BBC News | ARTS | Pratchett is all-time UK bestseller

Cult fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has topped a list of UK all-time bestselling books, as 12 of his titles prove perennial favourites.

A list of the bestselling books has been published by Whitaker BookTrack, which produces a weekly chart.

To celebrate its 300th chart of book sales of the top 5,000 titles it has produced an all-time bestseller list.

But just 44 books remained in the charts for all 300 weeks, according to survey.

Pratchett's Discworld series dominated the survey, followed by Jane Austen with Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park.

The data is taken from more than 6,000 retail outlets including internet, travel and specialist outlets with annual book sales worth over �1.3bn, accounting for more than 75% of books sales in the UK.

Three of Jane Austen's books are on the bestseller list
"Worthy" books such as Booker or Whitbread winners fail to make an impression unlike Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course and Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom.

Self-help books have also stayed the course with M Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled and John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus making the grade.

Omission

Other authors in the list include Louis de Berni�res, Sebastian Faulks, Robert Harris and John Grisham.

Surprising omissions are Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Eric Carle's book has become a children's classic
The most popular children's titles are The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Prachett's famous Discworld novels introduced a whole new array of comic characters who live in a world supported by four elephants who stand atop a giant "star turtle" which swims endlessly through space.

His books have sold more than 23 million copies worldwide and are outsold in the UK only by JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.

Rowling's series does not qualify for the chart because it was released after BookTrack's lists were started.


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