Migel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is the world’s best selling book of all time, selling more than 500 million copies.
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Second on the list published in 2017 is the Xinhua Zidian, the new Chinese Dictionary, with 400 million copies sold. Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (200 million), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lords of the Rings (200 million), J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (107 million), Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (100 million), Cao Xueqin’s Dreams of the Red Chamber (100 million), C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (85 million), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (80 million), and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (80 million) round out the Top 10.
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Looking at readers, India leads the list of countries who read the most with 10.7 hours per resident per week, followed by Thailand, China, the Philippines, Egypt, Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden, France and Hungary.
The global (reading) figure is 6.5 hours per resident. Among G7 countries, France leads with 6.9 hours per resident per week, followed by Canada (5.8 hours), Germany (5.7), the United States (5.7), Italy (5.6), the United Kingdom (5.3) and Japan (4.1).
