Something to aim for?

[gmw]

While researching something else I stumbled over Wikipedia's List of best-selling fiction authors and thought it interesting. (Note that a number of important authors don't appear on the list because reliable details have not been found - including Dickens and Austen and others.)

First off, imagine publishing 4000 books! That's what Corín Tellado achieved. I think I've left my run a little late. The front runners (of this best-selling list) by volume include:

John Creasey (English, Crime thriller) 600
Barbara Cartland (English, Romance) 723
Enid Blyton (English, Children's literature) 800
Corín Tellado (Spanish, Romance) 4,000

The other end of the scale (by volume) is also interesting. Here are the authors that managed an estimated 100 million sales (or more) with less than 10 books:

Lewis Carroll (English, Absurdist literature) 5
Dan Brown (English,Thriller) 6
Stephenie Meyer (English, Romance) 6
Eiji Yoshikawa (Japanese, Musashi) 7
J. K. Rowling (English, Harry Potter) 11
Arthur Hailey (English, Thriller) 11

(I've included Rowling and Hailey here because I'm pretty sure they were safely above the 100 million sales with less than 10 books.)

I'm not really sure what all this tells us, but I'm still astounded that anyone managed to publish 4000 books.

[crich70]

Isaac Asimov reached at least 515 works (more if you include individual short stories). And he wrote on a very wide variety of topics as well.

[VydorScope]

Right now... I will be happy to reach 6 books! LOL Of course then I will shoot for 7...

[Penforhire]

I feel the need to punish myself because I certainly helped both Brown and Meyer make that list. Maybe I should buy another of their books...

[kennyc]

I've heard about Barbara Cartland a few times....Never heard of the other leaders.
Looks like Dan Brown may have published 5 too many.

As you indicate the # of sales is probably more important than the number of books produced.

Some only produced one, but it was killer stuff -- Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird .....

[gmw]

So Enid Blyton never made it to America? (Secret Seven, Famous Five, Magic Faraway Tree, Brer Rabbit ... Noddy?) Or did you have a deprived childhood, Kenny?

[kennyc]

A bit of Brer Rabbit, never a favorite though...

[cortman]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I've heard about Barbara Cartland a few times....Never heard of the other leaders.
Looks like Dan Brown may have published 5 too many.

As you indicate the # of sales is probably more important than the number of books produced.

Some only produced one, but it was killer stuff -- Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird .....

I disagree on Brown and wholeheartedly agree on To Kill A Mockingbird. I find Brown's style gripping and his research exhaustive (if rather uniformly skewed, but hey).
The 4k book number is insane. Assuming a writing career of 50 years, that's almost two books per week without a single break.

[gmw]

According to Wikipedia the writing career of Corín Tellado spanned 64 years (1945..2009) - lots of time for breaks.

[cortman]

Originally Posted by gmw

According to Wikipedia the writing career of Corín Tellado spanned 64 years (1945..2009) - lots of time for breaks.

Oh certainly... that brings it down to an easy one book every 1.25 weeks. 0.o
I think I'll go cry now...

[crich70]

Didn't Barbara Cartland write a lot of stuff to formula?

[kennyc]

Yep, that's what I understand....she also dictated it and someone(s) else typed it up.

They might use a formula or template. They find something that works well for them, and they stick to it. This is one of several techniques Barbara Cartland used. Her stories all follow a similar structure, so she always knew which bit went where and what came next. No wonder she could write a book in two weeks, and had 720 published in her lifetime.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4887535

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...-Cartland.html

[gmw]

Originally Posted by crich70

Didn't Barbara Cartland write a lot of stuff to formula?

Maybe, but since she had sales somewhere between 500 and 1000 million (according to that list), I think it must have been the right formula.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by gmw

Maybe, but since she had sales somewhere between 500 and 1000 million (according to that list), I think it must have been the right formula.

Perhaps, but it sounds a bit like cheating in a way. I mean if the same type of event happens to character x at the same point in the book just like it happened to character m in a book written several yrs before by the same author so that the main difference between stories is the names of the characters why read both books? I want a unique story each time I read a new book, not the same one in different pants.

[gmw]

Hey, lots of books (and magazines) have built their success on a formula that works - without the pants!