The SFF All-Time Sales List

[Werthead]

Full details here, but the quick version is as follows:

 

If an author is not present, that's likely because official sales figures have not been released yet. Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss, for example, should definitely be on here but as they have no official figures, I can't place them. That's also true for older authors like Philip K. Dick.

 

1) J.K. Rowling (c. 450 million)
2) Stephen King (c. 350 million)
3) JRR Tolkien (c. 300 million)
[Dean Koontz (c. 200 million)]
[Michael Crichton (200 million)]
4) Anne Rice (136 million)
5) CS Lewis (120 million+)
6) Stephanie Meyer (116 million)
7) Edgar Rice Burroughs (100 million+)
8) Sir Arthur C. Clarke (100 million+)
9) Andre Norton (90 million+)
10) Sir Terry Pratchett (85 million+)
11) Robert Jordan (80 million+)
[John Saul (60 million+)]
12) James Herbert (54 million+)
13) Richard Adams (50 million+)
14) Suzanne Collins (50 million+)
[Dennis Wheatley (50 million)]
[Jean M. Auel (45 million)]
[Morgan Llywelyn (40 million)]
15) Christopher Paolini (39 million)
16) Michael Ende (35 million)
17) Charlaine Harris (32.5 million)
18) Stanislaw Lem (30 million+)
19) R.A. Salvatore (30 million+)
20) Sherrilyn Kenyon (30 million+)
21) Robert Heinelin (30 million+)
22) George R.R. Martin (28 million+)
23) Kaoru Kurimoto (28 million)
24) Terry Brooks (26.5 million)
25) George Orwell (25 million+)
26) Marion Zimmer Bradley (25 million+)
27) Darren Shan (25 million+)
28) Terry Goodkind (25 million+)
29) Diana Gabaldon (25 million)
30) Cassandra Clare (24 million)
31) Kevin J. Anderson (23 million)
32) Eoin Colfer (21 million)
33) Isaac Asimov (20 million+)
34) Margaret Weis (c. 20 million)
35) Tracy Hickman (c. 20 million)
36) Brian Jacques (c. 20 million)
37) Kazumasa Hirai (c. 20 million)
38) Raymond E. Feist (20 million+)
39) Michael Moorcock (20 million)
40) Mercedes Lackey (20 million)
41) David Eddings (18 million+)
42) Frank Herbert (18 million)
43) Hideyuki Kikuchi (18 million)
44) Anne McCaffrey (18 million+)
45) Tad Williams (17 million)
46) Larry Niven (17 million)
47) Douglas Adams (16 million)
48) Brandon Sanderson (15 million+) (12 million WoT)
49) Rick Riordan (15 million)
50) Philip Pullman (15 million)
51) Yoshiki Tanaka (15 million)
52) Timothy Zahn (15 million)
53) Diana Wynne Jones (10 million+)
54) Robert E. Howard (10 million+)
55) Stephen Donaldson (10 million)
56) Neil Gaiman (10 million + )
57) Alice Sebold (10 million+)
58) Madeline L'Engle (10 million+)
59) Jerry Pournell (10 million+)
60) Chris Bunch (10 million+)
61) Allan Cole (10 million+)
62) Peter Straub (10 million+)
63) Frederik Pohl (10 million+)
64) Cyril M. Kornbluth (10 million+)
65) Gordon R. Dickson (10 million+)
66) Ray Bradbury (8 million+)
67) Christopher Golden (8 million+)
68) F. Paul Wilson (8 million+)
[bernard Cornwell (7 million+)]
69) David Weber (7 million)
70) Orson Scott Card (7 million+)
71) Roger Zelazny (6.5 million+)
72) William Gibson (6.5 million+)
73) Peter S. Beagle (6 million+)
74) Gregory Maguire (6 million+)
74) Laurell K. Hamilton (6 million+)
76) Jim Butcher (6 million+)
77) Jonathan Stroud (6 million+)
78) Barbara Hambly (6 million+)
79) L. Frank Baum (5 million+)
80) Daniel Keyes (5 million+)
81) Garth Nix (5 million)
82) Robert R. McCammon (5 million+)
83) Vonda N. McIntyre (5 million+)
84) Audrey Niffenegger (5 million+)
85) Sergei Lukyanenko (5 million+)
86) Frank Schatzing (4.2 million+)
87) Fritz Leiber (4 million+)
88) Lian Hearn (4 million)
89) David Drake (4 million)
90) Veronica Roth (4 million)
91) Tamora Pierce (4 million+)
92) Aaron Allston (3.3. million+)
93) Robert Harris (3 million+) (SF only)
94) Alan Dean Foster (3 million+)
95) Ursula K. Le Guin (3 million+)
96) Guy Gavriel Kay (3 million)
97) Lloyd Alexander (3 million)
98) Dan Abnett (3 million+)
99) John Ringo (3 million)
100) Joe Abercrombie (3 million)
