Top Selling Authors of the Decade

The Bookseller magazine has released the list of the UK top selling authors of the period 2000-09. Seven Irish authors are featured in the top 100 list. Maeve Binchy is the highest selling of the Irish authors having sold over 4.6 million copies of her books over the past ten years at a value of almost £32 million. Marian Keyes is just behind her in 27th place having sold 4.5 million books at a value of over £28 million during the period. Cecelia Ahern is in 42nd place having sold 3.2m books at a value of £18.6m. The other Irish authors on the list are Darren Shan, Cathy Kelly, Sheila O’Flanagan and Eoin Colfer. Darren Shan and Eoin Colfer are primarily known as children’s authors but both have recently begun writing for adults – Eoin Colfer with And Another Thing, the sequel to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The 100 top bestselling author list was dominated by JK Rowling, selling 27.5 million books at a value of almost £216 million. Some distance behind her was Dan Brown selling only one third that number of books and Roger Hargreaves (Mr Men books) one tenth of that number.