List of best-selling books
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This page provides a list of best-selling books of all time and in any language. For some books, accurate accounting has proven impossible, so instead an educated guess by an expert is provided. "Best-selling" refers to the estimated number of copies sold of each book, rather than the number of books printed or currently owned. This list only includes printed books by default, as only machine-printed monographs have been available in sufficient copies as to accumulate sales in the millions.
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[edit] List of Best-Selling Books
[edit] Note
- The Qu'ran, the Book of Mormon, and the Bible are considered to have been divinely authored or inspired by the respective religious traditions who venerate them. They thus also consider God/Allah or one of his agents to have been the author, at least in part.
- This list was originally compiled in 1997, and has been updated using the sources shown, and others, including the articles on each title. The Qur'an has been copied or printed since the 7th century CE and the number of copies presumably numbers hundreds of millions. The figure of six billion Bibles is also an estimate.
- The Lord of the Rings is considered by most people to be a single book, because it was written and planned by the author to be such. Some people consider it to instead be a trilogy or series of three books, because it was originally published as a series of three volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. This move by the publishing house was due largely to post-war paper shortages as well as to minimize the price of the first volume to aid sales. In subsequent printings the book has sometimes appeared as a single volume, and in at least one case was split into seven. The figure of 100 million is an estimate of copies of the full story sold, whether published as one volume, three, or some other configuration.[1]
- And Then There Were None is noted as the best-selling mystery novel of all time and is the most successful of all the Agatha Christie Novels
[edit] List of Best-Selling Series of Books
[edit] Note
There are great differences between the number of the books published in each series. For example, although the Perry Rhodan series and the Star Wars series have each sold more books than the Harry Potter series or The Chronicles of Narnia, they also have had more individual books published in their series. The Perry Rhodan series has released over 2,350 books and the Star Wars series has released over two hundred, but the Harry Potter series has only six released installments and The Chronicles of Narnia seven. Thus, the Harry Potter series has over 60 million copies sold for every book, while the Perry Rhodan series has sold less than half a million per book, and the Star Wars series has sold just over three million per book.
[edit] Best-Selling Authors
- Agatha Christie: it is estimated that one billion copies of her novels have been sold in English, and another billion in 103 other languages. [2].
- Danielle Steel has sold more than 550 million copies of her novels.
- Enid Blyton's books have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide and been translated into at least 90 languages. More than 300 of her titles are still in print and her books continue to sell in 2 million copies every year. The Noddy books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, making Noddy one of the most beloved and popular fictional characters ever.
- Richard Scarry children's books (especially the Busytown series) have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.
- J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series have sold an estimated 397 million copies combined in just 9 years, which would make them the fourth best-selling book if considered a single tome. It is the best-selling and most popular book series in history and there is also one more book still to be released in the series, which would further increase the total sales. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince holds the record for the fastest selling book, selling over 9 million copies in 24 hours.
[edit] Best-Selling Children's Books in the USA only (through the end of 2000)
[edit] Hardcover
| No. | Book | Author | First published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Pokey Little Puppy | Janette Sebring Lowrey | 1942 |
| 2 | The Tale of Peter Rabbit | Beatrix Potter | 1902 |
| 3 | Tootle | Gertrude Crampton | 1945 |
| 4 | Green Eggs and Ham | Dr. Seuss | 1960 |
| 5 | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | J.K. Rowling | 2000 |
| 6 | Pat the Bunny | Dorothy Kunhardt | 1940 |
| 7 | Saggy Baggy Elephant | Kathryn and Byron Jackson | 1947 |
| 8 | Scuffy the Tugboat | Gertrude Crampton | 1955 |
| 9 | The Cat in the Hat | Dr. Seuss | 1957 |
| 10 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | J.K. Rowling | 1999 |
[edit] Paperback
| No. | Book | Author | First published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charlotte's Web | E.B. White; illustrated by Garth Williams | 1952 |
| 2 | The Outsiders | S.E. Hinton | 1968 |
| 3 | Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing | Judy Blume | 1976 |
| 4 | Love You Forever | Robert Munsch; illustrated by Sheila McGraw | 1986 |
| 5 | Where the Red Fern Grows | Wilson Rawls | 1973 |
| 6 | Island of the Blue Dolphins | Scott O'Dell | 1971 |
| 7 | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | J.K. Rowling | 1999 |
| 8 | Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret | Judy Blume | 1972 |
| 9 | Shane | Jack Schaefer | 1972 |
| 10 | The Indian in the Cupboard | Lynne Reid Banks | 1982 |
Reference: Publishers Weekly, 2001 [3]
