Tracking the best-selling SF&F authors of all time

The science fiction genre has plenty of big-name authors, at least among the SF-buying public, but not too many of them are well-known enough among mainstream readers to qualify as bestselling authors.

There have been exceptions. One fan has attempted to compile a list of the all-time, bestselling SF&F authors. Here are the results. The top three are J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkien. In fact, the list is dominated by fantasy authors and the top-selling science fiction writers trail far behind their fantasy colleagues.

Before you go thinking that the list is gospel, be warned that it is far from authoritative since many famous authors, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein are not even on the list because its creator couldn't find any reliable numbers for them and the numbers that he does have come from Wikipedia which isn't exactly the most reliable source.

Another blogger has taken it upon himself to hack the formula to write a bestseller by parsing Dan Brown's success with The Da Vinci Code. His conclusion was Brown's story was successful because it included imaginary technology that seemed plausible along with some entertaining plot twists. Is that all it takes?

One book that has become a bestseller, not to mention a Pulitzer Prize winner, is Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The Guardian takes a look at some of the similarities with an earlier classic of post-apocalyptic fiction, Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz.