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. 1
   William Shakespeare

   The English playwright whose collected works rival any novelist's sales four centuries on.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Dr. Seuss

   Theodor Geisel, whose rhyming picture books taught much of America to read.
   867pts
3. 3
   Agatha Christie

   Guinness World Records lists her as the best-selling fiction writer ever, at roughly two billion copies.
   570pts
4. 4
   Barbara Cartland

   The romance novelist who published more than 700 books and sold them by the hundreds of millions.
   0pts
5. 5
   J.K. Rowling

   The Harry Potter author, the best-selling novelist of the modern era.
   0pts
6. 6
   Danielle Steel

   The most prolific living romance novelist, with a book on the bestseller list almost every year since 1980.
   0pts
7. 7
   Stephen King

   The horror novelist whose titles have sold hundreds of millions and been filmed dozens of times.
   0pts
8. 8
   Leo Tolstoy

   The Russian novelist behind War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
   0pts
9. 9
   Enid Blyton

   The children's author of the Famous Five and Noddy, translated into 90 languages.
   0pts
10. 10
    Georges Simenon

    The Belgian creator of Inspector Maigret, who wrote roughly 400 books.
    0pts
11. 11
    Jackie Collins

    The novelist of Hollywood excess, with 32 New York Times bestsellers.
    0pts
12. 12
    Harold Robbins

    The mid-century American novelist whose potboilers sold in the hundreds of millions.
    0pts
13. 13
    Paulo Coelho

    The Brazilian author of The Alchemist, one of the most translated books alive.
    0pts
14. 14
    James Patterson

    The thriller writer who industrialised co-authorship and dominates airport shelves.
    0pts
15. 15
    Nora Roberts

    The romance and suspense novelist with more than 200 titles in print.
    0pts
16. 16
    Jin Yong

    The Chinese wuxia novelist whose martial-arts epics sold hundreds of millions across Asia.
    0pts
17. 17
    Corín Tellado

    The Spanish romance writer named by UNESCO as the most-read author in Spanish after Cervantes.
    0pts
18. 18
    Ryōtarō Shiba

    The Japanese historical novelist whose books sold by the tens of millions at home.
    0pts

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