Reading List · Bestsellers
Best-Selling Books of All Time
A Tale of Two Cities has sold more than 200 million copies, as many as The Little Prince. Below are the 25 best-selling books of all time, ranked by copies sold, with the source for every figure. Next to each: whether I would hand it to you, and where to buy it.
By Lisanne Swart · 25 books · Figures checked September 2026
The shelf · 25 books, the taller the spine the more copies sold
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
The Bible is the best-selling book of all time and the most sold book in the world, with an estimated 5 to 7 billion copies sold and distributed, according to Guinness World Records. Leave out religious and political texts and the answer is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, with more than 200 million copies, followed by The Little Prince (200 million) and The Alchemist (150 million). The full ranking of 25 is below, with the figure for every book and where each estimate comes from.
The 25 Most Sold Books in the World at a Glance
| Book | Copies sold | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens, 1859 | More than 200 million | Amazon |
| The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943 | 200 million | Amazon |
| The Alchemist Paulo Coelho, 1988 | 150 million | Amazon |
| Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling, 1997 | 120 million | Amazon |
| Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Xueqin, 1791 | 100 million | Amazon |
| Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll, 1865 | 100 million | Amazon |
| The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien, 1937 | 100 million | Amazon |
| And Then There Were None Agatha Christie, 1939 | 100 million | Amazon |
| She: A History of Adventure H. Rider Haggard, 1887 | 83 million | Amazon |
| The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown, 2003 | 80 million | Amazon |
| The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger, 1951 | 65 million | Amazon |
| Sophie's World Jostein Gaarder, 1991 | 60 million | Amazon |
| The Bridges of Madison County Robert James Waller, 1992 | 60 million | Amazon |
| Black Beauty Anna Sewell, 1877 | 50 million | Amazon |
| Heidi Johanna Spyri, 1880 | 50 million | Amazon |
| Anne of Green Gables L. M. Montgomery, 1908 | 50 million | Amazon |
| Charlotte's Web E. B. White, 1952 | 50 million | Amazon |
| Lolita Vladimir Nabokov, 1955 | 50 million | Amazon |
| The Ginger Man J. P. Donleavy, 1955 | 50 million | Amazon |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez, 1967 | 50 million | Amazon |
| Watership Down Richard Adams, 1972 | 50 million | Amazon |
| The Eagle Has Landed Jack Higgins, 1975 | 50 million | Amazon |
| The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco, 1980 | 50 million | Amazon |
| The Tale of Peter Rabbit Beatrix Potter, 1902 | 45 million | Amazon |
| Jonathan Livingston Seagull Richard Bach, 1970 | 44 million | Amazon |
Religious and political texts excluded. Often claimed but not ranked: Don Quixote and The Lord of the Rings. Read the full list ↓
The rankings
Three ways to count the books the world bought most
If You Only Read One
Sales tell you what was bought, not what is worth your evening. Two of the 25 below are on my own shelf.
If you want a novel that changes what fiction can do
One Hundred Years of Solitude
“The first fifty pages are dense and require patience. Get through them and the book opens into something extraordinary.”
If you want to see how a beautiful voice can lie
Lolita
“It teaches you to distrust a beautiful voice, and that lesson reaches well beyond fiction.”
The 25 Best-Selling Books of All Time
Ranked by estimated lifetime copies sold. Books with the same estimate are listed in order of first publication.
More than 200 million copies
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, two men who look alike and want opposite things, are pulled into the French Revolution until one of them takes the other's place. Dickens published it in weekly instalments in 1859, and it has been required reading in British and American classrooms for generations.
If you are curious about Dickens but have not started, try Great Expectations first: the same moral seriousness, and much harder to put down.
— Lisanne200 million copies
The Little Prince
A pilot crashes in the Sahara and meets a boy from a tiny asteroid, who has met a fox, a rose and a great many foolish adults. Translated into hundreds of languages, more than any other book outside religious texts.
If you have not returned to it as an adult, do.
