Book Trivia
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125 free Book trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This book trivia quiz is about books as objects and as an industry rather than the stories inside them (for plots, authors and characters, take our Literature quiz). It covers the clay tablets and papyrus scrolls that came before the codex, Bi Sheng and Gutenberg, the Diamond Sutra and the Book of Kells, why paperbacks cost sixpence, how ISBNs and Dewey numbers work, who coined the word 'blurb' and where the dust jacket came from. The easy questions are ones most readers know: the best-selling book of all time, the best-selling novelist, what a hardcover is bound with and what an audiobook used to be called. From there it works through bestsellers and records: Harry Potter's 600 million copies, Don Quixote, The Little Prince's 600 translations, Agatha Christie's two billion, the longest novel, the largest medieval manuscript, the priciest printed book and manuscript ever sold. There are prizes (Booker, Pulitzer, Nobel, Newbery, Caldecott, Hugo), libraries (Congress, British Library, Bodleian, Alexandria, the first bookmobile, Little Free Libraries), retailers and formats, from Penguin and Pocket Books to the Kindle, Project Gutenberg and Kindle Direct Publishing. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the books, institutions and inventions involved before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Readers may also like our Classic Literature and Children's Books quizzes.
30 of 125 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From which Old English word does 'book' come?
Boc
'Book' descends from Old English 'boc', a Germanic word with cognates in Old Norse 'bok' and Old Saxon 'bok'; Latin 'liber' and Greek 'biblos' are unrelated words for the same object.
Q 02Roughly how many unique books had been published in total, by Google's 2010 estimate?
Around 130 million
In August 2010 Google engineers estimated there were 129,864,880 unique books in the world, around 130 million, after de-duplicating library catalogue records.
Q 03What is the name of the format, of pages bound at one edge, that replaced the scroll?
The codex
The codex, pages bound along one edge, replaced the scroll in the Roman world; it developed from hinged wax tablets and was adopted early by Christians for their scriptures.
Q 04According to Guinness World Records, what is the best-selling book of all time?
The Bible
Guinness World Records names the Bible the best-selling book of all time, with an estimated five billion or more copies printed and distributed.
Q 05Which novel opens with the sentence 'Call me Ishmael'?
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's 1851 novel, opens with the three-word sentence 'Call me Ishmael', spoken by the sailor who narrates the hunt for the white whale.
Q 06Which series has sold more than 600 million copies, the most in history?
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is the best-selling book series in history, with more than 600 million copies sold worldwide across its seven novels, translated into over 80 languages.
Q 07How many publishers rejected the first Potter book before Bloomsbury took it?
Twelve
Twelve publishers turned down Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone before Bloomsbury accepted it in 1996, reportedly after the chairman's eight-year-old daughter loved the first chapter.
Q 08Which novel, published in 1605 and 1615, is believed to have sold over half a billion copies?
Don Quixote
Don Quixote, published by Cervantes in two parts in 1605 and 1615, is often called the first modern novel and is estimated to have sold over 500 million copies.
Q 09Which book became the world's most translated non-religious book in 2017?
The Little Prince
The Little Prince became the world's most translated non-religious book in April 2017, when a Hassanya version brought Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella to 300 languages.
Q 10Who is the best-selling novelist of all time, with more than two billion copies sold?
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, with more than two billion copies sold; her 66 detective novels have been translated into over 100 languages.
Q 11Which Charles Dickens novel of 1859 is often claimed as one of the best-selling novels ever?
A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens's 1859 novel set in London and Paris during the French Revolution, is often cited with a claimed 200 million copies sold, though the figure is unverified.
Q 12Which Chinese title, the 'Little Red Book', has print estimates of up to 6.5 billion?
Quotations from Chairman Mao
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the 'Little Red Book', was mass-printed during the Cultural Revolution; estimates run from one billion to 6.5 billion copies, over a billion of them in 1966–69 alone.
Q 13Which woodblock-printed scroll, dated 11 May 868, is the oldest dated printed book?
Q 21What is a book printed in Europe before 1501 called?
An incunable
An incunable (plural incunabula) is a book printed in Europe before 1501; the Latin incunabula means 'swaddling clothes' or 'cradle', marking printing's infancy.
