The SFF All-Time Sale List (vol 2) (updated Dec 2018)

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

Is there a particular Reddit page where SFF fans post regularly? Or is posting activity spread out across numerous pages, from what you've seen?

r/fantasy (which despite the name also covers SF, but mostly fantasy). There are several SF reddits but the communities don't seem to have the same all-round coverage.

[Jussi]

Sapkowski has sold over 15 million Witcher books. Front cover of the new Gollancz edition of Sword of Destiny:

https://img.aijaa.com/b/00493/14856171.jpg

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Jussi said:

Sapkowski has sold over 15 million Witcher books. Front cover of the new Gollancz edition of Sword of Destiny:

https://img.aijaa.com/b/00493/14856171.jpg

Impressive, a big jump over the previous figure of 6 million.

[Jussi]

Jasper Fforde update (from the Edelweiss catalog):

His books have sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide.

 

Kristin Cashore update:

https://www.amazon.com/Winterkeep-Kristin-Cashore/dp/0803741502/

Graceling Realm series, which has sold 1.3 million copies.

[TerokNor]

Stumbled upon this 1995 Usenet thread in which John M. Ford details some of his numbers and estimates 1 million+ copies in print.

[TerokNor]

I recently spotted this 1978 cover for Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, stating 500.000 copies sold. The Stars My Destination probably also sold a bunch on top of that.

[TerokNor]

John Scalzi recently gave a number in this blog post: 5 million copies sold worldwide, that number being from ca. 2016.

Also, until recently very much below my radar regarding SFF, there is Nora Roberts, whose Eve Dallas/In Death novels written as J.D. Robb have sold more than 66 million copies . Some of her work written as Roberts is also genre and probably adds several million on top of that.

[Jussi]

Mark Lawrence update

Jorg has sold approaching 2 million copies of his stories and made a mark on many hearts.

[Jussi]

Becky Chambers:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0062936042

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has sold 131,600 units combined and continues to backlist extremely well.

 

Adrian Tchaikovsky:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0316705853

His blockbuster novel Children of Time and its sequel sold over 100,000 copies.

 

James S.A. Corey update:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0316332917

The Expanse series has sold over 3.5 million copies in the English language, and every new hardcover sells more copies than the previous.

 

Daniel Abraham update:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0316421847

Abraham's epic fantasy series The Dagger and the Coin has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide

 

John Gwynne update:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0316539880

Gwynne's debut series, The Faithful and the Fallen, has sold more than 200,000 copies across all formats.

 

Andrzej Sapkowski's American numbers (from Orbit US):

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=031639209X

From the show launch in December 2019, the Witcher series became the bestselling fantasy series of 2020. Since the series first published, we have sold 5 million copies net across all formats.

[Jussi]

Jenn Lyons:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=1250225736

The Ruin of Kings, Jenn Lyons' debut novel, has grossed over 100k copies across all formats since publication — making it one of Tor's most successful debuts in the last decade.

 

Sarah J. Maas update:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=1635574072

Her books have sold more than fourteen million copies and are published in thirty-seven languages.

 

Victoria Aveyard update:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0062872621

Victoria’s debut series, Red Queen, has sold over 3 million copies since its release

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Jussi said:

Jenn Lyons:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=1250225736

The Ruin of Kings, Jenn Lyons' debut novel, has grossed over 100k copies across all formats since publication — making it one of Tor's most successful debuts in the last decade.

That's a good indication of how unusual it is that the last decade didn't really have a mega-selling, break-out author. Even Maas's series was more at the Tad Williams level of success rather than say the Brandon Sanderson/Pat Rothfuss, let alone the Robert Jordan/Terry Pratchett.

[Jussi]

Emily St. John Mandel update:

https://time.com/5804007/emily-st-john-mandel-station-eleven-coronavirus/

The hugely popular Station Eleven, which has sold 1.5 million copies

 

Kiera Cass update:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0062291661

Kiera’s books, including the #1 New York Times bestselling Selection series and #1 New York Times bestselling The Siren, have sold almost 7 million copies.

[Jussi]

Ian C. Esslemont

Quote

This incredibly atmospheric and action-packed epic fantasy from million copy seller Ian C Esslemont is a must read for fans of Steven Erikson, David Gemmell and Brandon Sanderson.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Jussi

[IlyaP]

On 7/3/2021 at 7:00 PM, Jussi said:

Daniel Abraham update:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=0316421847

Abraham's epic fantasy series The Dagger and the Coin has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide

Excellent news. This series deserves a lot of love and attention, as it is so goddamn good.

