Kev,
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY did a book called EIGHTY YEARS OF
BEST-SELLERS some years ago which included a chapter devoted
exclusively to best-selling mysteries (defined as any mystery
book that sold more than a million copies, IIRC). Obviously
Spillane didn't have the most books since he was, as you
point out, relatively unprolific, but his books were at the
top of the list, and his total sales surpassed everyone's
except Erle Stanley Gardner, who seemed to write as many
books in a year as Spillane did in his whole career.
I'm pretty sure that the oft-cited statistic of Spillane's
being the author of seven of the ten best-selling novels ever
printed (having at that point only written seven novels) came
from PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY data. And since PW had only been
keeping those statistics since the 1890's or thereabouts, the
qualifier "on record" should probably be added to that
citation.
I'm guessing that the disparity in sales figures might have
something to do with whether or not foreign sales, or foreign
language sales, are counted.
Also Mickey Spillane is still selling, so the sales figures
are in a constant state of flux. If one obit writer used
figures from several years ago because that's all he had
available, and another had access to more recent records,
there'd be a disparity in the reported figures.
The same things would hold true for reports of Christie's
sales, and might lead to the same disparities.
As an illustration of both of those elements, foreign sales
and continuous sales, Al Collins told me the other day that,
shortly after Mick's passing, his widow received a German
royalty check for THE BIG KILL that was somewhere in "the
high five figures." Published novelists on this list can tell
you how comparatively unusual it is to earn out an advance,
let alone get a royalty check that's somewhere between
$50,000 and $100,000. And when you consider that it's
a royalty check for one book that's over a half century
old, in just one country, it's quite amazing.
As for the specific question of whether or not Spillane has
better total sales than Christie, several standard references
(all at least a few years old now) reported that only Gardner
had better total sales than Spillane, and Spillane only wrote
a fraction of the number of books Gardner did.
Whether that's worldwide sales, or strictly American sales, I
don't know. Comparing Christie ro Gardner, I think it's quite
evident, based whose books have stayed continuously in print,
that Christie's been outselling Gardner since their
respective deaths, so Christie's probably ahead of Gardner in
total sales now. And since Spillane survived Gardner by more
than 30 years, and continued to be sporadically productive
during that time, to say nothing of continuously
self-promoting and continuously in print, he probably is,
too.
Worldwide, judging only on total sales, it wouldn't surprise
me to learn that Christie's ahead of Spillane. But neither
would it surprise me to learn that Spillane's ahead of
Christie.
JIM DOHERTY
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