Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Most of those stats depend on how you define things. For example, most of the books prior to the 1980's first appeared as a serial in magazines (that is how I first read Zelazny's Amber series), so shouldn't magazine sales be included?
Asimov's original Foundation trilogy is actually a group of novellas that were packaged as a trilogy for the connivance of the publisher. The LOTR's trilogy was actually a single book that was broken into three parts for the publisher.
So, should they be considered a single book rather than a series?
Traditionally, science fiction and fantasy has been lumped together and there are quite a few books that are a blend of the two. For example, is Star Wars, SF or Fantasy? Should Dune be considered a fantasy since it includes elements that are fantastic rather than science based?
Azimov's Foundation Trilogy list sales as 20 million, excluding magazine sales. The LOTR trilogy of 150 million, while the Hobbit has sales of 100 million. Rowling's last Harry Potter book had sales of 44 million (apparently the individual sales figures for the first six haven't been reported publicly). Dune is listed as sales of 12 million.
Right now, I can't find sales figures for Ender's Game. That could be because it started as a short story, was then made into a novel and has been revised a couple of times, so the question becomes how to you count that? The fact that it isn't in the list is most likely because either the figures aren't publicly available than because it hasn't sold enough copies to make the list.
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I read Dune (and quite a few others that later made it into paperback) in Analog SF and F