Talk:List of best-selling fiction authors

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A fact from List of best-selling fiction authors appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 April 2008, and was viewed approximately 1,600 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that 16 of the 72 fiction authors with at least 100 million copies of their works in print did not write in English, and 16 of the 72 are women?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/April.

Wikipedia

reliability of sources

The claim that only 16 of the top 72 best selling fiction authors didn't write in English surprised me. Then I noticed that almost the entire list of sources consists of English language newspapers. Newspapers aren't exactly the most reliable source to begin with (and as you can see the references repeatedly contradict each other), and English language newspapers are bound to focus much more on English books than anything else. Aren't there some better original sources to refer to than newspapers? Where did they get their figures from? There are probably a bunch of non-English speaking authors who have been overlooked by these newspapers.

Matt Oblivioid (talk) 18:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are more than welcome to add info from non English sources and from sources not available online. The article is not the definitive list, but is a list of what I was able to find online (already added to by other editors). It is exactly because these figures are uncertain that I added a minimum and maximum estimate (based on recent sources, it makes no sense to give a 2001 source for Rowling or a 1950 source for Christie). But for non-English authors: I have found a number of sources claiming that e.g. Karl May and Hermann Hesse are the only german authors with more than 100 million copies sold, and I have also read that there are very few Chinese mega-bestselling authors (fiction, so excluding Mao). I am quite certain that I miss a lot of authors (Spanish, most probably), but I have only added those for which I could find a source. Fram (talk) 19:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Im surprised to the lack of spanish writers there are here, also classical autors such as Aristoteles, Platon, etc. Im pretty sure Greek authors have sold more than half of the list showed here, and Miguel de Cervantes it's probably at the level of Shakespeare, if not whit more books sold. Also would be good to try to find numbers about Gabriel Garcia Marquez, another great selling author. Dan Brown (Da vinci code) should have accurate information in English since it's an american author, and im sure his book's sold pretty solid for a while.

I see... the "did you know" blurb on the front page made it sound that it was an established fact that "16 of the 72 fiction authors with at least 100 million copies of their works in print did not write in English", but if the list is incomplete that makes more sense. Anyway, good work, shame about its limitations. I'll try and find info on french and spanish sources if i have time... Oblivioid (talk) 22:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sort Broken

The sorting on this page is broken because it uses things like "1 billion" instead of "1,000,000,000" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.22.188 (talk) 22:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So far as I can tell, the sort is permanently broken. See User:TachyonJack/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors for a demonstration. Using 1,000,000,000 dosen't fix the sort, it does not really sort numerically. --TachyonJack (talk) 03:22, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of old sources

I am against the blanket removal of old sources. While some of them should perhaps be removed, some others are quite interesting. Has Robert Ludlum really sold more books in the seven years since his death than while he was alive? How did Horatio Alger lose 200 million books sold in thirty years (since the upper limit was removed here)? Of course one shouldn't include an estimate for e.g. J.K. Rowling from 2001 or so, but for authors where sales have slowed down considerably, an older estimate may still be very relevant. Please only remove the most blatant ones, or discuss on a case-by-case basis. Fram (talk) 11:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Probably because this list is a hotchpotched synthesis of various guesstimates by a wide variety of sources. Just to take a few of these:

To take the Alger example, the cite (from 1973(!)) states "has sold between 100 million and 400 million copies". How is that solid evidence he sold 400 million, and for that matter, why is the lowball estimate of 100 million not used as the low-end estimate? The low-end estimae is currently "Americans bought 200 million copies of his dime store novels" - this in itself is inherently faulty to use as a global sales figure, as books are available countries other than America.
The Janet Dailey one uses a low figure from a 1997 piece, which gives a sales figure, and the high end figure isn't even a sales estimate - it's a print one (sales and copies printed two things are not the same).
The Richard Scarry one - whose books continue to sell - uses a 1994 figure for the low estimate.
The 1998 Catherine Cookson piece says "more than 100 million" - notwithstanding there are a lot of numbers that are "more than 100 million", to retain this despite a 2008 figure being 120 million is deceptive.

