10.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: 80+ Million
On this list, you will find some of the greatest
books that showcase some of the most esteemed
authors to ever live.
And then there’s The Da Vinci Code by Dan
Brown.
This book that has its own Wikipedia page
dedicated solely to people’s criticism of
it, ranging from its historical and religious
inaccuracies to its poor literary quality.
Despite this, some people must have liked
it because 80 million copies have been sold
since it was published in 2003, and the series
it’s a part of has inspired not one, but
three disappointing movies from Tom Hanks
and Ron Howard.
The book starts off with a murder in the Louvre
in Paris, and Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon
is called to the scene because the victim,
the curator of the museum, wrote a coded message
in blood.
Soon, Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu
Abraham are following clues to uncover a secret
that has been protected for over 2,000 years.
Since there are 80 million copies out there,
then there is probably a good chance you know
that the secret is Jesus Christ had children
with Mary Magdalene.
If you didn’t, well, at least now you don’t
have to read The Da Vinci Code and you can
pick a better book to spend
9.
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S.
Lewis: 85+ Million
Irish-born Clive Staples Lewis went to Oxford
University and specialized in literature and
philosophy.
After school, he was given a teaching position
with Magdalen College, which is a part of
Oxford.
While there, he joined the literary discussion
group, the Inklings, which included another
author on this list, who wrote the book in
our #6 spot.
Lewis was a prolific writer, but he is best
known today for his seven-book series The
Chronicles of Narnia.
The most famous book and introduction to the
series, and the bestselling book of the series,
is The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which
was published in 1950.
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe takes
place in 1940 and tells the tale of four English
siblings who are sent to the English countryside
because of the Blitz.
While there, they discover a magical wardrobe
that is a gateway to another world, Narnia,
which is full of talking animals and magical
creatures.
When the children arrive, the world is in
perpetual winter because the White Witch has
cast a spell to keep Narnia frozen.
To help their friends in Narnia, the children
must work together to defeat the White Witch
and break her spell.
At first, the critics didn’t love The Lion,
The Witch and The Wardrobe, but readers did.
It’s estimated that over 100 million copies
of it have been sold.
The other books in the series were also bestsellers,
but none of them reached the levels of the
first book.
8.
Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin: 100+
Million
One of China’s greatest novels is Dream
of the Red Chamber, or The Story of the Stone,
which was written by Cao Xueqin, a writer
and painter who was homeless and drank too
much.
He wrote the book in chapters during the 1750s
and he exchanged the chapters with friends
and family, often for food or some wine.
He died in his 40s in 1763.
A collection of the chapters formed into a
novel wasn’t published until 1791.
However, even today, it is debated what the
true version of the story is.
There have been alternate endings that have
survived and even completely different manuscripts
have popped up.
Today, there is an academic field solely dedicated
to studying the variations of Dream of the
Red Chamber called “Redology.”
Often compared to Gone With the Wind, Dream
of the Red Chamber is a sprawling saga about
the decline of a wealthy family and it is
full of astute observations about life in
18th century China.
It’s a massive book, the English edition
is over 2,500 pages long, and there are over
400 characters and several different story
lines.
One of the most famous storylines involves
a man named Jia Baoyu, who is in love with
one of his cousins, but he is forced to marry
a different cousin and this leads to a terrible
tragedy.
The book was a massive hit in China, especially
after a TV version was released in 1987, and
it is believed that over 100 million copies
of the book have been sold.
7.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie:
100+ Million1
Arguably the most famous crime writer of all
time is Agatha Christie, who is also considered
the bestselling author to ever live.
In total, she wrote 66 novels and 14 short
story collections and she supposedly sold
200 billion of them; which is 28 books for
every single person on Earth.
Her bestselling novel of all time is And Then
There Were None, which has a plot line that
is so famous that you’ve probably seen dozens
of variations of it in movies and television
shows.