[Jussi]

The Stormlight Archive is now more popular series in the US than A Song of Ice and Fire. From the Edelweiss catalog:

 

THE BIGGEST SERIES IN FANTASY: Sanderson’s #1 NYT and USA Today bestselling Stormlight Archive series has become the strongest-selling fantasy series in the industry, with 2020 sales outperforming the likes of Game of Thrones, the Kingkiller Chronicles, the Dresden Files, and Dune.

TREMENDOUS SERIES GROWTH: Stormlight Archive sales continue to grow in frontlist and backlist with every volume, and Rhythm of War has been no exception, grossing nearly 800K copies in all formats in less than 9 months, a 32% increase on Oathbringer.

MASS MARKET DOMINANCE: In 2020, Brandon Sanderson was the #1 science fiction & fantasy mass market author in America. The Stormlight Archive series has shipped more than 1M MM copies in North America alone, and Way of Kings is a regular fixture on nationwide MM bestseller lists.

[Werthead]

On 10/2/2021 at 10:38 PM, Jussi said:

The Stormlight Archive is now more popular series in the US than A Song of Ice and Fire. From the Edelweiss catalog:

THE BIGGEST SERIES IN FANTASY: Sanderson’s #1 NYT and USA Today bestselling Stormlight Archive series has become the strongest-selling fantasy series in the industry, with 2020 sales outperforming the likes of Game of Thrones, the Kingkiller Chronicles, the Dresden Files, and Dune.

TREMENDOUS SERIES GROWTH: Stormlight Archive sales continue to grow in frontlist and backlist with every volume, and Rhythm of War has been no exception, grossing nearly 800K copies in all formats in less than 9 months, a 32% increase on Oathbringer.

MASS MARKET DOMINANCE: In 2020, Brandon Sanderson was the #1 science fiction & fantasy mass market author in America. The Stormlight Archive series has shipped more than 1M MM copies in North America alone, and Way of Kings is a regular fixture on nationwide MM bestseller lists.

There's some hard "from a certain point of view" justification going on there.

Total lifetime sales of the four Stormlight books seem to be under 4 million (The Way of Kings passed 1 million last year by itself, and Rhythm of War is at 800,000 after a year, so we can assume averaging out sales of 1 million per each of the other books), which is very impressive by modern epic fantasy metrics but microscopic compared to A Song of Ice and Fire, which is well north of 90 million and potentially closing in on 100 million (and still neck and neck with Wheel of Time). 

Also, given that Tor sell Stormlight but not ASoIaF, Kingkiller or Dresden, I find their assurance they know how much those series are selling comparatively to be somewhat dubious, especially given that Dresden dropped two new books last year and is among the biggest-selling urban fantasy series of all time.

Otherwise what the sales blurb tell us is that Stormlight sold more copies of the latest volume in the series published under a year ago than series which have not had a new volume in a decade (although I note they exclude WoT from the comparison, perhaps a sign that WoT sales are surging ahead of the TV show), to which the answer is, "Duh." If The Winds of Winter came out tomorrow, it would (probably) bury the latest Sanderson comparatively.

Stormlight's performance is extremely impressive in hardcover, but it's overall sales performance seems slightly disappointing compared to Mistborn, which seems to comfortably remain Brandon's biggest-selling series.

Edited October 6, 2021 by Werthead

[Jussi]

https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/JenniferJackson/

 

Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries series

* Over One Million copies sold!

Edited December 13, 2021 by Jussi

[Ran]

This thread and the Sanderson-related marketing doublespeak reminds me of a post I made last month calling into question the sales figure estimates for the Wheel of Time series. Figured I linked it here to see if anyone wants to take my research efforts further and see if they can find any other reliable information on how many books the series has sold.

The best Tor figure for national and global sales I can find was in their 2007 press release announcing Sanderson would complete the series: 14 million NA, and "over 30 million" worldwide, which I take to mean 16 million+ in the rest of the world. The question is how many more books sold between 2007 and now. Werthead had some information on the sales of Sanderson's WoT books from his agent.

As I indicate, I am really dubious of how the figure jumped from 30 million in 2007 to over 90 million now, and I suspect the number is actually in the low 40 millions at this point in time.

[Werthead]

There is no way that The Wheel of Time has sold that low a number of copies. It's international sales profile, all the information from Orbit and Tor and the information I had from Sanderson's agent heavily contradict that. I do agree there was a lot of confused figures being thrown around though, and some of Tor's sales data seems to contradict itself.

