Shakespeare it is estimated to be the best-selling author ever within a range of 2-4 billion copies (certainly closer to, or surpasing, 4 billion today), but this are all his plays and poems, and all their translations and editions combined, not a single book.

Yet, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are his most popular works, probably by great margin; those that generated the greater number of translations and editions. But for some reason, individual works by Shakespeare aren't counted—perhaps because it is very difficult to track works that have been selling for centuries, are in the public domain, and are frequently distributed to schools, universities, bookstores, and theaters.

In any case, it seems unlikely that if books asTale of Two Cities, The Lord of the Rings, and Then There Were None are among the best-selling titles with 100-200 millions copies each and their number is quite small compared to Shakespeare total, the Bard most famous plays wouldn't be here, too. Romeo and Juliet in particular may've reached 500 millions copies sold, since up to a third of Shakespeare plays are not even fairly well known, and his sonnets and poems are not as popular as his most famous tragedies.

Among the hundreds and thousands of editions of the play, some has alone reached the millions of copies. Examples are the Folger, Penguin, and Pelican editions in English, which have sold each many millions copies of the Bard works.



Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are among the best-selling works in history. That only is not stated for certain.