Cosmos (book) - Legacy

Legacy

Cosmos became the best-selling science book ever published in the English language. It was only surpassed in the late 1980s by Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time. Though spurred in part by the popularity of the television series, Cosmos became a best-seller by itself. Cosmos spent 50 weeks on the Publishers Weekly best-seller's list, where it became the first science book to sell more than half a million copies. The book also spent 70 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. Cosmos sold more than 900,000 copies while on the best sellers list and continued to sell well for years later, selling around five million copies internationally. Shortly after Cosmos was published, Sagan received a $2 million advance for the novel Contact. This was the largest release given for an unwritten fiction book at the time. The success of Cosmos made Sagan "wealthy as well as famous." It also ushered in a dramatic increase in visibility for science books. Science historian Bruce Lewenstein of Cornell University noted that among science books "Cosmos marked the moment that something different was clearly going on."

Lewenstein also noted the power of the book as a recruitment tool. Along with Microbe Hunters and The Double Helix, he described Cosmos as one of the "books that people cite as 'Hey, the reason I'm a scientist is because I read that book'." Particularly in astronomy and physics, he said, the book inspired many people to become scientists.