— Lisanne150 million copies
The Alchemist
Santiago, a shepherd boy, crosses the desert towards Egypt in search of treasure and, on the way, of his Personal Legend. It sold poorly on first publication in Brazil before becoming a global phenomenon, and it holds the Guinness record for the most translated book by a living author. Older estimates put its sales at 65 million; current figures are far higher.
If you are looking for a book that asks the same questions more honestly, read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
— Lisanne120 million copies
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
An orphan living in a cupboard under the stairs learns on his eleventh birthday that he is a wizard. Published in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, it is the best-selling book in a seven-book series that has sold more than 600 million copies.
The first three are genuinely wonderful. After that it depends on your tolerance for very long books about teenage feelings.
— Lisanne100 million copies
Dream of the Red Chamber
The rise and decline of the aristocratic Jia family, centred on the heir Jia Baoyu and the two women he must choose between. Written in the mid-eighteenth century and left unfinished at the author's death, it is so central to Chinese literature that its study has its own name: Redology.
Why read itFor the density of its world: hundreds of characters, and a great household drawn so closely that you learn how it runs, down to its poetry games and its debts.
100 million copies
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
A girl follows a white rabbit down a hole into a country where nothing follows the rules she was taught. Its phrases have entered everyday English, and being long out of copyright is part of why it never stops selling.
Why read itAs an adult, for how seriously it takes nonsense: the logic puzzles and the wordplay hold up long after the rabbit hole has stopped being a surprise.
100 million copies
The Hobbit
Bilbo Baggins is pushed out of his front door by thirteen dwarves and a wizard and sets off for a mountain guarded by a dragon. Tolkien's first novel, and the prelude to The Lord of the Rings.
If you have to choose between this and The Lord of the Rings, start here. It is shorter, funnier, and trusts its reader more.
— Lisanne100 million copies
And Then There Were None
Ten strangers are invited to an island by a host who never arrives, and are killed one by one in the order of a nursery rhyme. The best-selling mystery novel ever written.
Read it in one sitting; that is how it was designed. If you want more Christie after this, Witness for the Prosecution is her best short work.
— Lisanne83 million copies
She: A History of Adventure
Two Englishmen travel to a lost kingdom in Africa ruled by an immortal queen, She-who-must-be-obeyed. One of the founding books of the lost-world adventure story.
Worth reading to understand where half of twentieth-century adventure storytelling came from.
— Lisanne80 million copies
The Da Vinci Code
A symbologist is called to the Louvre after a murder and follows a trail of puzzles towards a secret the Church has supposedly kept for centuries. The best-selling thriller of all time, and the second of Brown's Robert Langdon novels, a series that has sold around 200 million copies.
If you want a thriller that does something similar with better prose, read Donna Tartt's The Secret History instead.
— Lisanne65 million copies
The Catcher in the Rye
Sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield wanders New York for three days after being expelled from school, talking to almost no one honestly. The defining novel of adolescent alienation.
Why read itFor the voice, which still sounds like a real sixteen-year-old more than seventy years on, and for how much it lets you notice that Holden does not.
60 million copies
Sophie's World
A Norwegian teenager starts receiving mysterious letters that ask her who she is and where the world came from, and is led through the history of Western philosophy. Translated into more than fifty languages.
Why read itAs the gentlest introduction to philosophy there is: from the first Greek thinkers to Sartre, carried by a mystery that keeps the pages turning.
60 million copies
The Bridges of Madison County
A travelling photographer and an Iowa farmer's wife spend four days together in 1965 that shape the rest of their lives. Filmed in 1995 with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.
Why read itIn a single evening: it is short, and its whole weight rests on one decision, which is why readers still argue about it.
50 million copies
Black Beauty
The life of a horse, told by the horse, from an easy colthood through years of hard use to a quiet retirement. Published a few months before Sewell died, it was distributed by animal welfare campaigners to promote better treatment of working horses.
Why read itFor what it changed: few novels have done as much for the way people treat animals, and it still reads as plainly and directly as the day it was written.
