The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Pratchett crowned 'evergreen' king

01.08.08

Fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has been revealed as the “evergreen” king in The Bookseller’s first-ever list of titles that have never fallen out of the top 5,000 chart.

Only 12 books, out of the more than 1.8 million titles that Nielsen BookScan has sales data on, are on the “evergreen” chart, which dates back to 1995, when Nielsen began collecting sales data.

Pratchett has three of his early Discworld novels in the selection: The Colour of Magic, Mort and The Light Fantastic (all Corgi). Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong (Vintage), with 988,136 copies sold to 16th July, is the top seller. Two children’s titles are on the list: Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Walker Books) and Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Puffin).

Rounding out the chart are J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit (HarperCollins); Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course (BBC Books); James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy (Bantam); Nelson Mandela’s A Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus); M Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled (Arrow Books); and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (Bantam).

Blog: guessing the evergreens

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