101) Margaret Atwood (3 million+) (SF only)
102) Robert Silverberg (3 million+)
103) Eric Flint (3 million)
104) Scott Westerfield (3 million+)
105) Robert Asprin (3 million)
106) Rick Hautala (3 million+)
107) Brian Lumley (3 million+)
108) Neal Stephenson (3 million+)
109) Simon R. Green (2.7 million)
110) Kim Stanley Robinson (2.5 million+)
111) Harry Turtledove (2.5 million)
112) S.M. Stirling (2.5 million)
113) Michelle Paver (2.5 million+)
114) Max Brooks (2.4 million+)
115) James Dashner (2.3 million+)
116) Susan Cooper (2 million+)
117) Hans Dominik (2 million+)
118) Peter F. Hamilton (2 million+)
119) Brent Weeks (2 million)
120) Andrzej Sapkowski (2 million+)
121) Lois McMaster Bujold (2 million)
122) Katherine Kurtz (2 million)
123) Trudi Canavan (2 million+)
124) Stephen Lawhead (2 million+)
125) Robert Rankin (2 million+)
126) Maggie Stiefvater (2 million+)
127) Gregory Benford (2 million+)
128) Greg Bear (2 million+)
129) Jacqueline Carey (2 million+)
130) Piers Anthony (2 million+)
131) L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (2 million+)
132) David Gemmell (2 million+)
133) Justin Cronin (2 million+)
134) Kevin Crossley-Holland (2 million+)
135) Melanie Rawn (1.8 million+)
136) Jennifer Roberson (1.7 million)
137) Elizabeth Moon (1.5 million+)
138) Deborah Harkness (1.5 million+)
139) Susanna Clarke (1.5 million+)
140) Markus Heitz (1.5 million+)
141) Libba Bray (1.5 million+)
142) Seth Grahame-Smith (1.4 million+)
143) Dan Simmons (1.25 million+)
144) Stan Nicholls (1.25 million+)
145) Naomi Novik (1.2 million+)
146) Jack Campbell (1.2 million+)
147) Tanya Huff (1.2 million+)
148) Iain M. Banks (1.1 million+) (SF only)
149) Kelley Armstrong (1 million+)
150) Samuel R. Delany (1 million+)
151) Ed Greenwood (1 million+)
152) Paul S. Kemp (1 million+)
153) Connie Willis (1 million)
154) Sara Douglass (1 million)
155) Robin Hobb (1 million+)
156) Steven Erikson (1 million+)
157) Alastair Reynolds (1 million+)
158) Jasper Fforde (1 million+)
159) Ian Irvine (1 million+)
160) Richard A. Knaak (1 million+)
161) Katherine Kerr (1 million+)
162) Dave Duncan (1 million+)
163) A.C. Crispin (1 million+)
164) Hugh Howey (1 million+)
165) Joe Haldeman (1 million+)
166) Glen Cook (1 million+)
167) David Brin (1 million+)
168) Henry N. Beard (1 million+)
169) Douglas C. Kenney (1 million+)
170) Alexey Pehov (1 million+)
171) John Gregory Betancourt (1 million+)
172) Jo Clayton (1 million+)
173) Christie Golden (1 million+)
174) Drew Karpyshyn (1 million+)
175) David Mitchell (1 million+)
176) Ransom Riggs (1 million+)
177) Elizabeth Haydon (1 million+)
178) Peter V. Brett (925,000)
179) Chris Wooding (750,000+)
180) William King (750,000+)
181) Erin Morgenstern (650,000+)
182) Janny Wurts (500,000+)
183) Kevin Hearne (500,000+)
184) Alison Croggon (500,000+)
185) Michael Gerber (500,000+)
186) Hugh Cook (500,000+)
187) Gail Carriger (400,000+)
188) Gail Z. Martin (400,000+)
189) Lawrence Watt Evans aka Nathan Archer (400,000+)
190) Ben Aaronovitch (400,000+)
191) Lynn Flewelling (350,000)
192) Kate Elliott (300,000+)
193) Ernest Cline (300,000)
194) Mark Smith aka Jonathan Wylie aka Julia Gray (300,000+)
195) Julia Smith aka Jonathan Wylie aka Julia Gray (300,000+)
196) Scott Lynch (300,000+)
197) J.V. Jones (250,000+)
198) Mark Lawrence (250,000+)
199) Michael J. Sullivan (250,000+)
200) Karen Miller (250,000+)
201) Sharon Lee (250,000+)
202) Steve Miller (250,000+)
203) Karen Russell (210,000+)
204) James Barclay (200,000+)
205) R. Scott Bakker (200,000+)
206) Paolo Bacigalupi (200,000+)
207) Jaye Wells (200,000+)
208) David Dalglish (175,000+)
209) Daniel H. Wilson (160,000+)
210) Adam Roberts (150,000+)
211) Glen Duncan (150,000+)
212) Glenda Larke (120,000+)
213) James Lovegrove (100,000+)
214) Tom Lloyd (70,000+)
215) Russell Kirkpatrick (70,000+)
216) Hannu Rajaniemi (40,000+)

[Suttree]

Cool...interesting list. Thanks Wert!

