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)
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. James.
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.
