The Best Selling Books of All Time (Full List)
The Best-Selling Books of All-Time (Ranked in Order)
In 2021, Dan Pilkey’s Children’s novel, Mothering Heights, sold an astounding 1.3 million estimated copies. As one of the only 2 books to sell over a million copies in the year, the novel became the best overall selling print book in 2021. A super impressive total, one that is extremely difficult to replicate in the modern era of reading. Apart of an extremely popular 10 book series, Dog man’s Mothering Heights has an extraordinary youth following, something that’s quite common in lists of the best selling titles.
According to research by Google, over 130 million books have been officially published in modern history. Some titles are clearly a lot more well known than others. According to Publishers Weekly, the average published book will sell 500 total copies. A very few select stories will achieve best-selling status. If a story is ultra popular then it will be possibly ranked by the New York Times the Amazon best selling list. Beyond that we enter a special category, a pantheon very few stories will achieve in our lifetime: the top selling books of all time. As referenced before, Mothering Heights sold 1.3 million copies in 1 year. Even though this is amazing, it doesn’t come close to reaching the list of best selling books of all time. It would take a story with a flabbergasting level of audience. Out of curiosity, we reviewed and gathered a list of the best selling novels of all time:
The following ranking includes a top 30 ranking of all of the best-selling in modern history. Best-Selling is ranked by publisher copies sold. Please note that many titles such as The Bible or The Quran are not included because their sales are difficult to estimate. Books like those have sold billions of copies over the centuries, but since there’s no complete archive of publisher records or sales figures they aren’t included for that reason. Please note that a lot of these sales figures are low because they don’t consider the resale of used books. Verified publisher sales in new condition are used and are a best gathered estimate. Many individual books are resold many times, if these figures were possible to track the numbers would be much higher.
The 30 Best-Selling Books of All-Time:
#1. Don Quixote (500+ million copies sold)
Miguel de Cervantes
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#2. Xinhua Zidian (400+ million copies sold)
the Commercial Press
#3. The Hobbit (150+ million copies sold)
J. R. R. Tolkien
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#4. The Lord of the Rings (140+ million copies sold)
J. R. R. Tolkien
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#5. A Tale of Two Cities (142+ million copies sold)
Charles Dickens
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#6. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (120+ million copies sold)
J.K. Rowling
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#7. The Little Prince (100+ million copies sold)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#8. Dream of the Red Chamber (100+ million copies sold)
Cao Xueqin
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#9. And Then There Were None (100+ million copies sold)
Agatha Christie
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#10. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (85+ million copies sold)
C. S. Lewis
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#11. She: A History of Adventure (83+ million copies sold)
H. Rider Haggard
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#12. The Adventures of Pinocchío (80+ million copies sold)
Carlo Collodi
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#13. The Da Vinci Code (80+ million copies sold)
Dan Brown
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#14. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (77+ million copies sold)
J. K. Rowling
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#15. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (65 million copies sold)
J. K. Rowling
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#16. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (65+ million copies sold)
J. K. Rowling
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#17. Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix (65+ million copies sold)
J. K. Rowling
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#18. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (65+ million copies sold)
J. K. Rowling
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#19. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (65+ million copies sold)
J. K. Rowling
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#20. The Alchemist (65+ million copies sold)
Paulo Coelho
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#21. The Catcher in the Rye (65+ million copies sold)
J. D. Salinger
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#22. The Bridges of Madison County (60+ million copies sold)
Robert James Walker
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#23. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (50+ million copies sold)
Lew Wallace
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#24. You Can Heal Your Life (50+ million copies sold)
Louise Hay
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#25. One Hundred Years of Solitude (50+ million copies sold)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#26. Lolita (50+ million copies sold)
Vladamir Nabokov
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#27. Heidi (50+ million copies sold)
Johanna Spyri
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#28. The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (50+ million copies sold)
Benjamin Spock
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#29. Anne of Green Gables (50+ million copies sold)
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Paperback / Hardcover / Audiobook / Ebook
#30. Black Beauty (50+ million copies sold)
Anna Sewell
