A while ago I started a post on the most-printed books ever, and this is the best info available:
According to The Top 10 of Everything 2005 by Russell Ash, the following are the 10 best-selling books of all time:
Supposedly, the most read writer out there right now is Johnny Hart, writer of the Wizard of Id and BC comic strips. Here’s a timeline and some cites:
So the Washington Post back in 99 said he was the most widely read writer on earth. Anyone care to refute this? Here’s the current New York Times bestseller list .
BTW, does anyone else think it’s funny that the most outspoken Christian cartoonist in the funny pages has two strips, one about CAVEMEN (whom fundies deny existed) and one about WITCHCRAFT?
And what’s up with the fink? Isn’t Jesus their only king?
Refute? Easily. “Most syndicated” does not equal “most widely read.” Period.
I haven’t a clue as who is the most widely read, but you have to remember that posting individual book sales is not the same thing. Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Agatha Christie, John Grisham, J. K. Rowling and many others have far surpassed 100,000,000 books sold for their total body of work.
Writers of classic literature have been read by generations and in every language. Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Cervantes. Who can say how many billions have read them?
I’d also imagine that Charles Schulz certainly had more readers over his lifetime than Johnny Hart ever did. Probably whoever does Tintin does as well. Maybe a dozen other comics artists, too.
Those 1999-2000 quotes were examples of a press release gone wild. Meaningless noise.
I had to think for a moment where to move this one–it’s about cough, cough literature, but it’s rather pointless, and the OP seems to want a debate, but not Pit-worthy…
Sorry, but I’m gonna get flack no matter where I put it.
Why do people underline things Like This? I find it somehow distracting. You know that underlining in vB code is just as easy as bolding or italicizing? You just put a u between brackets ([ u]) - without the space - and turn it off like you would any other tag.
Regarding the Bible…Are they counting sold or printed copies - like those Gideon’s bibles that are always in hotel rooms - as opposed to read bibles? Because, in my experience, no one reads that book. Not even most hardcore christians.
Ok, the annoyingly required disclaimer for the semantically challenged out there: Of course lots of people read the bible. But it is very rare to run into someone who has read the entire thing, especially in just a few sittings as so many people do with books like Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code.
Hey… hostility? By ‘does anyone care to refute this’, I meant ‘is it true’, not ‘I say it is, I dare a challenge.’ I should have phrased it as a question.
You think I want to admit this dude is the most publicized out there?
I was cutting/pasting someone elses words from my other post, and I considered changing it. It is rather bothersome.
Funny you should mention it; today being the day I start a lot of stuff, I’m also starting a one-year Bible read. I have one of only two versions printed today of the Bible w/ the Apocrypha in the King James translation- did you know the original King James bible included the Apocrypha? Anyways, I’m a Secular Humanist, but- well, I needn’t justify it!
Even this extended Bible, 701 pages, only takes 2 pages a day to read if you spend a year on it. It’s really not that hard, which is why they sell those special Bibles split into daily readings for a year. I even enjoy memorizing passages.
This underline issue came up a while back. Apparently, some folks read message boards on software that can’t make sense of underlining. So, they emphasize things like this or this. I don’t know if it is still necessary. Perhaps there are still horse-drawn browsers out there, somewhere.
It’d be interesting to see data on how many readers skip Hart’s strips.
Personally, I find the old-style emphasis to be far less jarring than the more modern ways, and the double stars offers a level of emphasis between plain text and bold.
Mark Evanier on the Johnny Hart most-syndicated-cartoonist claim. (The article, written in 2001, refers to a comic strip in which a menorah turns into a cross, losing one candle to each of the final sentences of Jesus Christ.)
It’s also worth pointing out in a discussion like this the misleading data on top-grossing films; Leonard Maltin wrote a good article on it that appears in the World Almanac 2005- he points out higher ticket prices, and one should also point out inflation- what would that film’s gross be worth today?
Supposedly, adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind is the top-grossing movie of all time. But that movie, which is like 57 on the top-grossing list, was released 6 or 7 times theatrically (go head, correct me), so one should also consider that- although if a film is popular enough to do that, it deserves its rank. ET wasn’t :rolleyes: .
Blame me, not andrewdt85. He was quoting from one of my posts. I always use the “Like This” style when it’s a title. (For emphasis of a word or phrase, I use like this.) I also always use greater-than signs for quoting. It’s what I’ve always done, and I intend to keep doing it.
What an odd list. Odd how many Americans are on there, yet no Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Shakespeare, or Hell even Enid Blyton.
I, a prolific reader, have never heard of:
The McGuffey Readers by William Holmes McGuffey - 60,000,000 copies
A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard - 40,000,000 copies
(tie) In His Steps: “What Would Jesus Do?” by Charles Monroe Sheldon - over 30,000,000 copies
I’ve also never heard of that cartoonist.
On purely anecdotal evidence - talking to students from about 40 countries - I’d say the currently most widely-read writer is either JK Rowling, Arthur Conan Doyle or Shakespeare. Terry Pratchett’s the best-selling writer in the UK, but I don’t know how well he sells in other countries.
The McGuffey Readers were a standard set of reading primers in nineteenth century U.S. If you’re not American or don’t know much about pre-twentieth century books, it’s quite possible you haven’t heard of them. A Message to Garcia and In His Steps: “What Would Jesus Do?” were immense bestsellers around the turn of the century (between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), but no one reads them anymore except for people interested in older literature. Rowling, Shakespeare, Doyle, Christie, King, and Blyton had many different books (or plays) but not a single one that’s sold a huge amount (and Blyton was never that well known in the U.S.). Pratchett’s moderately popular in the U.S. but not as much as in the U.K., and he doesn’t have a single book that was hugely popular either.
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