According to the official Agatha Christie website, more than 2 billion
copies of Dame Agatha's books have been sold:
"Agatha Christie is the world's best-known mystery writer. Her books
have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another
billion in over 45 foreign languages. She is outsold only by the Bible
and Shakespeare."
AgathaChristie.com: Essentials
http://www.agathachristie.com/essentials/bio.shtml
Confirmation of that figure is widely available on the Web. Here's
another citation:
"While J. K. Rowling still trails detective story author Agatha
Christie?s overall sales of 2 billion books, and romantic novelist
Dame Barbara Cartland?s lifetime sales of 670 million, it is the speed
of her sales, and more importantly how much money she has already
extracted from her success that puts her in a league of her own."
MSN Money (UK): Harry Potter and the Lake of Cash
http://money.msn.co.uk/investing/Insight/SpecialFeatures/ActiveInvestor/HarryPotterMoneybags/default.asp
It would be wonderful if a comprehensive database of all book sales
existed on the Internet, but unfortunately the data are fragmented and
scattered, and no single, central source has access to the info that
would be necessary to prepare and maintain such a database. However,
there are ways to obtain some useful data regarding book sales. The
material gathered by my friend and Google Answers colleague bobbie7 in
answer to this earlier question may be of interest to you:
Google Answers: Book sales
http://www.answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=214173
Finding even a rough estimate of the number of Christie's film and
television adaptations that have been sold in the video market is
likely to be an agonizing task. Here's a good list of film titles, but
tracking down the sales figures for each of these and adding the total
would take a very long time:
AgathaChristie.com: Movies: The Collection
http://www.agathachristie.com/tv/movies_alpha.shtml
In addition to the full-length movies, the TV series "Poirot," "Tommy
and Tuppence, Partners in Crime" and "The Miss Marple Mysteries" have
been packaged and sold as video collections.
Google Web Search: "agatha christie" + "billion" + "books"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22agatha+christie%22+billion+books
I hope this helps! If anything is unclear, or if a link doesn't work
for you, please request clarification; I'll gladly offer further
assistance before you rate my answer.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |