The Age of Mega-Authors: over one hundred million book sales By Sara Niles

Sara Niles 

There are best sellers in books, and there are epic, mega-bestsellers: books that have sold over one hundred million copies.  The authors who have had the distinction of being included among this very elite group, as mega-authors, are few.

The  book by author Agatha Christie that was published in 1939,  And Then There Were None reportedly sold over one hundred million copies worldwide;  which is no small feat considering the fact the prolific Christie has reportedly sold over four billion books worldwide, making Agatha Christie one of the  most prolific authors of all time.

Books that have sold over one hundred million copies include The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien and A Tale of Two Cites by Charles Dickens;  both English authors whose long running sales dated back to  the nineteenth century, which of course, gave them both a good head start

Since the dawn of the second millennium, there have been noteworthy authors who may eventually eclipse the former prolific champions for the prize of mega-authors; to name a few:

Barbara Cartland (1 billion), Danielle Steele (800,000,000), and JK Rowling (450,000,000)

From USA Today: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/story/2012/09/25/1582921/57839010/1,

Followed by Dean Koontz, Stephen King (350,000,000), and Louis L’Amour (330,000,000), with a pretty long list of authors who have sold over one hundred million books per volumes of work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors; however, there remain two distinct authors who are set far apart from the crowd: Suzanne Collins and E.L. Grey.

E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games topped the list in 2012 of book sales:  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/55383-the-bestselling-books-of-2012.html

AS of 2012 the Hunger Games reportedly outsold JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series with over fifty million copies sold worldwide. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/55383-the-bestselling-books-of-2012.html

Wow! Now that is a lot of book sales…but wait, Fifty Shades of Grey by Suzanne Collins has sold over seventy million copies, according to the Wall Street Journal in its March 26, 2013 issue: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323466204578384743129294104

The latter two authors, American author Suzanne Collins and English author E.L. James, are epic mega-authors whose names will live long in the annals of literature.

Writing and Authors: We Bring Life into our Books

Sara Niles

Into every book written by an author, there is a little bit of the author’s life and personality, whether the author writes fiction of nonfiction. Within each story there is some nuance of the voice behind the page, the man or woman who tirelessly toiled to create a story.

In the case of Stephen King the mega-author

(see King’s Mega-list:  

http://bookshopblog.com/2011/03/10/stephen-king-books-chronological-order/ ),

who wrote thousands upon thousands of pages of books that became best sellers, including many that were made into movies, King admits that his own life experience colored his writings:

“1988: “I have a sense of injustice that came; I think … My mother was a single parent. Her husband deserted her when I was 2, and she went through a lot of menial jobs. We were the little people. We were dragged from pillar to post…” Quoted from:http://www.horrorking.com/biography.html

King goes on to add:

“A lot of that sense of injustice stayed. It stuck with me, and it’s still in the books today.”

Agatha Christi, one of the world’s most prolific authors, traveled the world and spent 

many years in the orient, accompanying her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan. From Christie’s life experience came the book:  ’Murder on the Orient Express’ , written in 1934, and still a best seller today: 

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Express-Hercule-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B000FC12Z0/

The much repeated advice to write what you know, is a best practice for good authors, because what we know best, comes from life.

 Sara Niles

Author of Torn From the Inside Out

http://www.amazon.com/Torn-From-Inside-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00DLY9TW2/

What do authors love to read?

Sara Niles

Author of The Torn Trilogy

There many types of books, science fiction, crime drama, philosophy, fiction and nonfiction, but the one thing they all hold in common with best sellers is the writing. Good writing spans all genres of books, from the terse and concentrated style of writers like Ernest Hemingway to the elaborate long winded style of Thomas Wolf or the florid style of Danielle Steele. 

Some writers capitalize on the brilliance of their own intricate storytelling with twists and turns in every chapter, a rising crescendo of suspense and a satisfying conclusion that makes the reader happy to be where they are in real life, that is safe and alive, after an escape in to thrilling fantasy rife with danger.

Agatha Christie is one of, if not the most prolific author with over one hundred books and short stories published, not counting the plays and many other works. The best-selling book And Then There Were None (formerly Ten Little Indians), is one of the best-selling books of all time. So what is appealing about Christie as an author? The answer is simple; she was able to marry the skill of great storytelling with good writing.

Stephen King, John Grisham as well as a long list of other best-selling authors hold the talent to write well and tell a good story in common, which of course, explains their continuous ability to create best- selling books. If you have ever searched high and low for a good book to read, you may have come to appreciate the skill required to write one. 

Although taste in books is an individual thing, I love to read almost any style of writing if the writing is good and the story is believable and compelling and I delight in finding a new treasure. While doing my usual Saturday morning garage sale foraging, I discovered one such treasure in the form of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, a book written in the late 1980’s when it first became a runaway bestselling book which was made into a movie in 1990.

So what was my reaction after reading Presumed Innocent?

“I just completed Presumed Innocent (1987) by Scott Turow (Hardcopy edition) and was impressed significantly-not simply by the skillfully written story but by the skill of his writing. The entire book flows with literary gems, even normal reflection is laden with deep insight, literary metaphors and beautifully worded phraseology” (Excerpt from my book review of Presumed Innocent)

Now I feel compelled to read Turow’s latest works in the hopes that the author consistently produced in the style of his first masterpiece.