Given the wholly arbitrary and wobbly factual nature of this list, I wonder if it even can be improved to a reasonable level of accuracy. fish&karate 14:44, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is because the "arbitrariness" of these figures that I included upper and lower limits, to give people some background and some ballpark figures. The list is not supposed to be the definitive answer to "who sold the most", and is not providing any new conclusions (the definition of synthesis): it is providing reliably, independently sourced items about a notable subject (claims of being "the bestselling (children's, female, thriller, living, ...) author" are being done all the time: this article tries to provide some background information on this, while making it clear that none of this is definitive or certain). If you have suggestions as to how we can improve this article (e.g. by replacing certain outdated sources with newer ones), then be mu guest. But to simply remove all older sources without making a distinction between them was too blunt for my taste. If you have serious misgivings about this list, you can always take it to AfD. Until then, I'll try to go through the sources this week, and replace outdated ones with more recent ones where possible. Fram (talk) 15:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By ranking the authors by these ballpark figures, the table does provide a conclusion, unfortunately. Were they listed alphabetically, then it probably would not. I would suggest any older sources relating to authors that are still widely published (not necessarily alive) are at best useless, and at worst misleading. I did initially pick an arbitrary cut-off of 10 years; how about we both try and update sources where possible this week, and then see where we are. fish&karate 10:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have not added a "numbers" or "rank" column on purpose, because I didn't want to read "according to Wikipedia, X is the 32nd bestselling author of all time" anywhere. However, to reflect the reality that probably 95% of the people looking at this list (and all similar ones) is most interested in some order by numbers, that's the way I sorted them by default. Category:Bestsellers are all (I think) listed by number of sales. (I know, it is not because everyone else is wrong that we should be as well, but I just wanted to indicate that it is the most usual method of sorting lists of bestsellers).

As for sources: I basically agree. But when a 2007 source says "500 million" and a 2000 source says "1 billion" (Barbara Cartland), what am I supposed to do? Similar problem with e.g. Erskine Caldwell. I'll try to find more recent sources for Simenon, Robbins, Steel, Tolstoy, Pushkin, King, Dailey, Wallace, perhaps Scarry, Yoshikawa, Rice, Smith, and Robins. But I fear that I did a pretty exhaustive websearch for most of these. If, while looking for sources, you come across any other author nor yet listed, I would obviously be grateful if you would add those as well. Fram (talk) 11:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've improved (I hope) Simenon, Robbins, Steele, King, Dailey, Wallace, Rice, Smith and Scarry. Only ones left (if I haven't forgotten any) are Tolstoy and Pushkin, Yoshikawa, and Denise Robins. All of those are decades or centuries dead, so older sources are not that outdated compared to living writers (although of course especially the first three are probably steady sellers). If there are any sources (or authors) left that you would rather see removed (if no better, more recent sources can be found), I would prefer to discuss it here first. If it means removing an author alltogether, then I would rather have them with an outdated figure than not at all. If it only removes oen of the two estimate, then I have less problems with that. I'm not trying to WP:OWN the article, I just hate to see a lot of hard work go to waste :-) Fram (talk) 14:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Non-fiction

Quick note for ambitious editors in need of a project: sure would be nice to have a similar page for non-fiction authors as well. That's really how I ended up on this page. -- B.Rossow ^talk_contr 14:43, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

here here! Totally agree!

Darrellx (talk) 16:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dr. Seuss

It says on this page that Dr. Seuss published 44 books whereas the "Dr. Seuss" wiki page says he published over 60 books. I only noticed this by "surfing" around. I have no knowledge of this author so I couldn't say which page is right, I just thought this problem needed to be pointed out. Someone who may know which is right should correct it accordingly. Munin75 (talk) 05:38, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Charles Dickens

It says that Charles Dickens has sold over 200 million books (as a max estimate). However, the source links to an article that says that just A Tale of Two Cities has sold over 200 million copies on its own. Seeing as Dickens wrote rather more than just one book, it looks like he's going to be much higher up the list than he is - seeing as ATOTC is the best-selling work of fiction of all time. I'd have thought he'd be in the top five anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.10.126 (talk) 13:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're totally right - the figure quoted for him is far too low, he has sold at least twice that. Unfortunately we need to prove it though - I've had a look round and I can't find any sources for his sales, at all.

Neither can I. I am pretty sure that he must have sold at least 700 million books. Go to any book store now and you will certainly find one easily. He has written at least 20 novels, 27 short stories and many, many, many more according to wikipedia's page "Charles Dickens bibliography"

Pranshu bhatnagar (talk) 11:39, 7 July 2010 (UTC)Pranshu[reply]

Jack London

Why no mention whatsover of Jack London? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.110.171.75 (talk) 07:44, 27 June 2010 (UTC) If anyone finds anything, don't hesitate to change this! 87.115.46.45 (talk) 16:58, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because we don't know of any reliable, independent source stating that he has sold more than 100 million copies of his books. While very popular, I don't know whether he reaches such figures or not. If you know of such a source, either add it to the article or (if you are unsure) post it here, and we can discuss it. Fram (talk) 07:39, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Twain

How is Mark Twain not on this list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.111.169.46 (talk) 13:06, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Date of first publication

To give the chart a little historical context, it would be interesting to add a column indicating date of first publication (or years active). (I should do it. But I can't today.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.93.178.132 (talk) 23:21, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

