Overview

The 30 bestselling authors whose stories are told in this book have sold, by any reasonable estimate, around five billion copies of their books. None has sold fewer than 50 million, and one has sold 40 times that number. Five billion... it is a phenomenal number. But what would have happened if John Grisham had made it as a baseball player... or if Colleen McCullough had pursued her dream of a career in medicine... or if Dan Brown had become a pop musician? It is difficult to say, but what is certain is that we, their readers, would have been the poorer. From the golden age of the typewriter through to the digital era of the computer, Five Billion Sold recounts the dramatic ups and downs in the lives of Ian Fleming, Grace Metalious, Wilbur Smith, Danielle Steel, Robert Ludlum and J.K. Rowling, to name a few - while the interwoven essays delve into the publishing world’s most intriguing questions, from the story of how the paperback transformed the industry to the question of what defines a bestseller. So plunge into these pages and learn just what inspired the world’s most well-known authors, as well as how they turned this inspiration into phenomenal success. You will undoubtedly form your own view as to whether, as Sidney Sheldon once said, all it takes to make a writer is “paper and a pen and a dysfunctional family”—but, most importantly, you will learn about the real people who wrote the books we love.  

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