[Red2111]

wait ...  so twitard is beating out both Robert Jordan AND GRRM??

 

 

da faq is this wrong with this world  o.0

 

 

 

edit - wait a tick.  Sparkly vampires are beating ...  ACTUAL vampires on that list.  *twitches a bit*

 

*gags*   

[BFG]

I'm more concerned that Star Wars Eragon is beating GRRM and RJ *shrugs*

[Mr Ares]

I'm more concerned that Star Wars Eragon is beating GRRM and RJ *shrugs*

Check again: he's only beating GRRM, and RJ has more than double Paolini's figures.

[Werthead]

True, but 40 million divided by 4 is a lot more readers than 80 million divided by 14 (or 15). That's rather concerning.

[BFG]

good points by both.

[Mr Ares]

True, but 40 million divided by 4 is a lot more readers than 80 million divided by 14 (or 15). That's rather concerning.

True. If I hadn't lost the last of my faith in humanity a long time ago, I would be losing it now.

[Plato]

Shouldn't Dan Brown be on there?  His silly books were #1 top selling forever...  Also missing Michael Crichton?  I guess they don't release their figures.

 

On the list at hand:  Ugh Steven King!?  I guess if you write 2-5 gems out of 100s of crap, you end up selling a few more books...

[Red2111]

well King also has his tv shows and movies to help boost his books sales, because the book is always better than the visual media.

[Mr Ares]

Shouldn't Dan Brown be on there?  His silly books were #1 top selling forever...  Also missing Michael Crichton?  I guess they don't release their figures.

From the actual blog post: "Michael Crichton has sold approximately 200 million copies of his novels. However, his books are a mixture of SF, sort-of-SF, political and/or crime thrillers and historical novels. Separating his sales out per-book is impossible." As for Dan Brown, I don't think his books really qualify as SFF - they're just badly written thrillers with implausible conspiracy theories.

[Werthead]

Yeah, Crichton has written 27 novels but only 8 of them are SF. By themselves they've probably sold tens of millions (they include most of his best-known novels) but it's impossible to quantify. I might move Crichton and Koontz into the list in holding places so people can see their figures for comparative purposes.

 

Dan Brown's work is not science fiction or fantasy.

[Red2111]

hey Wert, how come the list doesn't include the dude that wrote Sherlock Holmes?   you'd think with the recent movies and the amount of time his books have been around, he'd be on that list.

[Werthead]

Sherlock Holmes isn't SF. Also, there was a time (in the 1960s and 1970s) when the books were out of copyright before they were re-copyrighted. During that time every publisher who could published a Sherlock Holmes collection of some kind, which renders any kind of ability to keep track of their sales impossible.

[Werthead]

Updated.

[Werthead]

Updated. Brandon Sanderson has sold 15 million books, including 1.5 million of the first Mistborn novel by itself. Impressive.

[Werthead]

Minor update. Correction: Sanderson has sold 1.5 million copies of the Mistborn trilogy, not just the first book. He has sold 2.6 million non-WoT books to approximately 12.5 million WoT novels. This also takes WoT's official sales figure to over 56 million, the overwhelming majority of that in the United States and Canada. Worldwide sales will be a lot higher (possibly higher than the 80 million I have estimated).

[JenniferL]

That's a lot of books. 

[Werthead]

Indeed. One of the oddities of the list is that Jordan has sold an enormous number of books whilst never getting a TV series or movie made of the books: Andre Norton has sold slightly more, but that's spread over 300+ books, whilst Jordan's sales are 99% taken up by the WoT books. In fact, you have to go down to #18 to find another author (Salvatore) who's never had a TV series or film made of his books.

[Werthead]

Big update, taking us to 199 authors.

[Werthead]

Updated!

[Lilbaz]

Surprised grrm hasn't jumped higher since the tv series came out.

[Werthead]

Surprised grrm hasn't jumped higher since the tv series came out.

 

He has. He was sitting at about 5-6 million in 2008 ;)

 

That's an absolutely massive jump. He sold 9 million books in 2011 by itself, for example.

[Red2111]

I wonder how many of those in 2011 were DwD *nods*

[Werthead]

I wonder how many of those in 2011 were DwD *nods*

 

About 2 million, I think.