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    [OC] Best Selling Books in History
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    [OC] Best Selling Books in History

    Methodology and Source: Counts are drawn from the latest publisher reports, scholarly estimates, and Wikipedia’s List of best-selling books (accessed May 2025). Totals for religious and political works reflect all printed or distributed copies, including free ones, rather than retail sales. Figures are approximate, rounded to the nearest 10 million (100 million for the Bible).

    The chart was rendered using using the data visualisation platform PlotSet.

    Posted by Eeagli

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    33 Comments

    2. jawstrock on

      Harry Potter was such a phenomenon that we millennials got to grow up with. Kids will probably never get to experience something like that again.

    4. Anxious-Shapeshifter on

      Hahaha oh man … I can’t wait to tell my Mormon friends that the Lord of the Rings has sold almost as many copies as the Book of Mormon.

    8. Connor49999 on

      Why does the Quran say 3,500 and not 3.5 billion to bring it in line with the other numbers. Or more accurately, why aren’t all the other numbers formatted like the Quran since the chart is meant to be in millions?

    9. The_Lucky_7 on

      This list is completely wrong. Euclid’s Elements is the second most published, translated, and distributed book in history and it didn’t even make the list.

    10. Skyconic on

      For just a second I got excited that Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s musical “Book of Mormon” was one of the best selling books in history. And then I remembered that it’s based on an actual insane religion that actually exists. Sigh

    11. Kiytostuo on

      It was honestly better the first time when you had Harry Potter as religious

    12. Edxactly on

      is it really “selling” when bibles are place din hotels, motels, given to people who don’t want them,etc..etc…etc..

    13. chesterforbes on

      Funny that there’s only one nonfiction book on here. At least it’s presumed that Little Red Book isn’t all made up

    14. CodeVirus on

      If we are looking at the whole series of books (like Harry Potter) wouldn’t Guiness World Records Book be the one that sold most?

    15. PyrrhoTheSkeptic on

      It seems unfair to use a series of books for Harry Potter, instead of counting the individual books.

      Also, if you are going to include book series, then your list is wrong, because the *Goosebumps* series has sold 400 million according to this:

      [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#List_of_best-selling_book_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#List_of_best-selling_book_series)

      And there are other series listed there that sold more than some of the books you have on your list.

      So I think you should revise the list, and consider the individual books in the Harry Potter series, and not take them all together. If you do, I don’t think Harry Potter will appear on the list at all, of the 10 biggest selling books.

    22. Illiander on

      > including free ones, rather than retail sales

      Web serials would like a word with your data sources.

    23. theschlake on

      I thought Anne Frank would be on here, but then I realized all the books on this list were fiction. Maybe that’s the qualifier.

    24. the_answer_is_RUSH on

      Why the Quran written as 3,500 when little red book is written as 1.1 billion?

    25. Fornad on

      The figure for LOTR is bogus. That 150 million figure dates back to at least 2007 so would be much higher now.

    26. Mr_Pnutbetter on

      Any post that uses superlatives such as “best”, “most”, “biggest”, “smallest” to describe the stat of interest especially in “all of history” context can neither be true nor accurate. Just a fun insight into what kind of biases the OP has or researchers have (that have contributed to the data source)!

    30. Lobsterman06 on

      So surprised the Book of Mormon is actually on the list that’s so funny

    33. Iwubinvesting on

      Idk don’t think it’s fair when one book is a thousand years and another 25 years ago.