Top 18 Best-Selling Authors of All Time

Two billion copies here, four hundred novels there. Romance, horror, wuxia and children's rhyme all sit on the same shelf in this one.

1

Agatha Christie

Guinness World Records lists her as the best-selling fiction writer ever, at roughly two billion copies.

2

William Shakespeare

The English playwright whose collected works rival any novelist's sales four centuries on.

3

Barbara Cartland

The romance novelist who published more than 700 books and sold them by the hundreds of millions.

4

J.K. Rowling

The Harry Potter author, the best-selling novelist of the modern era.

5

Danielle Steel

The most prolific living romance novelist, with a book on the bestseller list almost every year since 1980.

6

Stephen King

The horror novelist whose titles have sold hundreds of millions and been filmed dozens of times.

7

Leo Tolstoy

The Russian novelist behind War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

8

Enid Blyton

The children's author of the Famous Five and Noddy, translated into 90 languages.

9

Georges Simenon

The Belgian creator of Inspector Maigret, who wrote roughly 400 books.

10

Dr. Seuss

Theodor Geisel, whose rhyming picture books taught much of America to read.

11

Jackie Collins

The novelist of Hollywood excess, with 32 New York Times bestsellers.

12

Harold Robbins

The mid-century American novelist whose potboilers sold in the hundreds of millions.

13

Paulo Coelho

The Brazilian author of The Alchemist, one of the most translated books alive.

14

James Patterson

The thriller writer who industrialised co-authorship and dominates airport shelves.

15

Nora Roberts

The romance and suspense novelist with more than 200 titles in print.

16

Jin Yong

The Chinese wuxia novelist whose martial-arts epics sold hundreds of millions across Asia.

17

Corín Tellado

The Spanish romance writer named by UNESCO as the most-read author in Spanish after Cervantes.

18

Ryōtarō Shiba

The Japanese historical novelist whose books sold by the tens of millions at home.