Rowling, Donaldson and James enter Nielsen 'Bestseller Hall of Fame'

Authors including J K Rowling, E L James and Julia Donaldson have made Nielsen Book’s first Bestseller Hall of Fame, as their titles are amongst those which reached platinum sales records.

The list – comprising 97 titles by 64 authors – features publications that have sold more than one million copies between 1998 and the end of 2015. It includes 46 fiction titles, 34 children’s books and 14 non-fiction titles.

Rowling appears in the list more than any other author, with nine titles breaking the platinum record, followed by Dan Brown with six. E L James has four, as do the creative team of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. However, James is the only person to achieve a ‘sextuple platinum bestseller’, with Fifty Shades of Grey selling more than six million copies.

James’ books are some of the newest to make the line up, along with the likes of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), whilst the oldest are George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and J R R Tolkein’s The Hobbit.

Other authors to feature in the Hall of Fame include Steig Larsson, Bill Bryson, Jamie Oliver, John Green, Sylvia Day and Helen Fielding, and out of the total, 34 are British and 23 American.

“These 97 titles offer a fascinating snapshot of the reading tastes of the British public,” said Andre Breedt, director of Nielsen Book Research. “Most titles are of recent publication, reflecting the fact that Nielsen Book began tracking book sales 18 years ago. This makes the achievement of titles dating back to more than three-quarters of a century even more impressive.”

He added: “It is interesting to note how fiction dominates over non-fiction, while the oft-presumed dominant celebrity memoir is represented by only a handful of authors.”

Nielsen will officially reveal ‘the class of 2016’ – the books that reached the million-copy milestone last year – at the Specsavers Bestseller Awards ceremony in London next week (25th January).

Specsavers founder Dame Mary Perkins said: “These are the books of our lives. I am thrilled to see so many of my own favourites on the list, and have spotted many others that I cannot wait to read.”