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| Cover of The Little Prince |
This page provides lists of best-selling single-volume 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. This list is incomplete, since there are many books such as Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers, The Adventures of Pinocchio, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and the individual Harry Potter books which are commonly cited as "best-selling books" yet have no reliable sales figures. There is a separate section on this page for books known to have sold over 10 million copies, yet do not have figures for their final sales data.
The Ramayan, The Geeta (Gita), The Bible, the Qur'an, The Communist Manifesto and Quotations from Chairman Mao are widely reported as the most-printed and most-distributed books in the world, with hundreds of millions of copies of each of them believed to be in existence. Exact print figures for some such 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 such books have been excluded from this List of best-selling books for these reasons.
More than 100 million copies
| Book | Author(s) | Original language | First published | Approximate sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | English | 1859 | 200 million[1] |
| The Lord of the Rings | J. R. R. Tolkien | English | 1954–1955 | 150 million[2] |
| Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | French[Note 1] | 1943 | 140 million[3] |
| The Hobbit | J. R. R. Tolkien | English | 1937 | 100 million[4] |
| 紅樓夢/红楼梦 (Dream of the Red Chamber) | Cao Xueqin | Chinese | 1754[5]–1791 | 100 million[6] |
| And Then There Were None | Agatha Christie | English | 1939 | 100 million[7] |
Between 50 million and 100 million copies
Between 30 million and 50 million copies
Between 20 million and 30 million copies
Between 10 million and 20 million copies
| Book | Author(s) | Original language | First published | Approximate sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
English | 1963 | 19 million[66] | ||
English | 2006 | 19 million[67] | ||
English | 1973 | 18 million[68] | ||
English | 2007 | 18 million[69] | ||
English | 1947 | 16 million[70] | ||
Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) | German | 1979 | 16 million[71] | |
English | 1994 | 15 million[72] | ||
English | 1975 | 15 million[73] | ||
English | 1942 | 15 million[74] | ||
English | 1989 | 15 million[75] | ||
English | 1936 | 15 million[76] | ||
Das Parfum (Perfume) | German | 1985 | 15 million[77] | |
English | 1939 | 15 million[78] | ||
English | 1995 | 15 million[79] | ||
La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) | Spanish | 2001 | 15 million[80] | |
English | 1979 | 14 million[81] | ||
English | 1997 | 14 million[82] | ||
English | 1933 | 14 million[83] | ||
Va' dove ti porta il cuore (Follow Your Heart) | Italian | 1994 | 14 million[84] | |
English | 1952 | 13 million[32] | ||
English | 1967 | 13 million[85] | ||
English | 1964 | 13 million[86] | ||
English | 1975 | 13 million[87] | ||
ノルウェイの森, Noruwei no Mori (Norwegian Wood) | Japanese | 1987 | 12 million[88] | |
English | 1956 | 12 million[89] | ||
English | 1965 | 12 million[90] | ||
La Peste (The Plague) | French | 1947 | 12 million[91] | |
人間失格 (No Longer Human) | Japanese | 1948 | 12 million[92] | |
English | 1968 | 12 million[93] | ||
English | 1992 | 12 million[94] | ||
Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager (Man's Search for Meaning) | German | 1946 | 12 million[95] | |
Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy) | Italian | 1304 | 11-12 million (during 20th century)[96] | |
English | 1958 | 11 million[97] | ||
English | 1923 | 11 million[98] | ||
English | 1971 | 11 million[99] | ||
English | 1999 | 10.5 million[100] | ||
English | 1961 | 10 million[101] | ||
English | 1978 | 10 million[102] | ||
English | 1988 | 10 million[103] | ||
English | 1957 | 10 million[104] | ||
English | 2002 | 10 million[105] | ||
English | 1992 | 10 million[106] | ||
Spanish | 1995 | 10 million[107] | ||
Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (Night) | Yiddish | 1958 | 10 million[108] | |
English | 2003 | 10 million[109] | ||
于丹《论语》心得 (Confucius from the Heart) | Chinese | 2006 | 10 million[110] | |
English | 1974 | 10 million[111] | ||
知価革命 (Knowledge-value Revolution) | Japanese | 1985 | 10 million[112] | |
中国社会主义经济问题研究 (Problems in China's Socialist Economy) | Chinese | 1979 | 10 million[113] | |
English | 1970 | 10 million[114] | ||
French | 2000 | 10 million[115] | ||
English | 1972 | 10 million[116] | ||
English | 1965 | 10 million[117] | ||
English | 1962 | 10 million[118] | ||
English | 2001 | 10 million[119] |