50 million copies
Heidi
An orphaned girl is sent to live with her withdrawn grandfather in the Swiss Alps, and slowly opens him up. Switzerland's most famous literary export, first published in two parts in 1880 and 1881.
Why read itFor the mountains: few children's books make a landscape feel this much like a cure, for the grandfather and for everyone who comes up to visit.
50 million copies
Anne of Green Gables
An imaginative, talkative orphan is sent by mistake to an elderly brother and sister who had asked for a boy, and stays. It has had a devoted following in Japan since its first translation there in 1952.
If you liked it as a child, the second and third books are worth reading too.
— Lisanne50 million copies
Charlotte's Web
A spider saves a pig from slaughter by writing words in her web. Its subjects, friendship and the fact that things end, land as hard on adults as on children.
One of the rare children's classics I would recommend to adults entirely on its own merits.
— Lisanne50 million copies
Lolita
Humbert Humbert, writing from a prison cell, gives his own account of his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. Nabokov uses the most beautiful prose he could write to expose the ugliest possible self-justification. First published in Paris in 1955 and banned in several countries.
Why read itFor exactly the reason it unsettles: it teaches you to distrust a beautiful voice, and that lesson reaches well beyond fiction.
50 million copies
The Ginger Man
Sebastian Dangerfield, an American ex-serviceman studying at Trinity College Dublin, drinks, borrows and charms his way through post-war Dublin. First published in Paris and banned for obscenity in Ireland and the United States.
Why read itFor the prose, which lurches between first and third person as wildly as its hero lurches through Dublin, and for a charming scoundrel you are never quite allowed to like.
50 million copies
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Seven generations of the Buendía family found and lose the town of Macondo, through civil war, a plague of insomnia and years of rain. Central to García Márquez's 1982 Nobel Prize, and given a new wave of readers by Netflix's adaptation in 2024.
The first fifty pages are dense and require patience. Get through them and the book opens into something extraordinary.
— Lisanne50 million copies
Watership Down
A small band of rabbits flees a warren that is about to be destroyed and searches for a new home. It began as stories Adams told his daughters on car journeys, and won the Carnegie Medal.
Why read itAs an adult too: under the rabbit adventure sits a serious novel about leadership, and about the kinds of society people are willing to live in.
50 million copies
The Eagle Has Landed
A Second World War thriller about a German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill from an English village. Filmed in 1976.
Why read itIf you want a war thriller that gives the men on the other side real sympathy, which is rarer than it sounds, and a plot that keeps you guessing until the church bells ring.
50 million copies
The Name of the Rose
In an Italian monastery in 1327, the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his novice Adso investigate a series of deaths. A medieval murder mystery that is also a novel about books, heresy and the power of knowledge; filmed in 1986 with Sean Connery.
Why read itIf you like a mystery that trusts you: the long debates are part of the puzzle, and the labyrinthine library at its centre is one you will want to walk yourself.
45 million copies
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
A disobedient young rabbit squeezes into Mr McGregor's garden and only just gets out again. Potter first printed it privately before Frederick Warne published it in 1902.
Why read itAloud: the sentences are short, exact and funnier than you remember, and the watercolours are Potter's own.
44 million copies
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
A seagull who wants to fly for the joy of flying, rather than simply to find food, is cast out by his flock. A short fable that became a publishing phenomenon in the early 1970s.
Why read itIn half an hour, as a fable about practising something for its own sake, long after anyone else has stopped watching.
Often Claimed, Not Ranked
Two famous books appear at the top of many lists. They are not ranked here, because nobody has a reliable figure for either.
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605) — often said to have sold 500 million copies. It is probably the most published work of literature in history, but four centuries of editions by countless publishers make any sales figure a guess.
- The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (1954–55) — the Tolkien estate has claimed more than 150 million copies, but the book has been sold as one volume, as three and as six, so the figures cannot be compared with single books.
