The bestselling books in world history

What is the best-selling book in history? The short answer: the Christians' Bible. But the rest of the list is not this simple. For most old books there are no official sales statistics, and the numbers you see in the lists are estimates; some have a solid source and some have merely been copied from this site to that site. On this page we have presented the most common estimates, and wherever a number is not reliable, we have said so.

Religious books

The Bible (Old Testament and New Testament), according to the estimate of Guinness World Records, has been printed and distributed in more than five billion copies and has been translated more than any other book. A large share of these copies have been distributed free of charge, so it is not "sales" in the precise sense of the word.

For the Quran there is no reliable estimate. The Quran is printed in very high volume in Muslim countries, but no international body has totaled the number of copies. What is clear is the very large number of manuscripts that have remained from the early centuries of Islam.

Best-selling novels

These are the most common estimates for single-volume novels. The numbers have been rounded, and most of them have been announced by publishers or newspapers, not an independent authority.

Book	Author	First publication	Sales estimate
Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes	1605	more than 500 million (no solid source)
A Tale of Two Cities	Charles Dickens	1859	about 200 million
The Little Prince	Antoine de Saint-Exupery	1943	about 200 million
The Lord of the Rings	J. R. R. Tolkien	1954	about 150 million
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	J. K. Rowling	1997	about 120 million
And Then There Were None	Agatha Christie	1939	about 100 million
Dream of the Red Chamber	Cao Xueqin	eighteenth century	about 100 million
The Hobbit	J. R. R. Tolkien	1937	about 100 million
Alice in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	1865	about 100 million

Read the first two figures in the table with caution. The figure of 500 million for "Don Quixote" is repeated everywhere in internet lists, but no trace of a real estimate is found behind it. For "A Tale of Two Cities" the situation is more or less the same. "The Little Prince" and "Harry Potter" have more documented estimates, because their publishers have published sales statistics.

Series: Harry Potter at the top

If we count multi-volume series, the seven-book Harry Potter series, with more than 600 million copies according to its publisher's report, is the best-selling fiction series in history. Behind it comes the Japanese manga One Piece by Eiichiro Oda, which by 2022 had sold more than 500 million copies. Fantasy and children's and young adult novels are very prominent in the list of best-selling series.

Nonfiction and political books

Quotations from Chairman Mao ("the Little Red Book") in the 1960s and 1970s in China was printed for almost everyone, and having it was practically mandatory. Estimates are from 800 million to more than one billion copies. For Marx and Engels' "The Communist Manifesto" too the figure of 500 million is often cited, but like "Don Quixote" it has no solid source.

Best-selling authors

Guinness World Records considers Agatha Christie the best-selling fiction author; estimates are more than two billion copies. For Shakespeare too figures in this same range are given, but his works have been printed for four hundred years in every format and language and counting them is almost impossible. After these two, names such as Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, and J. K. Rowling are repeated in the lists.

Several patterns in these lists

• The English language is dominant. Most best-selling novels have been written in English, and most of the authors are American or British. Part of this goes back to the size of the English-language market, and part to the fact that sales statistics have been recorded better in this same market.
• Fantasy and children's books have the largest share. Tolkien, Rowling, Saint-Exupery, and Lewis Carroll are all in this category. Children's books are bought by several generations in succession.
• Crime fiction is lasting. Agatha Christie has remained in the lists for almost a hundred years.
• Older books have a larger but less certain number. The older the book, the greater the gap between the announced figure and measurable reality.

The world's most famous books

Best-selling is not the same as best-known. Some of the most famous books have never reached the sales list, but they are repeated in almost every "world's best books" list. These ten books are among the most frequently repeated:

1. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (1869)
2. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
3. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)
5. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813)
6. 1984, George Orwell (1949)
7. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo (1862)
8. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville (1851)
9. The Odyssey, Homer
10. In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust (1913 to 1927)

From Persian literature, Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh," Rumi's "Masnavi," the "Divan of Hafez," Saadi's "Golestan," and the "Rubaiyat of Khayyam" have been translated into other languages more than any others. The Rubaiyat of Khayyam, with Edward FitzGerald's English translation in the nineteenth century, became one of the most widely read books of poetry in the world.

These figures alongside Iran's book market

To put these figures in perspective: according to Iran Book House (Khane-ye Ketab) statistics, the average print run per book title in Iran in 1404 (2025/26) was about 837 copies. This average was about 929 copies in 1402 (2023/24) and has so far fallen to about 712 copies in 1405 (2026/27). That means an ordinary Iranian book is printed in fewer than a thousand copies, and this figure has declined year after year. See the trend in print runs, the number of titles, and the share of translations on the Iran Book House dashboard: book publishing in Iran. The ebook and audiobook market is on the Fidibo dashboard.

Frequently asked questions

What is the world's best-selling book?

The Bible, with an estimated more than five billion copies. Among non-religious books, "Quotations from Chairman Mao," and among novels, provided older estimates are accepted, "Don Quixote."

What is the best-selling novel of the twentieth century?

By better-documented estimates, "The Little Prince" and "The Lord of the Rings." If series are counted, Harry Potter, whose first volume was published in 1997.

Who is the best-selling author in history?

Agatha Christie, according to Guinness World Records. Shakespeare has an estimate of similar scale, but it cannot be measured.

Sources

• Guinness World Records, records for the best-selling book and author
• The list of best-selling books on English Wikipedia and its sources
• Bloomsbury and Shueisha, Harry Potter and One Piece sales figures
• Iran Book and Literature House, publishing statistics for 1402–1405 (2023–2027)