TITLE: How popular and used were logarithm tables?
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: I've heard that, for a time, logarithm tables "sold more than the Bible". Can someone produce some reliable documentation about how prevalent they were ? Would a common shopkeep have one ? Would a common merchant ship have one ?
(they would be used to make multiplications and divisions faster)
I am interested in information regarding any time period (though, as my wording suggests, the question was brought to my attention in the context of the 15th century)

REPLY [5 votes]: I used them in secondary school (high school) in Ireland in the 70's. Not everyone could afford calculators, but log books were provided at public exams. Slide rules were allowed. These books also had tables for trigonometric functions as well.
In engineering school, we used steam tables. 
I still have log tables I 'borrowed' from my last exam.
Now I use tax tables (what's wrong with a formula?).