Table of Contents
- 1 How many books have sold a million copies?
- 2 What is the most copies a book ever sold?
- 3 Which author has sold the most books ever?
- 4 What percentage of royalties do authors get?
- 5 Who is the number 1 best-selling author?
- 6 Who are the best-selling authors of all time?
- 7 How do you find the sales numbers for an author?
How many books have sold a million copies?
More than 100 million copies
| Book | Author(s) | Original language |
|---|---|---|
| Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | J. K. Rowling | English |
| The Little Prince | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | French |
| Dream of the Red Chamber | Cao Xueqin | Chinese |
| And Then There Were None | Agatha Christie | English |
What is the average number of copies a book sells?
The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Those blockbusters are a minute anomaly: only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year, and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000.
What is the most copies a book ever sold?
25 Best-Selling Books of All-Time
- #1 – Don Quixote (500 million copies sold)
- #2 – A Tale of Two Cities (200 million copies sold)
- #3 – The Lord of the Rings (150 million copies sold)
- #4 – The Little Prince (142 million copies sold)
- #5 – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (107 million copies sold)
What is the average number of books sold by a new author?
There are all kinds of statistics bouncing around out there, but generally speaking, most self-published authors will likely sell around 250 books or less. A few years ago, the industry was buzzing when statistics revealed that the average self-published author earns less than $500 from her books.
James Patterson is the world’s highest-paid author by a wide margin, and has been the world’s best-selling author since 2001. He has sold more than 350 million books worldwide, and is most famous for the “Alex Cross” crime novel series.
How many copies do first time authors sell?
The average traditionally published non-fiction book sells about 250-300 copies in the first year, but when we manage a book launch, our target is to sell 1,000 copies in the first 3 months. Why 1,000? Because at that number of sales, a book has the momentum it needs to keep spreading by word of mouth.
Under standard royalties, an author gets roughly 20 to 30\% of the publisher’s revenue for a hardcover, 15\% for a trade paperback, and 25\% for an eBook. So, very roughly, every hardcover release that earns out brings the author something like 25\% of all revenue earned by the publisher.
How many books does an author have to sell to be a bestseller?
What does it take to be named a best-seller? The general consensus is that if you want to make your way onto a best-seller list, any best-seller list, you have to sell at least 5,000 books in a week, or maybe 10,000. Beyond that, things get complicated depending on which list you’re looking to end up on.
Top 100 best selling books of all time
| Rank | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| SOURCE: NIELSEN BOOK SCAN | ||
| 1 | Da Vinci Code,The | Brown, Dan |
| 2 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | Rowling, J.K. |
| 3 | Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | Rowling, J.K. |
How many copies does a book sell in its first year?
The majority of New York Times bestselling books sell from 10,000 to 100,000 copies in their first year. During the period studied, Dan Brown’s book The Lost Symbol held the record with 3 million copies sold in one year followed by The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and Go Set a Watchmen which sold 1.6 million copies each.
There are best-selling authors, and then there are mega-best-selling authors — writers who have sold 100 million copies or more. Writers like Ken Follett, Nora Roberts, James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. And there may be more of them now than ever.
How rare are self-published books that sell well online?
While self-published books sold online only are likely to sell half as many copies, the author gets more money per copy, making them as good a bet for income (as per the Author Earnings blog, for That’s very, very rare. There are roughly 1,000,000 titles published every year in the US alone. About 10 of them will hit this level of sales.
While finding precise sales numbers for any given author is nearly impossible, the list is based on approximate numbers provided or repeated by reliable sources. “Best selling” refers to the estimated number of copies sold of all fiction books written or co-written by an author.