Book Facts

Bestselling books that got rejected - a lot - before they made history:
Dune by Frank Herbert
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrice Potter

Books that were conceived and/or penned behind bars:
De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The Prince by Machiavelli

Books that spawned sequels - a lot of them and by different writers:
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Best-Selling Authors of All Time
This accolade goes to Agatha Christie, detective story authoress. Since 1920 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 William Shakespeare. Following a distant but still respectable second is Dame Barbara Cartland, the late British romance novelist. With over 700 novels to her name, she has sold more than 670 million copies worldwide.

Most Prolific Novelist
Between 1986 and 1996, Brazilian author Jose Carlos Ryoki de Alpoim Inoue had a massive 1,058 novels published. He writes westerns, science fiction and thrillers. Does he ever eat?