ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS OF THE NOVEL
~ Sales-to-Date: More than 18 million copies worldwide.
~ Published in more than 30 languages.
~ Chosen 27th out of the ‘101 Books to Read Before You Die’
 UNITED KINGDOM
~ One of the top bestsellers of all time
~ One of the best rated novels in the 100 books chosen in the BBC’s 2003 ‘The Big Read’ – the U.K.’s biggest-ever celebration of reading.
~ Ranked 33rd on BBC’s 2003 ‘The Big Read’ as one of the top 100 books ever written. Nearly 140,000 people nominated their favourite work of fiction as part of The BBC Big Read.
 UNITED STATES
~ Pillars still sells 100,000 paperback copies per year in the U.S.
~ Nineteen years after its first publication , The Pillars of the Earth went back to #1 on the The New York Times trade paperback list and #8 on its mass market paperback list (9 December 2008)
Chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the 60th Oprah’s Book Club Selection in November 2007
U.S. publisher shipped 1.4 million books following the Oprah announcement:
On November 14, 2007, Oprah Winfrey chose The Pillars of the Earth as the 60th Oprah’s Book Club selection. She said, “It’s such a great read… it’s like nothing I would ever read or had ever read before… I got to 800 pages, and I slowed myself down because I didn’t want it to end.”
Ken said: “I’m thrilled that The Pillars of the Earth has been selected for Oprah’s Book Club. Oprah is a unique cultural leader who has a special place in the hearts of people all over the world, and I have enormous respect for what she has achieved. Her endorsement will bring my work to the attention of her many millions of fans, and for that I am very grateful.”
As the biggest book club in the world, Oprah’s Book Club has approximately one million online members. Each of its selections has skyrocketed to the top of bestsellers lists.
Oprah’s Book Club works with the American Library Association (ALA) to distribute thousands of free Book Club selections donated by each publisher, to school, public, and community college libraries nationwide. The Chicago-based ALA, www.ala.org, is the oldest and largest library association in the world with more than 64,000 members.
Ken Follett beats Ken Follett at Audible.com
In Audible.com’s first ‘Annual Tournament of Audiobooks’ Ken was in the unusual position of competing against himself. In the competition the top two titles were The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End!
Eventually, in the single-elimination, winner-take-all, bracket-style tournament, The Pillars of the Earth was crowned the ‘Champion of Audiobooks’ by Audible.com members. Both audiobooks are narrated by John Lee.
 GERMANY
~ Approximately 4 million copies sold
~ Voted in Germany as the third-most popular book after The Lord of the Rings and The Bible
~ On German bestseller lists for six consecutive years
~ The audio book has gone x 2 platinum
~ At the Frankfurt Book Fair, on October 4th 2006, Follett was presented with a Platinum Disc to mark 200,000 sales of the audiobook of Die Säulen der Erde (The Pillars of the Earth) by the German publisher Verlagsgruppe Lübbe.
~ Die Säulen der Erde has sold more than 3.5-million copies in the German translation. The audiobook was narrated by Joachim Kerzel.
~ The Pillars of the Earth board games are winners! Die Säulen der Erde wins Deutscher Spiele Preis 2007. The board game version of Die Säulen der Erde – the German edition of The Pillars of the Earth – was chosen as the winner of the prestigious ‘Deutscher Spiele Preis’ award in Essen, Germany.
 SPAIN
~ One of the best sold novels of all time
~ Rated as the novel most read by Spaniards for the past 20 years
~ Statue dedicated to Ken Follett in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
 JAPAN
~ After its success in hardcover, Pillars has been re-released as a three-volume, soft-cover edition which is topping bestseller lists
~ 200,000 copies sold to date. Normal sales for non-Japanese authors in Japan usually do not exceed 25,000.
 ITALY
Sold more than 1.3 million copies
 AUSTRALIA
Pillars was voted No. 21 in the “Top 100 favourite books“ in Australia
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