What is the number 1 selling children's book of all time?

"" Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Image courtesy of Random House

Authors come and go, while others, especially those who scribe for children, withstand the yellowing of the folios. For generations, Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter and E.B. White have delighted parents and kids with their timeless tomes. No home library would be worth is shelf space without a mischievous cat in a hat, a lovable spider or a furry rabbit whose moniker is Peter.

While Seuss, White and Potter have been stalwarts on the best-selling list for generations, something wonderful, some would say magical, happened in the 1990s. A down-on-her-luck British writer, J.K. Rowling, waved a magic wand and changed children's literature forever. She introduced us to a boy wizard in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Seven books later, Rowling became one of best-selling authors on this or any other planet, as Hogwarts, Muggle and Quidditch nuzzled their way into our cultural lexicon.

Advertisement

Rowling's success blew holes in the all-time children's best-seller list. The magazine, Publishers Weekly, was the last to catalog the best children's books in 2001. That was long before Rowling's last volume in 2007, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", sold 15 million copies in the first 24 hours, eclipsing in one day the all-time children's best-seller, "The Poky Little Puppy", first published in 1942 [sources: Forbes; Random House].

By 2011, Rowling had sold 450 million or so Harry Potter books [source: ABC News]. We say "or so" because trying to corral the sales figure of a book is like trying to capture a Golden Snitch during a round of Quidditch. In fact, by the time you finish reading this sentence, a few hundred more Harry Potters and Cat in the Hats have been sold.

Go to the next page and thumb through the 20 best-selling children's books of all time incorporating the sales figures for, shall we say his name? Harry Potter. No doubt you might have favorite, or two.

This page provides lists of best-selling books and book series to date and in any language. "Best-selling" refers to the estimated number of copies sold of each book, rather than the number of books printed or currently owned. Comics and textbooks are not included in this list. The books are listed according to the highest sales estimate as reported in reliable, independent sources.

According to Guinness World Records as of 1995, the Bible is the best selling book yet written with an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed.[1] Sales estimates for other printed religious texts include at least 800 million copies for the Qur'an and 190 million copies for the Book of Mormon.[2] Also, a single publisher has produced more than 140 million copies of the Bhagavad Gita. The total number could be much higher.[3] Among non-religious texts, the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, also known as the Little Red Book, has produced a wide array of sales and distribution figures—with estimates ranging from 800 million[1] to over 6.5 billion printed volumes.[4] Some claim the distribution ran into the "billions"[5] and some cite "over a billion" official volumes between 1966 and 1969 alone as well as "untold numbers of unofficial local reprints and unofficial translations".[6][7] Exact print figures for these and other books may also be missing or unreliable since these kinds of books may be produced by many different and unrelated publishers, in some cases over many centuries. All books of a religious, ideological, philosophical or political nature have thus been excluded from the lists of best-selling books below for these reasons.

Many books lack comprehensive sales figures as book selling and reselling figures prior to the introduction of point of sale equipment was based on the estimates of book sellers, publishers or the authors themselves. For example, The Lord of the Rings as one text was recorded to have sold only 967,466 copies in the UK by 2009, but at the same time the author's estate claimed global sales figures of in excess of 150 million.[8] As such accurate figures are only available from the 1990s and in western nations such as US, UK and Australia. Further, e-books have not been included as out of copyright texts are often available freely in this format. Examples of books with reported high sales include The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas,[9] Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes,[10] Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en[11] and The Lord of the Rings[12] (which has been sold as both a three volume series, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, and as a single combined volume) by J. R. R. Tolkien. Hence, in cases where there is too much uncertainty, they are excluded from the list.

Having sold more than 600 million copies worldwide,[13] Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling is the best-selling book series in history. The first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, has sold in excess of 120 million copies,[14] making it one of the best-selling books of all time. As of June 2017, the series has been translated into 85 languages,[15] placing Harry Potter among history's most translated literary works. The last four books in the series consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books of all time, and the final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, sold roughly fifteen million copies worldwide within twenty-four hours of its release.[16][17] With twelve million books printed in the first US run, it also holds the record for the highest initial print run for any book in history.[18][19]

Key

[

edit

]

  Nonfiction

List of best-selling individual books

[

edit

]

More than 100 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 50 million and 100 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 20 million and 50 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 10 million and 20 million copies

[

edit

]

List of best-selling book series

[

edit

]

More than 100 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 50 million and 100 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 30 million and 50 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 20 million and 30 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 15 million and 20 million copies

[

edit

]

Notes

[

edit

]

The Perry Rhodan series has sold more than 1 billion copies,[319] but is not listed because that figure includes magazine sales, not novels alone.[citation needed] Similarly, the Jerry Cotton series has sold over 300 million copies, but most of these were in magazine format.[320]

The figures given for some books are for the number printed instead of confirmed sales.[which?]

More than 100 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 50 million and 100 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 30 million and 50 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 20 million and 30 million copies

[

edit

]

Between 10 million and 20 million copies

[

edit

]

See also

[

edit

]

References

[

edit

]