All books of a religious, ideological, philosophical or political nature have thus been excluded from the below lists of best-selling books for these reasons. Exact print figures for these and other books may also be missing or unreliable since these kinds of books may be produced by many different and unrelated publishers, in some cases over many centuries.

Some claim the distribution ran into the 'billions' and some cite 'over a billion' official volumes between 19 alone as well as 'untold numbers of unofficial local reprints and unofficial translations'. Among non-religious texts, the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, also known as the Little Red Book, has produced a wide array of sales and distribution figures - with estimates ranging from 800 million to over 6.5 billion printed volumes. Sales estimates for other printed religious texts include at least 800 million copies for the Qur'an and 190 million copies for the Book of Mormon. Tolkien, that lack comprehensive sales figures.Īccording to Guinness World Records as of 1995, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time with an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed. This list is incomplete because there are many books, such as The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, and The Lord of the Rings (which has been sold as both a trilogy of books, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, and as a single issue) by J. The books are listed according to the highest sales estimate as reported in reliable, independent sources. Comics and textbooks are not included in this list. 'Best-selling' refers to the estimated number of copies sold of each book, rather than the number of books printed or currently owned. This page provides lists of best-selling books and book series to date and in any language. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources. This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness.

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