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I was interested to learn that Agatha Christie is the best-selling author in history (ahead of JK Rowling by well over 1 billion copies sold). Only Shakespeare

I was interested to learn that Agatha Christie is the best-selling author in history (ahead of JK Rowling by well over 1 billion copies sold). Only Shakespeare rivals her.

dredmorbius 3y ago
Mao Tse-tung (Zedong) is another rival, with Quotations from Chariman Mao Tse-tung having from 800 million to 6.5 billion printed copies, though a fair argument could be made that these were not market-based sales. The list of best-selling / most-published books includes the Bible (~5 billion copies), The Qur'an (~800 million), and the Book of Mormon (~190 million). Along with Mao's book, all of these share the characteristic of being propaganda, in the modern and/or original senses of the word, literally. Of individual books with a known author: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (>500 million), A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (>200 million), and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (~200 million) top the list. Rowling and Christie are 4th and 5th on that list. Rowling tops the list for book series (500 million), followed by R.L. Stein, and Erle Stanley Gardner (the Perry Mason series). Curiously, Shakespeare doesn't appear on the list. Wikipedia, caveat lector. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books>
- jononomo 3y ago
  Look at the Wikipedia page for best-selling authors, not best-selling books. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction...
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Ah, thanks, though that has some notable omissions. There's the note: Authors such as Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Rick Riordan, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Higgins, Isaac Asimov and Leon Uris have not been included in the table because no exact figures could be found. Mao also seems to be omitted. Certainty is a chimera.
    - jononomo 3y ago
      Mao deserves to be omitted. As for the others, they may be well known names, but in comparison to Agatha Christie they're off by a billion copies. They'd be lucky to compete with Danielle Steele.
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        Mao deserves to be omitted. On what basis, if you don't mind?
        jononomo 3y ago
        I guess I don’t think people were honestly buying and reading Mao’s pamphlet at the rate of billions. If Elon Musk printed 10 billion copies of some pamphlet he wrote and mailed a copy to every person in the world, that wouldn’t make him the best-selling author of all time. People actually read Agatha Christie novels. Agatha Christie’s novels aren’t “great literature”. Great literature does not get read by every third person in Earth. Tolkien has only sold 200 million copies, for instance — one tenth the numbers that Agatha Christie put up. Anyone can enjoy an Agatha Christie novel. I suppose Shakespeare counts as “great literature” (maybe the greatest?) but he had a head start on Agatha Christie by a few hundred years and is taught in practically high school and college in the world (and I would bet that Shakespeare is not read as much as he is sold). People don’t buy Agatha Christie novels just to display in their bookcase. Having said all that, and having read a ton of Agatha Christie novels as a kid, I guess I’m still surprised at how monumentally popular she was. Apparently she sells particularly well in French because Poirot is a popular character with French-speaking people.
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        Fair enough. What of the religious tracts (Bible, Qu'ran, Book of Mormon)?
        jononomo 3y ago

I was interested to learn that Agatha Christie is the best-selling author in history (ahead of JK Rowling by well over 1 billion copies sold). Only Shakespeare rivals her.

dredmorbius 3y ago

Mao Tse-tung (Zedong) is another rival, with Quotations from Chariman Mao Tse-tung having from 800 million to 6.5 billion printed copies, though a fair argument could be made that these were not market-based sales. The list of best-selling / most-published books includes the Bible (~5 billion copies), The Qur'an (~800 million), and the Book of Mormon (~190 million). Along with Mao's book, all of these share the characteristic of being propaganda, in the modern and/or original senses of the word, literally. Of individual books with a known author: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (>500 million), A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (>200 million), and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (~200 million) top the list. Rowling and Christie are 4th and 5th on that list. Rowling tops the list for book series (500 million), followed by R.L. Stein, and Erle Stanley Gardner (the Perry Mason series). Curiously, Shakespeare doesn't appear on the list. Wikipedia, caveat lector. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books>

jononomo 3y ago
Look at the Wikipedia page for best-selling authors, not best-selling books. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction...
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Ah, thanks, though that has some notable omissions. There's the note: Authors such as Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Rick Riordan, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Higgins, Isaac Asimov and Leon Uris have not been included in the table because no exact figures could be found. Mao also seems to be omitted. Certainty is a chimera.
  - jononomo 3y ago
    Mao deserves to be omitted. As for the others, they may be well known names, but in comparison to Agatha Christie they're off by a billion copies. They'd be lucky to compete with Danielle Steele.
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      Mao deserves to be omitted. On what basis, if you don't mind?
      - jononomo 3y ago
        I guess I don’t think people were honestly buying and reading Mao’s pamphlet at the rate of billions. If Elon Musk printed 10 billion copies of some pamphlet he wrote and mailed a copy to every person in the world, that wouldn’t make him the best-selling author of all time. People actually read Agatha Christie novels. Agatha Christie’s novels aren’t “great literature”. Great literature does not get read by every third person in Earth. Tolkien has only sold 200 million copies, for instance — one tenth the numbers that Agatha Christie put up. Anyone can enjoy an Agatha Christie novel. I suppose Shakespeare counts as “great literature” (maybe the greatest?) but he had a head start on Agatha Christie by a few hundred years and is taught in practically high school and college in the world (and I would bet that Shakespeare is not read as much as he is sold). People don’t buy Agatha Christie novels just to display in their bookcase. Having said all that, and having read a ton of Agatha Christie novels as a kid, I guess I’m still surprised at how monumentally popular she was. Apparently she sells particularly well in French because Poirot is a popular character with French-speaking people.
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        Fair enough. What of the religious tracts (Bible, Qu'ran, Book of Mormon)?
        jononomo 3y ago