The SFF All-Time Sales List

[Jussi]

Jo Clayton

Her works sold over a million copies.

Christie Golden

She has over a million books in print.

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist has really high number for David Eddings:

At last count, the man had sold over 18 million copies worldwide

[Werthead]

Interesting.

Andre Norton and Robert Jordan are the only authors in the Top 10 (and the only ones until Salvatore at #18) who have never had films or TV series made of any of their books. Norton can, to a certain extent, be excused because she had something like 300 books with her sales spread across most of them. Jordan is extremely unusual in that his enormous sales come from relatively few books and only one series (his non-WoT books certainly account for less than 5% of his sales) which makes the lack of any serious adaptation attempt all the more unusual.

[Jussi]

Edgar Rice Burroughs

His novels sold more than 100 million copies in 56 languages, making him one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century.

YA author Libba Bray

Sales of the author's Gemma Doyle trilogy are nearing 1.5 million copies total in the US, and have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

[Werthead]

Cheers. The latest update takes us to just under 200 authors.

[Jussi]

Jonathan Stroud

Since the first book, The Amulet of Samarkand, was published in 2003, the series has sold more than 6 million copies in 36 languages worldwide.

Barbara Hambly & Vonda N. McIntyre (2013)

OVER SIX MILLION COPIES OF BARBARA HAMBLY'S BOOKS SOLD

5,000,000 COPIES OF VONDA N. MCINTYRE'S BOOKS HAVE BEEN SOLD!

David Mitchell (2010)

whose novel Cloud Atlas has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell:

We have over 180,000 copies in print of our paperback edition.

http://edelweiss.abovethetreeline.com/ProductDetailPage.aspx?group=related&sku=0307947475

“Swamplandia!” sold more than 30,000 copies in hardcover, according to Nielsen BookScan

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/books/e-books-accelerate-paperback-publishers-release-dates.html

[Jussi]

Tamora Pierce (2006)

Her novels have been printed in other languages and have sold over four million copies worldwide.

Ransom Riggs

"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

R. Scott Bakker

I’m best known for a now immense epic fantasy series called The Second Apocalypse, which has been translated into more than dozen languages (most recently Chinese) and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide.

Kim Stanley Robinson (2010)

With total worldwide sales of around 2.5 million copies, in numerous languages, his perspective plainly has a following.

[Jussi]

Updated figures:

Audrey Niffenegger

Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, has sold nearly five million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages to date.

David Gemmell

his books have sold millions of copies worldwide.

Gail Z. Martin (2013)

I work very closely with the folks at Orbit to make sure we're all working hand-in-glove to get the word out. To date, it's helped me sell about 400,000 books worldwide, and I'm hoping it will help me sell even more in the future.

[Jussi]

Neal Stephenson

Stephenson has sold over 3 million copies of his books worldwide

Sergei Lukyanenko (2006)

Lukyanenko's trilogy has so far sold more than three million copies outside Russia.

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Over 3,000,000 copies sold World Wide

Tanya Huff

Over 1,200,000 copies of Tanya Huff's work in print in the United States!!

Lawrence Watt-Evans (1994)

A Hugo Award-winning sf writer who can boast that more than 400,000 copies of his Ethshar novels are in print

Elizabeth Haydon (2002)

The trilogy is a word of mouth mega-seller in the USA - 1 million copies in print

Julia Gray (2000)

with total sales of over 300,000 copies worldwide

[Werthead]

That Stephenson figure seems quite low, considering his mainstream crossover appeal and how long some of his books have been out and considered genre must-reads. I was thinking he'd be a lot closer to 10 million.

[Jussi]

Justin Cronin

The Passage (2010) and The Twelve (2012), the first two books in his sweeping trilogy about vampire-like creatures, have sold millions of copies worldwide.

The Twilight Reign by Tom Lloyd (2011)

The series has sold more than 70,000 copies.

Hannu Rajaniemi

40,000 of books one and two sold already.

Kevin Crossley-Holland

The Arthur trilogy has now been published in twenty-five languages and has sold almost two million copies.

[Jussi]

Scott Lynch

Lies has been delivering regular royalties for seven years now. It's sold about 300,000 copies in the US and UK/Commonwealth, and I don't have up-to-date figures for the rest of the world.

Ben Aaronovich

All four titles from the Peter Grant series – RIVERS OF LONDON, MOON OVER SOHO, WHISPERS UNDER GROUND, and BROKEN HOMES – have now sold over 400,000 copies across all formats

[Werthead]

Updated.

Jussi, you are a god amongst geeks :)

[Jussi]

Thanks! But I'm going to stop posting in this thread... I believe we have enough figures and authors.

[Werthead]

Agreed. There's a few I'm still targetting: Rothfuss and updated figures for Robin Hobb and JV Jones most notably.

[Leofric]

Interesting.

Andre Norton and Robert Jordan are the only authors in the Top 10 (and the only ones until Salvatore at #18) who have never had films or TV series made of any of their books. Norton can, to a certain extent, be excused because she had something like 300 books with her sales spread across most of them. Jordan is extremely unusual in that his enormous sales come from relatively few books and only one series (his non-WoT books certainly account for less than 5% of his sales) which makes the lack of any serious adaptation attempt all the more unusual.

The main character and his animal companions in the Beast Master movie and series were based on Andre Norton's book. The actual plot and setting is much different. And I think there have been discussions to do something based on her Witch World books. Not sure if any other of her stories have ever been filmed.

[Jussi]

There's a few I'm still targetting: Rothfuss and updated figures for Robin Hobb and JV Jones most notably.

It looks like Hobb's Farseer Trilogy has sold over a million copies by itself (in the UK and US).

It has been nearly eighteen years since ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE first turned up in book shops and achieved the status of a modern fantasy classic, launching a trilogy that went on to sell over a million copies in the UK and US.

I am also really gratified to see Hobb’s audience grow and grow, not just in the UK but throughout the world. She is that rare fantasy writer whose works are now eagerly read by people who do not normally read fantasy, and HarperVoyager and I feel there is super potential going forward.

http://harpervoyagerbooks.com/2013/10/17/brand-new-series-from-robin-hobb/

[Seli]

Since you smartly do not include comics only as a point of interest, according to wikipedia the 34 Asterix comic books by the original creators sold approximately 325 million copies worldwide.

[Jussi]

It pains me to say this, but didn't the first few Runelords books sell like hotcakes?

According to this catalogue, the UK sales are over 100,000 copies.

Trudi Canavan has sold 1.2 million books in the UK alone. She is "the bestselling new fantasy author of the last decade".

[Anatúrinbor]

Werthead, I just bought a copy of Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence, so maybe you can update his sales figure and make it 250,001?

I'm just joking, nice work.

[Werthead]

Werthead, I just bought a copy of Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence, so maybe you can update his sales figure and make it 250,001?

I could have done, but I sent one of my duplicate copies down to the charity shop yesterday, so that balances it out ;)