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The SFF All-Time Sales List


Werthead

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I don't know if it's made up or a misunderstanding of some kind, but it's certainly not accurate. The Wikipedia page for Erikson himself lists the same no-longer-extant source (and a second source that also contains no such claim) for a figure of 10,000,000 copies by 2012, which is also implausible. Wert pointed it out just a couple years ago when Erikson's UK publisher announced he had hit the one-million mark worldwide. If he had sold nineteen, or even nine, million copies subsequent to that, he'd have gotten on all the bestseller lists in the process.



Edit: a closer look at the Wikipedia edit history shows that it's just well-intentioned users making mistakes (someone trying to add the one-million figure to Erikson's page but mistyping it, then someone else "fixing" it under the assumption it was meant to say ten million) or being odd (the person who added the 20,000,000 figure also added the line "This series is one of the most influential epic fantasy novels in the modern time," though that was later deleted). I'll fix it.


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Robin Hobb's Bantam numbers:

Bantam launched the Robin Hobb name in May of 1995 with Assassin's Apprentice, and that book alone has been in continuous print since, with sales of nearly half a million copies.

Robin Hobb is a major backlist staple for us, with over 2 million copies in print, and over 300K in ebook sales.

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How much money do writers such as Erickson, GRRM, Abercrombie, Sanderson ect make from all these sales? 2 million sales sounds like a lot, but does it make them rich or is writing not really a high paying job regardless of sales?

Usual royalty rate (which depends on the advance; a great many authors never "earn out their advance") after the advance is subtracted is 15% wholesale for hardcover and 10% for MMPB (and perhaps e-books now?). Or you could say 50¢ or thereabouts for most MMPBs as a minimum and go upwards of $1.50 for a hardcover. But considering that Erikson (unless you're talking about Steve Erickson, who has written many fine novels over the past thirty years) got something like a few hundred thousand £ advance for the entire 10 volume Malazan Book of the Fallen series, it would take sales of a few hundred thousand combined for him to start earning royalties for his series. But yes, if you sell in the hundreds of thousands of copies, even MMPBs, you'll eventually make some money. Just keep in mind that royalty checks are roughly twice a year and there is a long lag from the initial sale date to the first check (and even longer if it takes a long time to pay out the advance).

As for the sales figures for the overall list, I received a new Pratchett book in the email a couple of weeks ago from Knopf and in their press release, they said he had sold over 75 million worldwide, so there is a discrepancy there with the info provided in this thread.

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Hobb is translated in several languages, so the numbers should be increased by some margin. How big depends on how big the author is and how widely translated - for instance, Hobb or Martin are translated more often than Banks or Erikson, so far.

The huge numbers for Tolkien obviously take that into account, and it's quite possible that there have been more sales of LOTR translations than of the original in English.

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Pratchett's figures are all over the place, depending on differing press releases given out at different times. Pratchett's sales seem to go up by 5 million+ per year and his differing publishers do different press releases for it when it does. 80-85 million certainly seems to be the current figure, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it go up more soon. But some other publishers do seem to be relying on older, smaller figures.



I'm more surprised that Tor don't do similar updates for Jordan. Jordan is about to hit, or may have now passed, 60 million sales in the USA and Canada alone, and must be now around 90 million worldwide. I'm surprised they're not shouting that from the rooftops.


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Kevin J Anderson has twice as many as Timothy Zahn? Aren't both of them primarily getting thier sales from Star Wars EU books (of which Zahn's are far more popular?) Or am I simply not aware or Anderson's doubtless outstanding work in other areas?

Kevin J. Anderson also co-wrote the newer post Frank Herbert "Dune Books" which imo are of dubious quality. helps put him higher on the list.

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Since Stephen King is about 75% of the sales of JK Rowling, is he close to being a billionaire too? Obviously he's rich, but I've never heard anyone refer to him as that rich. I guess because his sales are from a much longer and gradual career, no one's noticed?


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Since Stephen King is about 75% of the sales of JK Rowling, is he close to being a billionaire too? Obviously he's rich, but I've never heard anyone refer to him as that rich. I guess because his sales are from a much longer and gradual career, no one's noticed?

Net worth of about $400M.

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Weird that Joe Abercrombie has sold three times as much books as Iain Banks.

He hasn't. That's Banks's SF sales in the UK alone. Banks's non-SF absolutely dwarfed his SF in sales. The Wasp Factory by itself appears to have sold more than all of his Culture novels and other SF works combined.

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Since Stephen King is about 75% of the sales of JK Rowling, is he close to being a billionaire too? Obviously he's rich, but I've never heard anyone refer to him as that rich. I guess because his sales are from a much longer and gradual career, no one's noticed?

I guess having an all ages book would help. A great film adaptation of "The Stand" or "the Dark Tower" would probably help him a lot though.

He hasn't. That's Banks's SF sales in the UK alone. Banks's non-SF absolutely dwarfed his SF in sales. The Wasp Factory by itself appears to have sold more than all of his Culture novels and other SF works combined.

Again some adaptation of the Culture books would probably remedy that. We can only hope someone will try, Would make a nice pseudo anthology show with a season per book.

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