Just Outside the Top 25
Several books people expect to find in a top 25 sell fewer copies than you might think. These are the ones worth your time anyway.
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — about 40 million copies. Scout's voice is still one of the finest in American fiction. Books like To Kill a Mockingbird →
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — around 30 million. Very short, and so precise it almost hurts. Read my full book recommendation for The Great Gatsby →
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell — an estimated 30 million. Read it knowing it romanticises a world built on slavery.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell — no reliable lifetime figure, so it does not appear on the ranking, but it is the one book here I would put in anyone's hands. Books like 1984 →
What About Book Series?
Series are counted separately, because a series of seven or seventy books is not the same thing as a single novel. Harry Potter leads by a wide margin, with more than 600 million copies across seven books; only its first volume appears in the ranking above. The manga One Piece has also sold around 600 million copies, but comics are not counted here.
→ The full ranking of best-selling book series, with per-book sales
Most Sold, Most Printed, Most Read, Most Translated
Almost every list online treats these as one question. They are four, and the answers barely overlap.
Most sold book in the world
The Bible, with an estimated 5 to 7 billion copies sold and distributed. Among novels with reliable figures, A Tale of Two Cities, with more than 200 million.
Most printed book in the world
Also the Bible. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the Little Red Book, comes next, with estimates from 800 million to more than 6.5 billion printed copies; many were distributed rather than sold. Among reference books, the Chinese Xinhua Dictionary has sold around 567 million.
Most read book in the world
There is no figure for books read to the end, only for copies sold, printed or borrowed. On those measures the Bible leads by a wide margin. Among novels, short books that stay on school reading lists — The Little Prince, Charlotte's Web, The Catcher in the Rye — are read in full by far more of their buyers than a thousand-page classic.
Most translated book in the world
The Bible, which exists in whole or in part in thousands of languages. Outside religious texts, The Little Prince has been translated into more languages than any other book.
How This List Was Made
Every figure is an estimate of lifetime copies sold, taken from Wikipedia's list of best-selling books, which only includes estimates from reliable, independent sources. Nobody audits book sales the way box office is audited: publishers report what suits them, older records are patchy, and out-of-copyright books are printed by anyone who wants to. Treat every number here as a well-sourced approximation rather than a measurement.
Three rules shape the ranking. Religious and political texts are left out, because they are largely distributed rather than sold. Nonfiction has its own list in best-selling nonfiction books. And each series counts once, with its best-selling book: that is why only one Harry Potter novel appears, although every book in the series has sold more than 65 million copies.
Frequently asked questions about the best-selling books of all time
What is the best-selling book of all time?
The Bible, with an estimated 5 to 7 billion copies sold and distributed, according to Guinness World Records. If religious and political texts are excluded, the best-selling book is Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, with more than 200 million copies.
What is the best-selling novel of all time?
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859), with more than 200 million copies sold, followed by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince (200 million) and Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist (150 million).
Which best selling book should I read first?
If you want one you can finish in an evening, start with And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: it was built to be read in one sitting. If you want the one that repays you most, read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and give it fifty pages before you decide.
What best selling book makes the best gift?
The Little Prince works for almost anyone, at almost any age, and it is short enough to be read on the day it is given. For a child, give Charlotte's Web. For someone who loves a puzzle, give And Then There Were None.
Which best selling books are worth reading in 2026?
The ones that do not depend on the moment they sold in. Of the 25 on this list, I would start with One Hundred Years of Solitude, which Netflix's 2024 adaptation brought to a new generation of readers, then The Little Prince, And Then There Were None and Charlotte's Web.
Footnotes
- List of best-selling books — Wikipedia
- Best-selling book of non-fiction — Guinness World Records
- Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung — Wikipedia
- Xinhua Dictionary — Wikipedia
- The Little Prince — Wikipedia
- The Alchemist (novel) — Wikipedia
- Don Quixote — Wikipedia
Every figure on this page is checked against the sources above rather than assumed from memory. Figures last checked 16 September 2026.
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
If this list interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
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