In the book (which had a really, really unfortunate
original title), 10 strangers are lured to
an island under false pretenses.
The only thing that all of them have in common
is that they were all somehow involved in
the death of another person, but managed to
avoid punishment.
Then at dinner, they are accused of their
crimes and told that throughout the night,
they would be killed one-by-one.
Sure enough, the characters start to die in
a manner that resembles the lines in the nursery
rhyme “Ten Little Indians,” which is where
the novel gets its name, because the last
line of the rhyme is “And then there were
none.”
The killer and how they performed the murders
is then revealed in a post script.
The book, which is considered to be Christie’s
masterpiece, has sold over 100 million copies
to date.
6.
The Hobbit by J.R. Tolkien: 100+ Million
While he was a professor of linguistics at
Oxford University, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
was grading some papers when he suddenly wrote
a line about a creature called “a hobbit.”
From that line grew the book The Hobbit, which
was published in 1937.
At first, The Hobbit was considered a children’s
book.
However, that view continued to evolve with
the publication of the Lord of the Rings trilogy
in 1954 and 1955 and this expanded its audience.
The Hobbit has never been out of print and
got a resurgence when the Peter Jackson Tolkien
movies were released.
In total, it’s estimated that over 100 million
copies of The Hobbit have been sold.
Of course, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is
also a mega-bestseller.
According to Forbes, over 150 million copies
of the trilogy, which includes single books
and all three in a single collection, have
been sold.
5.
Harry Potter and Philosopher’s Stone by
J.K.
Rowling: 107+ Million
The story of Joanne Rowling, better known
as J.K., is almost as Cinderella-esque as
the protagonist of her blockbuster franchise,
Harry Potter.
Rowling was a single mother living on welfare
in Edinburgh, Scotland, and she typed the
original manuscript on a typewriter; meaning
that if she changed one paragraph, she had
to change anything that followed it.
When she finished the manuscript in 1995,
she looked around for a publisher, but was
rejected by a dozen of them.
One of the big problems with The Philosopher’s
Stone (which is called
The Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States)
is that it was twice as long as the average
children’s novel.
The winds of fate changed for Rowling when
the chairman of a small publishing house called
Bloomsbury let his 8-year-old niece, Alice,
read the first chapter of the book.
After she did, she demanded that he give her
the rest of the book.
Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book and
gave Rowling a $2,400 advance.
They also told her to get a day job because
people didn’t make a living from writing
children’s books.
Today, Rowling is worth about $910 million
(she was a billionaire, but dropped off of
Forbes billionaire list in 2012, because of
charitable donations and Britain’s high
tax rates), and it all stemmed from that book
that couldn’t find a publisher and no one
thought would be successful.
That first book in the series has sold over
107 million copies as of 2010.
The rest of the books in the Harry Potter
series were also smash hits and it is considered
the biggest book franchise of all time.
As of 2013, before the release of The Cursed
Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find
Them, there were 450 million Harry Potter
books in print.
4.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
140+ Million1
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French aristocrat,
writer, and pilot.
After the Fall of France, Saint-Exupéry went
into exile and ended up in New York City,
where he continued to write.
In the second half of 1942, he wrote and illustrated
his magnum opus, The Little Prince.
The novella was published in 1943 in North
America, even though it was originally written
in French because Saint-Exupéry spoke English
poorly.
It wouldn’t be published in France until
1946, an event that Saint-Exupéry wouldn’t
live to see.
In 1943, he joined the Free French Air Force
and in 1944, he disappeared while doing a
reconnaissance mission over Germany.
His ID bracelet was found 50 years later in
a fisherman’s net off the coast of Marseilles,
but his body has never been found.
The Little Prince looks like a children’s
book, but it actually has a lot of keen observations
and insights regarding human nature and relationships.
The book is about a pilot who crashes in the
Sahara desert and meets a young boy with curly
blond hair.
