Quick – name the American author who’s sold the most books.
Not Stephen King. Nope, not Jackie Collins. King is No. 8 on the Top 10; Collins isn’t even on the list.
Shawn RyanThe No. 1 best-selling American author of all time? Harold Robbins, king of trashy fun. Robbins, who died in 1997, wrote 35 books, with 12 more published after his death, cobbled together from notes he’d made before dying.
If you were born after 1970, his name likely doesn’t ring a bell. He wrote fast-moving, sex-filled, melodramatic books that were high on tacky, low on taste. Several became equally lowbrow movies or miniseries – “The Carpetbaggers,” “The Betsy” and “The Lonely Lady,” to name a few. His books sold more than 750 million copies.
Robbins is hardly the only less-than-literary author in the Top 10 of American novelists. The entire list is pretty much beach-reading.