Who would win in a literary fame contest among Latter-day Saint authors? Is it the sci-fi legend, the fantasy powerhouse, or the vampire romance queen?
Of course, that all depends on how we define a Latter-day Saint "author" in the first place—and there are some fun technicalities worth exploring before we crown our champion.
Who is NOT in the Running?
For example, we could technically say Joseph Smith is the most famous Latter-day Saint author—he was listed as the author and proprietor of the Book of Mormon for a time. But because this was because his name was needed in order to publish the book, and we believe he was the translator and not the author, we can safely skip him.
But what about Mormon? He was the author of the majority of the Book of Mormon, right? So, could he count? Not really. Despite it being his namesake, Mormon compiled the Book of Mormon using the writings of many prophets. He also wasn't really technically a Latter-day Saint when you think about it. Though he did write to the Saints of the Latter-days.
We can probably ignore Mitt Romney. Yes, he has technically written a book, and it was a New York Times bestseller, but he isn't famous for being an author. He wrote a book because he was famous. Still, he's pretty well known, from his presidential run to looking almost indistinguishable from a "Just For Men" hair dye box. In the same vein, we can rule out Gladys Knight, despite her memoir and cookbook, as well as Glenn Beck, despite his many warnings against the global elite.
Honorable Mentions
Before we get to our top contenders, there are a ton of successful Latter-day Saint authors who deserve recognition. Here are just a few honorable mentions who have each hit the New York Times Best Seller list and sold millions of books:
James Dashner: Author of the wildly popular Maze Runner series, which spawned a successful film franchise. The series has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 37 languages.
Shannon Hale: Award-winning author of The Goose Girl, Princess Academy (a Newbery Honor book), and Austenland (adapted into a film). Hale has written for middle grade, young adult, and adult audiences and has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.
Brandon Mull: Creator of the Fablehaven and Dragonwatch series, which have sold millions of copies worldwide. Mull worked in marketing and film promotion before publishing his first novel in 2006.
Ally Condie: Author of the bestselling Matched trilogy, which was optioned by Disney for film adaptation. