[D'iversify]

Legend of course is always a classic, even if it's a bit rough around the edges. Waylander, The first Chronicles of Druss, Winter Warriors and White Wolf are the other Drenai books I'd pick out. I thought the Rigante series was in general of a fairly high quality. Not read any of his other stuff aside from Dark Moon (which I did think was very good) and Morningstar (which was quite average). Get the impression I should have a go at Knights of Dark Renown, never picked a copy up back when was reading Gemmell.

[Macros]

Morningstar was average, as much as I liked the morningstar as a character.

I read 3/4 rigante books years ago, which I loved. They had a kid with green/gold eyes, the sidthe and the modiart.
I went and ebooked the rigante booms I could find recently and it wasn't the same stuff at all. It was highlander yes but totally different scenario, characters and focused on a young guy who became a hero general, couldn't get into it because I was expecting to reread the novels about one eyed men stealing cattle and boxing matches (Gemmell does love a good prize fight)


ETA:
oh foolish Macros.
A bit of googling revealed that I had actually read books 3&4 of the series and the connovar booms were the first two. Seeing that is the case, Books 3&4 are vastly superior to number 2, and better than 1 as well.

This post has been edited by Macros: 06 September 2013 - 01:21 PM

[Werthead]

Updated. Have put in Crichton and Koontz as optional figures (since they wrote a lot of non-SF material), added Jim Butcher, Arthur C. Clarke and a few others.

[Abyss]

D, on 06 September 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

...Get the impression I should have a go at Knights of Dark Renown, never picked a copy up back when was reading Gemmell.

KNIGHTS is pretty good. It's loosely connected to the Druss and Drenai stories.

[Macros]

I have a feeling Ive started knights twice before but always got distracted a bit a ways in and didn't get back to it.
does it start with a young lad and mechanical flying birds??

[Werthead]

Updated. GRRM up to 28 million, Diana Gabaldon up to 25 million and a few newcomers to the list like Ernest Cline and L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

[Mentalist]

Wert, are these English-only figures?

Because Lukyanenko shifted a lot of books in Russia. And he's written a lot more than just the Watch books. Ditto for Sapkowski--he's been translated into a bunch of European langauges before the game ever came out (and led to an English translation deal).

[Werthead]

Another update, this time with authors like Tad Williams moving onto the list.

Quote

Wert, are these English-only figures?

Worldwide, as much as possible. If you have more accurate figures for Sapkowski and Lukyanenko that'd be great.

[Werthead]

Update.

Biggest surprise here is Iain M. Banks. Banks has sold 1.1 million copies of all his SF novels combined. However, he has sold more than 1 million copies of The Wasp Factory by itself. With the rest of his non-SF work, he must have sold at least four times that amount in total. He wasn't kidding when he said that his SF - which makes up almost half his total output - was radically outsold by his mainstream work.

[Werthead]

Updated. And quickly, before it changes again, check who's at #42

This post has been edited by Werthead: 18 September 2013 - 04:00 PM

[Werthead]

Too late, gone in the updated

[Macros]

Can't you fudge the results so he always stays there?

I think there should be a buy some fucking Gemmell books campaign launched.

[Werthead]

Updated. Brandon Sanderson rockets straight in there with 15 million sales in eight years, including 1.5 million of the first Mistborn book by itself.

[Werthead]

Correction: Sanderson has sold 1.5 million copies of the Mistborn trilogy by itself, not just the first book. His solo sales are 2.6 million to WoT's apparent 12.5 million (of two books and just the initial hardcover sales of AMoL). That also pushes WoT's official sales to 56 million, most of that just from the USA and Canada.

[Aptorian]

I wonder if Sanderson has earned enough "fuck you" money at this point that he can do what ever the hell he wants for the rest of his life.

[Macros]

judging by his decision to lumber ahead with the 10 book opus that is the stormlight archives I'll go ahead and say yes

[Werthead]

He's well off but not rolling in it. His cut from the WoT books is probably relatively modest. Selling 2.6 million of his own books is still doing very well (rather better than SE in terms of raw sales, we must remember) but he's not in the GRRM/Jordan/Goodkind club just yet.

[Werthead]

Big update, taking us to 199 authors.

[Werthead]

Updated! Some moderate improvements for Scott Lynch and Scott Bakker, plus many new additions.