Who is the best-selling author of all time?
Agatha Christie is often named the best-selling fiction author of all time, with an estimated 2 billion copies sold. William Shakespeare is often ranked alongside her, though his sales are harder to count.
Agatha Christie, the English writer known as the Queen of Crime, wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, featuring famous detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Guinness World Records lists her as the best-selling fiction writer of all time. Her books have been translated into more than 100 languages.
Her mystery And Then There Were None is one of the best-selling novels ever, and her play The Mousetrap has been performed in London's West End continuously since 1952, the longest-running play in the world. Christie died in 1976, but her stories continue to be adapted for film and TV.
Other top-selling authors
Other authors estimated to have sold hundreds of millions of books include Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, J.K. Rowling, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King and Japanese manga creator Eiichiro Oda. Sales figures for many writers are estimates, so rankings vary between sources.
Did You Know?
Christie once disappeared for 11 days in 1926, sparking a nationwide search. She never fully explained what happened.