Books by new pope quickly become best sellers

Demand for books by the new pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has quickly surpassed supply, with many of his works selling out.

Numerous Ratzinger books have reached the best-seller lists of Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com, including “Salt of the Earth,” “The Ratzinger Report,” “Introduction to Christianity” and “Milestones,” a memoir that covers his life through 1977.

A second volume of his memoirs is being translated, and other books are planned including “Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith,” which should be out next month, said Mark Brumley, president of Ignatius Press. The nonprofit, San Francisco-based publisher has issued the German-born Ratzinger’s works in English for more than 20 years.

Brumley also expects to include a new foreword to “The Ratzinger Report,” a book-length interview that was published in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, Doubleday has scheduled a pair of books for May: a collection of the new pope’s writings, currently untitled, and a biography by John Allen Jr., whose previous book on Ratzinger was released in 2000.

Barnes & Noble Inc. is publishing its own book, by scholar Greg Tobin.

Harper San Francisco, a spiritual/religious imprint of HarperCollins, is planning to publish David Gibson’s “Keys to the Kingdom: The Making of a Pope and the Future of Catholicism,” and Continuum will release Paul Collins’ “God’s New Man: The Election of the New Pope and the Legacy of John Paul II.”