The main takeaway is that the 14 million in North America and 30 million "worldwide" claim seems to have been highly confused. I've had it that the correct figure in 2007 was 44 million in North America with an undisclosed number of copies outside North America (apart from 5 million in the United Kingdom, which given the size of our population is absolutely enormous). Why that very specific 14/30 split came up is interesting, though.

However, I saw some claims back in 2007 that the 44 million claim was worldwide (i.e. it was 14 million NA + 30 million ROW = 44 million total) at the time. In which case a doubling of those sales in the 14 years between 2007 and 2021 is plausible, given WoT's near-constant, blanket profile in venues like Goodreads, Amazon and r/fantasy. I would note that a 14 million NA / 30 million ROW split feels off, though, 

That said, if Tor turned around tomorrow and said mea culpa, the 90+ million sales are erroneous and the correct figure is ~75 million, I wouldn't be too surprised (and good news for GRRM and Pratchett, who'd have way more daylight between them and RJ in that event). But 40 million is implausibly low at this stage.

Several points of comparison:

• Terry Goodkind had apparently sold 25 million books by the mid-2000s. Tor have been very consistent in that Goodkind was their second-biggest-selling author behind RJ, ergo RJ had sold well over 25 million books by the same time period (as you'd hope, with a half-decade head start and a much better series).
• Sales of ~40 million would put Robert Jordan at less sales than Terry Brooks and barely more than R.A. Salvatore. From a sales profile and perspective, RJ absolutely buries both of those authors (in themselves still two of the biggest-selling living fantasy authors). Each new WoT novel was a Major Publishing Event in a manner that the latest Drizzt or the latest Salvatore never has been, even now.
• By 2018 Brandon Sanderson's three Wheel of Time novels had sold 12 million copies by themselves, which clearly does not compute with the eleven (or twelve) non-Sanderson novels selling 40 million.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Werthead

[Ran]

 

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The main takeaway is that the 14 million in North America and 30 million "worldwide" claim seems to have been highly confused.

What is the mechanism by which PW's info from Tor and distributors can be so wildly wrong, then? I cite direct quotes over years where the progression of NA book sales were steadily increasing at the rate of ~780k per year, and then somehow in the decade between the sales tripled.

Just to quickly quote what I wrote:

Quote

A great source is just old Publisher's Weekly reports, because they pulled their data directly from publisher releases and distributors. 1998: "first 7 books ... more than 7 million" in NA . 2000: "Tor calculates that there are more than 10 million in print" seems to be NA and takes us through Winter's Heart. 2005: "So far, the series has sold more than 12 million copies in North America". That fits perfectly with 2007's announcement from Tor of 14 million NA after Knife of Dreams is included. 

No one has better sales data on their own books than a publisher, as you noted re: Sanderson. The exact number of books printed and sold are absolutely under their control. Short of them deliberately lying back in the late 90s through the mid-2000s, which seems crazy (why undersell how well the books have done when marketing them?), I can't see how this is possible.

14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I would note that a 14 million NA / 30 million ROW split feels off, though, 

Yes. 14 million + 16 million is much more reasonable.

14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Terry Goodkind had apparently sold 25 million books by the mid-2000s.

At which point Jordan had over 30 million, so was firmly the #1 seller for Tor. I don't see the objection. Goodkind, like Jordan, was a NYT bestseller at a certain point, debuting at #1 and all. They were very similar in sales, however bizzare it may seem now, but Jordan was ahead of him.

17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Sales of ~40 million would put Robert Jordan at less sales than Terry Brooks

It's worth considering that publishing in the 70s and early 80s was different than it was in the 90s. Paperbacks were much more disposable (in part due to some tax-related issues in the U.S. that the Supreme Court only changed at the end of the 70s) and print runs were much bigger. In 2016, Random House/Del Ray reported that they had "26 million copies in print" in North America, which I absolutely believe is true... but a big thing here is that "copies in print" is not at all the same as "copies sold", which is another issue with some of these things. Like the 2000 estimate of 10 million copies in print of WoT is not the same as copies sold, as well. 

 

29 minutes ago, Werthead said:

barely more than R.A. Salvatore.

Salvatore has done in 50 books what Jordan and Sanderson did in 14. Is this really strange?

30 minutes ago, Werthead said:

By 2018 Brandon Sanderson's three Wheel of Time novels had sold 12 million copies by themselves, which clearly does not compute with the eleven non-Sanderson novels selling 40 million.

That absolutely has to be a global figure for the sales of his books, or at least how many of his books are in print. If we just extrapolate that average backwards, that would suggest 56 million copies  sold/in print worldwide for the whole series. I'd be willing to run with that instead of my lower estimate, but that's still a damned far sight away from 90 million.