J.K. Rowling Number of Books

Rowling is currently listed as writing 7 books, presumably in reference to the Harry Potter series. However, she has published others: Her page lists an additional four (in addition to one short story). It seems prudent to include on this list all of her books, not just the most widely sold ones. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.91.41.159 (talk) 13:39, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Jacqueline Susann

I'm pretty sure that Jacqueline Susann belongs somewhere on this list. Her novels entered the Guinness Book of World Records because of their record breaking sales numbers. It escapes me as to how she could've been overlooked in this article. In total she wrote 6 books four of which were published during her lifetime. All were best sellers but her three major novels Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine, and Once is Not Enough were here most successful and continue to sell world wide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ariadavid (talk • contribs) 23:47, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Antoine De Saint-Exupery?

The number of sales from The Little Prince alone qualifies him for inclusion on the list.Gstridsigne (talk) 14:55, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, but we need a reliable source to indicate total sales numbers for him. Fram (talk) 06:54, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

200 million. The reliable source is on the List of best-selling books. There isn't much knowledge concerning sales for his other literature. Gstridsigne (talk) 12:05, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, feel free to add it at the appropriate spot (i.e. among the other authors whose max estimate is given as 200 million here)! Fram (talk) 13:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Steven King Sales Figures Update

Steven King has assuredly sold more than 300,000 books. The current figure comes from 2006, i.e. it's over a decade out of date. For example, this article[1] from publisher's weekly suggests that Stephen King has sold at least 600,000 books in 2014 alone. An update seems necessary. GeoffreyZanders (talk) 04:26, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comic book authors

I believe individual authors whose (fictional) work comes out in a series of books (not just issues in a magazine or newspaper) should be included on this list. I was mainly thinking of authors whose work comes out in the form of Tankōbon. 1Meticulous (talk) 08:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with this is that sales figures are often given for every type of publication together, e.g. for manga these are mainly the magazine sales. For other comics (European and American, I don't know if this applies in Japan as well) sales figures are given per series mainly, not per author (one series often had many authors). In general, it seems more useful and practical to create a list of best-selling comics series, not one for best-selling comics creators (or certainly to keep that latter one separate from this one). It's mainly that the way these are created, sold, and counted is too different to the other authors on this list, making them incomparable. Your additions would be more useful at List of best-selling comics probably (if you haven't added them there yet, that is). Fram (talk) 09:15, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Manga sales actually aren't the magazine sales (the magazines often have several different comics in them so those are not the ones that are reported on). Sales figures for Manga are given by series and when a series has an individual author (which is often) it fits the "best-selling fiction authors" article perfectly. I understand European and American comics having multiple authors is a problem so I think we should come up with a way to exclude those and include the ones that really do belong on this page, rather than exclude all comics based on the fact that some (maybe most) do not fit. 1Meticulous (talk) 10:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Where is Jeff Kinney?

I don't want to add him and get scolded, but where is Jeff Kinney? I thought maybe there was a list of best-selling children's fiction authors that he was on, but I didn't find one, and I think if J. K. Rowling is on here, and especially Enid Blyton, then Jeff Kinney should be too as he has sold over two hundred million across 13 books, which is very impressive.^[1] DJKinsella (talk) 16:49, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "Jeff Kinney to Hit the Road for The Meltdown". Publishers Weekly. September 25, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2018.

Tom Clancy?

Are we saying that Tom Clancy who has several films and games to his name, based on his books, has less than 100 million is sales? You cannot be serious! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hypernator (talk • contribs) 04:24, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusion of William Shakespeare unwarranted

While there's a section which includes known authors ("Miguel de Cervantes, Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne...) for whom no exact data could be found, one editor insists on placing William Shakespeare in the "best-selling" list, under the pretense that some sources make up arbitrary numbers of sales.

Shakespeare was not a fiction author; he didn't write books, nor publish stories. He was a playwright (and poet) who created plays to be performed-- which he didn't even "own" (they were owned by the theater company). Most of his creations weren't even put to print in his lifetime -- he only "authorized" three works to be published: Venus and Adonis (1593), The Rape of Lucrece (1594) and the poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle (1601). Everything else was based on "pirated" copies, collected or re-created from memory or prompt books of actors. There's no way to know what the sales of Shakespeare are, because there are no sales records stretching back to the 16th century; and publication of works ascribed to him have been public domain, since they existed before copyright, so there's no one bothering to track such sales now.

