Rick Warren Matters
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 1/3/2005
Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life—the bestselling book of 2003 and 2004—was named by Time magazine as one of the 16 "People Who Mattered in 2004." What made him matter was not the 20.5 million copies his book sold in two years in the U.S. alone, but that he gave away "90% of his royalties, campaigning against hunger and expanding a drug recovery program for prison inmates." Averaging a record 833,000 copies sold each month, Warren's book, according to Zondervan, is also the bestselling book in the U.S. in Spanish (Una Vida Con Proposito has sold more than one million copies). The book has already been translated into 28 languages, with 56 languages licensed, and has sold more than 4.75 million units of related gift products, including The Purpose-Drive Life Journal. An article in Forbes noted that "if Warren's ministry was a business it would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks."
