Book Sales Compared To Other Authors
In 1945 Frank Luther Mott developed a system to compare top selling books from 1665 (Golden Multitudes, the Story of Bestsellers in the United States). To make comparisons possible, Mott defines a bestseller as a book with sales equal to one percent of the US population.
His ranking:
- Charles Dickens, 16 bestsellers;
- Erle Stanley Gardner, seven;
- Walter Scott, six; and
- James Fenimore Cooper, Gene Stratton Porter, and Harold Bell Wright, five each.
Scott and Dickens were not American authors, and Gardner came much later than Wright. By Mott's reckoning Harold Bell Wright was one of only three American authors to write five best sellers from the arrival of the pilgrims in America through the first quarter of the 20th century. And Wright's total book sales were higher than Cooper and Porter. No American beat, or quite matched, Harold Bell Wright's record until Erle Stanley Gardner, whose career peaked 30 years after Wright's.
Read more about this topic: Harold Bell Wright
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