In short, he doesn't belong on a "best-selling" list, because his sales are unknowable, and all sources can do is come up with anecdotal numbers. Leflyman^Talk 13:26, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The first part of your post is unwarranted (Shakespeare has been included for years here, and now there is one editor insisting that he doesn't belong), the second is irrelevant (whether he published the works or they were published posthumously, illegally, whatever, has no bearing on inclusion or not, just like Kafka's works are not somehow "not" by him because he wanted them burned but they were published anyway). Then you make claims that plays are not fiction, which is weird. Which only leaves you with "no one tracks sales, so we don't know what the sale numbers are", which is why we have estimates as provided by reliable sources, instead of claiming exact figures. It's in the column headers, "min. estimated sales" and "max. estimated sales". Basically, there is no reason to exclude him, and if we had similar estimates for e.g. Cervantes, they would be included as well. Fram (talk) 13:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Shakespeare has been included for years here" is an example of the logical fallacy of Appeal to tradition -- just because something was done incorrectly before, does not justify continuing to do so.

Again, the reasons are quite clear: he is not a "best-selling fiction author" because 1) he didn't author fiction in the sense of creating works for publication (and thus sales); he created plays for performance which were later collected, edited and ascribed to him, after his death. Scholars continue to debate whether he even wrote all the plays under his name; his only confirmed extant written works, are his six signature on legal documents. (There's ongoing discussion that three pages of revisions to Sir_Thomas_More_(play) may also have been by him.)

2) There are no reliable sources for actual sales, just anecdotal. The text of the article itself says, "...have not been included in the table because no exact figures could be found." The supposed reliable source claims came from articles about Agatha Christie which included WP:weasel word anecdotes, "Only the Bible and Shakespeare's works are said to have sold more" and, "it has been suggested that only the Bible and Shakespeare's canon have outsold..." These are not reliable; there is no actual concrete information there.

As for Cervantes, there are quite a few sources listing Don Quixote having 500M sold (for example, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/best-selling-books.html and https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/this-book-sold-the-most-copies) -- but just as with Shakespeare, these number appear to be entirely anecdotal. Leflyman^Talk 14:26, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an "appeal to tradition", it's a counterpoint to your unwarranted "one editor insists on placing" about something which could better be described as "one editor insists on removing". Your contorted reasoning to exclude Shakespeare from a "list of fiction authors" is not convincing. Fram (talk) 14:54, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As for the "exact figures" quote, this doesn't mean "X has sold 150,209,327 books", nearly every entry here is an approximation in that regard. What "exact figures" means is that we don't include "many millions" or "is a bestselling author" or some such claims, but only claims with an "exact" number, like "100 million" or "more than 150 million" or so. If you have a suggestion for better wording than "exact figures" for this, then feel free to suggest something. Fram (talk) 14:59, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's understandable that as the originating editor of this article you have an incentive to protect your preferred original version. (Congrats, by the way, on the longevity of it -- you've been on Wikipedia, almost as long as I have.)

I stand by what I stated. By any measure, the listing of Shakespeare as "best-selling fiction author" of all time is tenuous, because the sources just aren't reliable. The works ascribed to him are humanity's literature, and immeasurably important-- but by the same token, not measurable in the same way as Agatha Christie, who wrote for publication in her own lifetime, and continues to be published, under copyright. Just because you established it as a "wikiality" in 2008, doesn't mean that it can't be changed to follow WP:RS 14 years later.

As noted on my Talk page, if you disagree with this assessment, please feel free to reach out for a WP:THIRD or seek WP:ARB. Leflyman^Talk 15:45, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As noted in policy, the burden is on you to get consensus to change the consensus version. Many writers have been discussed in the past 10+ years, some have been removed or placed elsewhere (see e.g. the many Tolkien discussions). You are now trying to change the long-standing version, this is opposed, so it is up to you to get consensus for your preferred version. Fram (talk) 16:01, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Some sources

2006: [2] "[...] Christie is [...] apart from William Shakespeare, the all-time best-selling author of any genre. Her books have sold over 2 million copies in the English language and another billion in over 45 foreign languages" (so Shakespeare: more than Christie, #1, at least 3 billion)
2017, Guinness World Records

These still have the exact same problem as the original claimed source: the parenthetical "apart from William Shakespeare" is not a number; nor is based on any actual information, just arbitrary anecdote. What is being counted? No single work of Shakespeare appears on *any list* of books anywhere. It's just taken as gospel that he's the single "best-selling author." Leave him in the presumptive group of "many, many copies of works have sold, but no real numbers are known" -- and be done with it. --Leflyman^Talk 15:55, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

John Grisham

On what planet has John Grisham written only 22 novels? His Wikipedia page lists 45 novels, so that would be at least a good starting point. 2600:1011:A018:7A8:DCC6:F25A:7C89:2570 (talk) 19:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Could we also include the birth and dead age of each author so people can order it by century/year?

[1] "Jeff Kinney to Hit the Road for The Meltdown". Publishers Weekly. September 25, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2018.

[1]