passing on his book because it was a business book and a “love story”, and they did not know what shelf to put it on. In the account I heard, he said it took talking to over 30 publishers before finding one that would take the risk. He also explained that his co-author wanted to get paid a flat guaranteed fee for his work. This turned out to be a great thing for Eliyahu Goldratt and a big missed opportunity for Jeff Cox. The Goal is probably the most read business book of all time — in the world. I say probably because it’s difficult to track worldwide sales. And pirated copies of The Goal have been found in other languages around the world. Eli also explained another phenomenon that occurs with The Goal – he said that most business books are purchased but only 1 in 4 are actually read. With The Goal, for each one purchased it was passed to 4 different people to read. There, of course, is no hard evidence of this. The Goal publisher, North River Press, has indicated on the 30th anniversary edition (2014) that over 6 million copies have been sold.
The Goal book by Eliyahu Goldratt – 6 Million copies sold and counting! Here’s some data compiled by www.politifact.com on bestselling business books. The data in this table looks suspect since Rich Dad Poor Dad has estimated sales lower than the Nielsen data and the 7 Habits has as huge estimated sales range, but as I said this data is hard to acquire.
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