Q 22Which Venetian printer introduced italic type in 1501 and used a dolphin-and-anchor device?
Aldus Manutius
Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer of the Aldine Press, introduced italic type in a 1501 Virgil and used the dolphin-and-anchor device with the motto festina lente, 'make haste slowly'.
Q 23Which punctuation mark did Venice's Aldine Press help standardise around 1500?
The semicolon
The Diamond Sutra
The Diamond Sutra, a Chinese woodblock-printed scroll dated 11 May 868, is the oldest dated printed book; found in the Dunhuang caves, it is held by the British Library.
Q 14What unusual dedication appears in the colophon of the oldest printed book?
'For universal free distribution'
The Diamond Sutra's colophon says Wang Jie had it made 'for universal free distribution' on behalf of his parents in 868, often called the first explicit public-domain dedication.
Q 15Who invented movable type around 1040 AD, using ceramic characters?
Bi Sheng
Bi Sheng, a Northern Song commoner, devised movable type from baked clay characters between 1039 and 1048; the statesman Shen Kuo recorded his method in the Dream Pool Essays.
Q 16What is the oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, from Korea in 1377?
Jikji
Jikji, a Buddhist anthology printed at Heungdeok Temple in 1377 under Korea's Goryeo dynasty, is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type; its surviving volume is held in Paris.
Q 17What was Johannes Gutenberg's trade before he developed the printing press around 1440?
Goldsmith
Gutenberg was a goldsmith by trade; his experience with metal alloys and punch-cutting helped him cast the uniform lead-based type that made his press practical around 1440.
Q 18In which city did Gutenberg print his Bible in the 1450s?
Mainz
Gutenberg printed his Bible in Mainz, his home city on the Rhine, around 1454–55; within decades the press had spread to roughly 270 European cities.
Q 19How many lines per page give Gutenberg's Bible its alternative name?
42
Gutenberg's Bible is known as the 42-line Bible, or B42, because most of its pages carry 42 lines per column; it is also called the Mazarin Bible after the copy found in Cardinal Mazarin's library.
Q 20How many copies had Western Europe's presses produced by 1500?
More than twenty million
Books from before 1500 are called incunabula.
The semicolon first appeared in print in 1494 in Pietro Bembo's De Aetna, from Venice's Aldine Press, which also fixed the modern shape of the comma.
Q 24What was the first title printed in British North America, in 1640?
The Bay Psalm Book
The Bay Psalm Book, a metrical psalter printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640 by Stephen Daye, was the first book printed in British North America.
Q 25Who bought Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester for $30.8m in 1994?
Bill Gates
Bill Gates bought Leonardo's Codex Leicester at Christie's in November 1994 for $30.8 million, then a record price for any manuscript; it had previously belonged to oil magnate Armand Hammer.
Q 26What is the main topic of the Codex Leicester?
The movement of water
The Codex Leicester, 72 pages in Leonardo's mirror script, deals mainly with the movement of water, with further notes on fossils, the moon's glow and the properties of air.
Q 27Which Holy Roman Emperor reportedly bought the Voynich manuscript for 600 ducats?
Rudolf II
Rudolf II, the Habsburg emperor who collected curiosities in Prague, reportedly paid 600 ducats for the Voynich manuscript; a 1665 letter by Johannes Marcus Marci, found with it, records the purchase.
Q 28Where has the Voynich manuscript been held since 1969?
Yale's Beinecke Library
Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has held the Voynich manuscript since the dealer Hans P. Kraus donated it in 1969; it is catalogued there as MS 408.
Q 29What was the first name of the Polish book dealer who bought the undeciphered manuscript in 1912?
Wilfrid
Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish-born antiquarian bookseller, bought the manuscript in 1912 from the Jesuit Villa Mondragone near Rome; it has carried his name ever since.
Q 30What is the largest extant medieval illuminated manuscript, nicknamed the Devil's Bible?
Codex Gigas
The Codex Gigas, made in 13th-century Bohemia, is the largest surviving medieval illuminated manuscript at 92 cm tall; its full-page portrait of the Devil earned it the nickname Devil's Bible, and it is kept in Stockholm.