Seriously, though, has anyone actually tried to Google this? I bet the top result is some outdated listicle that says 'The Alchemist' and everyone just ran with it. I don't trust those lists. They usually just parrot the same five international bestsellers without any real data from the Indian market. We need a proper historian of print culture in India to even begin to guess.
I'm always fascinated by the posthumous best-seller. A writer like Saadat Hasan Manto or Ismat Chughtai sells more today, in collected editions and translations, than they likely ever did during their lifetimes. Their status as classic, essential reading in universities and for the intellectually inclined drives constant, if not massive, sales.
Similarly, the works of Rabindranath Tagore are constantly re-packaged—selected poems, short stories, his songs. Every publisher has a Tagore collection. The aggregate sales across all these editions from dozens of publishers over a century is impossible to calculate but undoubtedly huge.
It shows that 'best-selling' isn't always about a single blockbuster launch; it can be about cultural endurance, becoming part of the educational and literary canon.
Graphic novels and illustrated editions are selling like never before. A beautifully rendered mytho-fantasy graphic novel can have a high price point but also become a desirable object, leading to great sales. This category was tiny in the early 2010s.
Now, it's a genuine segment that can produce a breakout hit. While it might not outsell a mass-market paperback novel, it could top certain value or volume lists for its category, showing how the 'most sold' title is now split across many more sub-lists than before.
I'm skeptical of any absolute claim without seeing the data from all publishers side-by-side. What about an author like Ashwin Sanghi? His 'Krishna Key' and Chanakya's Chant series sell like hotcakes in the thriller genre. He's often mentioned in the same breath as Amish for mythological thrillers. His cumulative sales across multiple bestsellers could be massive. The 'most sold' author might be a consistent hit-maker rather than a one-book wonder. Sanghi, Bhagat, Amish—they all have portfolios of bestsellers. The total sum of their work might be the real record.
Let's consider the silent bestseller: the railway timetable. Before apps, the 'Trains at a Glance' book was an essential travel companion sold at every station. The print runs were massive and frequent. If that counts as a 'book,' it might be one of the highest-selling non-fiction items in Indian history. It's a fascinating piece of print culture that served a critical function for decades.
Movie and TV adaptations are the ultimate sales rocket fuel. A book might have modest sales for years, then a streaming adaptation drops. The publisher will rush back to press, and the sales in the quarter following the adaptation can be so massive that it becomes the publisher's 'most sold' title for the year, even if its pre-adaptation life was quiet. The determination is often about timing and capturing that explosive moment.