I really like the Better Novel Project and think analyzing best sellers is fascinating (if you haven’t checked that site out you totally should.)

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This is why I decided to find out what / if, what the best selling book series from the 90s to present day (Jan 2018) have in common. Just because it’s fun and interesting. There might be some ramblings here, it’s basically me just taking you all through the process of my thoughts on the subjects and sharing the what and why behind it.

Warning. It’s pretty long!

I started off with this list of best selling books over on Wiki: Best Sellers.

Went down to book series and changed the settings to first release and picked the ones with the first book in the series published between 1990-present day.

That got me a pretty good list but there were still a few things that needed to be taken into account. Such as origin language, nonfiction, written by multiple authors and such things.

I cut the nonfiction and books first printed in a language than English (there were only a couple).

Wiki has it all sorted into a couple of categories so I’ll go with those too.

More than 100 million copies

Here we end up with

Fifty Shades of Grey (125M)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (194M)
Twilight (120M)
Robert Langdon (200M)
Harry Potter (510M)
Goosebumps* (350M)

These are in order of most recent publication date, not most sold copies, (those numbers are in the brackets.)

*Here it’s worth noting that while the first 5 series have between 4-12 book, Goosebumps have over 62 books in print. This means that while this is a popular book series, the numbers are somewhat misguiding and therefor it’s in cursive.

Between 50 million and 100 million copies

The Hunger Games trilogy (65M)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (65M)
Jack Reacher (60M)
A Song of Ice and Fire (60M)
Alex Cross (81M)
Magic Tree House series (70M)
The Wheel of Time (80M)

Same thing here with the order (most recent release first). Here we also have the Magic Tree House series which is 56 books compared to the others which are between 3-22 books.

Between 30 million and 50 million copies

Divergent trilogy (35M)
The Inheritance Cycle (33M)
Junie B. Jones (44M)
Harry Bosch (42M)

Here Junie B. Jones stands out with 30 books compared to the rest which have 3, 4 and 15 books in the series respectively.

Between 20 million and 30 million copies

Dork Diaries (25M)
Percy Jackson & the Olympians (20M)
The Southern Vampire Mysteries (20M)
Artemis Fowl (21M)
The Sword of Truth (25M)
Captain Underpants (26M)
Outlander (25M)
Maisy (20M)

Here we have Maisy with 23 books compared to the others that are hoovering around 10 books or so.

Between 15 million and 20 million copies

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (15M)
Bridget Jones (15M)
His Dark Materials (15M)

So not much to say about those, the Ladies’s Detective agency has 9 books but that’s not a upper huge number of books, at least not to merit a note.

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This gives us a master list of 28 books, but if we ignore ones I’m feeling are here mostly because the huge number of books in the series (these are in red), this leaves 24 books.

Fifty Shades of Grey (125M)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (194M)
Twilight (120M)
Robert Langdon (200M)
Harry Potter (510M)
Goosebumps (350M)
The Hunger Games trilogy (65M)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (65M)
Jack Reacher (60M)
A Song of Ice and Fire (60M)
Alex Cross (81M)
Magic Tree House series (70M)
The Wheel of Time (80M)
Divergent trilogy (35M)
The Inheritance Cycle (33M)
Junie B. Jones (44M)
Harry Bosch (42M)
Dork Diaries (25M)
Percy Jackson & the Olympians (20M)
The Southern Vampire Mysteries (20M)
Artemis Fowl (21M)
The Sword of Truth (25M)
Captain Underpants (26M)
Outlander (25M)
Maisy (20M)
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (15M)
Bridget Jones (15M)
His Dark Materials (15M)

So these 28/24 book series are the ones we might call the best selling book series of the 90s and 00s. Some of the books were published during the 10s such as 50 Shades, part of Twilight and Divergent and some of these series are still ongoing but still, most are 90s and 00s publications. Meaning it normally takes at least a decade to get on this best selling list.

The two I had never heard about when starting this are Dork Diaries and Harry Bosch. The remaining I have heard of. I’ve read about half and watched most of the others in their adapted form (TV/Film).

Let’s see them all in order of most sold books.

Harry Potter (510M) (Book 1 alone has sold 120M copies)
Goosebumps (350M)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (194M)
Robert Langdon (200M)
Fifty Shades of Grey (125M)
Twilight (120M)

Under 100M books sold


Alex Cross (81M)
The Wheel of Time (80M)
Magic Tree House series (70M)
The Hunger Games trilogy (65M)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (65M)
Jack Reacher (60M)
A Song of Ice and Fire (60M)
Junie B. Jones (44M)
Harry Bosch (42M)
Divergent trilogy (35M)
The Inheritance Cycle (33M)
Dork Diaries (25M)
Captain Underpants (26M)
Outlander (25M)
The Sword of Truth (25M)
Artemis Fowl (21M)
Maisy (20M)
Percy Jackson & the Olympians (20M)
The Southern Vampire Mysteries (20M)
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (15M)
Bridget Jones (15M)
His Dark Materials (15M)

Here we can note that for example the ten last on the list put together dosen’t even amount to half the Harry Potter sold! The top three book series totals over 100M books sold together but only the top six have sold over 100M copies and 14 bottom (50%) of the list have sold less than 50M books each.

So just like with wealth (the 8th richest people in the world have more wealth than the 50% poorest) there is a seriously big gap for the really big sellers like Harry Potter, Fifty Shades, Wimpy Kid, Langdon and Twilight that clearly not many ever make the jump to over 100M books sold in a series (much less on one book, like with Rowling’s Philosopher’s Stone which has sold over 100M copies alone).

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So, now comes times for some fun statistics!

How many of these best selling series are:

Middle grade books?

Young adult novels?

Fantasy novels?

Crime/ mystery novels?

Romance?

Let’s check!

Middle Grade: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Dork Diaries, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Artemis Fowl, Captain Underpants, His Dark Materials.

That makes for a total of 8

Wow!

That’s more than I expected, about 1/3 of the total number of the best sellers.

I’m a little iffy about putting Harry Potter here but since Harry is 11 when the book starts and it is read by a lot of kids I’m figuring it still counts. Also His Dark Materials might also be considered a YA book since it contain some pretty deep stuff. But I think my mother read it to me when I was like 8-9 and I loved it so I’m leaving it here.

Young adult novels: Twilight, The Hunger Games trilogy, Divergent trilogy,

That’s a total of 3.

Huh. I thought the YA category would be more impressive.

Fantasy novels: A Song of Ice and Fire, The Wheel of Time, The Inheritance Cycle, The Sword of Truth

Here we end up with 4 series.

The Inheritance Cycle might also fit into the YA category but I feel it is more fantasy than young adult somehow and that’s why I put it here.

Crime/ Mystery novels; Robert Langdon, Jack Reacher, Harry Bosch, Alex Cross, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency,

5 books series here! I kind of expected more from this section too. Don’t know why but I feel like there are a lot of popular crime / mystery novel series out there. A few of the series I cut because they weren’t in English, were mysteries so maybe that’s why?

Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, The Southern Vampire Mysteries, Outlander, Bridget Jones,

4 here too! If you count Fifty Shades of Grey as a romance…maybe it should be in the Crime section