What are the best selling books of all time? Here we have a list of the top ten, before we start the countdown though, time for some honourable mentions.
The Bible is widely believed to be the most printed and distributed book of all time. There must be more copies of it lying around in hotel rooms than there are many of the books in the top ten put together.
The bible is not a bestseller though, copies may have been brought and sold, but there is no reliable data for this, the majority of Bibles in existence will have been given away for free. The same applies for other religious and political texts, The Koran and The Communist Manifesto both being good examples.
Some books have been around for years, but have been repeatedly edited. The New China Dictionary makes the list, as it has only had a few additions over the years. Others such as Scouting For Boys or The Guinness Book of World Records have had wholesale changes with every editions. The first copy of Scouting For Boys included instructions for jumping trains and performing emergency throat surgery.
Fifty Shades of Grey just fails to make the list. At a mere 70 million copies it is still a little behind The Da Vinci Code sitting at number ten. Dan Brown’s venture into the mortality of Christ is now ten years old now though, with Fifty Shades only being released last year, he must be looking nervously over his shoulder.
The Da Vinci Code, along with the other nine bestsellers, is listed in the infographic below. It is staggering to think that these ten titles alone account for well over one billion books.
To store all these best selling books you would need a library the size of a small town! But what about digital storage? This infographic also shows just how many floppy disks you would need, along with other, less retro, methods.
These are some of the best selling books at this time. If you think there are new bestsellers at the time when you reach this infographic feel free to share with us.