The boy tells the pilot that he’s a prince
that fell from a small planet called Asteroid
325, however on Earth we call it Asteroid
B-612.
The Prince left his home after he fell in
love with a rose and he caught her in a lie,
so he is traveling across the universe to
cure his loneliness.
While the story and the pictures are a bit
simplistic, the complexity of the emotional
impact has resonated with readers for decades.
It has been translated into 250 languages
and two million copies are sold every year.
Altogether, it’s estimated that 140 million
copies of The Little Prince has been sold
since 1943.
3.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: 150+ Million
Famed Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho’s beloved
novel The Alchemist was published in 1988,
and it is about Santiago, a young Spanish
boy who has a dream that urges him to go to
Egypt.
Before he sets out, he learns about the Personal
Legend, which is something that someone always
wanted to do with their life.
If someone decides to follow their own Personal
Legend, then the universe will try to help
them.
And the universe is a very powerful ally.
If the universe will bend to help a person
on their Personal Legend, then it’s possible
to do the impossible, like alchemy, which
is the process of turning lead into gold.
The book and its message of following one’s
dreams has made it a favorite of many famous
people.
Pharrell Williams gets choked up when he talks
about the book, while Will Smith thinks of
himself as a metaphorical alchemist.
If you know anything about Oprah, you shouldn’t
be surprised that Oprah loves it.
She suggested it to Madonna, who said that
it was life changing.
Of course, non-famous people also love The
Alchemist as well, quite a few of them in
fact.
In under 30-years, 150 million copies of The
Alchemist have been sold.
2.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens: 200+
Million
Charles Dickens was born into a poor family
in England in 1812.
When he was just 12-years-old, his dad was
put into prison over debt and Dickens had
to drop out and work in a run-down factory
labeling cans.
He was able to go back to school when he was
15, but only for a short time before he was
forced to drop out again to work as an office
boy to help out his family.
A year later, Dickens started working as a
freelance reporter.
He also became a notable cartoonist who published
under the name Boz.
His work as a writer and cartoonist eventually
led to his first novel, The Pickwick Papers,
which was published in 1837.
22-years later, Dickens’ published the book
that would go on to be his bestselling and
arguably his greatest piece of work, A Tale
a Two Cities.
The book takes place before and during the
French Revolution and is set both in England
and France.
It follows over a dozen characters, both peasants
and aristocrats.
It’s a rich and complex book that has been
a bestseller since it was published in weekly
installments from April 30 to November 29,
1859.
While it is impossible to figure out the exact
number of copies that have been sold in the
150 years since it was released, most estimates
put the sales figure at around 200 million
copies.
1.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra:
500+ million
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote
does have a huge advantage over the other
books on this list; mainly it’s centuries
older than all of them.
Don Quixote is considered the first modern
novel and was published in 1605.
It follows the adventures of Alonso Quixano,
an elderly man who lives in La Mancha, Spain.
As he loses his sanity, he reads books about
chivalry and decides to become a knight.
He declares himself Don Quixote de La Mancha
and sets out on his old horse, Rocinante,
with his loyal assistant at his side, Sancho
Panza, to right wrongs and dish out justice.
However, nothing goes right from the start
and he gets into a bunch of hilarious adventures.
The book was an instant hit when it was released
and it was reprinted six times in its first
year, but Cervantes didn’t profit much from
it and died poor in 1616.
After his death, the popularity of the novel
continued to flourish and the book is still
popular today.
In 2005, which was the 400th anniversary of
the original publication, 10 publishing houses
released a version of the book.
One version from the Royal Spanish Academy
sold out their entire stock of 600,000 copies
in two months in Spain and Latin America.
To get an estimate of how many copies of Don
Quixote have been sold since 1605, the website
Lovereading.co.uk, calculated how many editions
and how many translations classic novels have
gone through.
By their estimates, Don Quixote has been translated
into 25 languages and there have been 963
editions, which calculates to over 500 million
copies.
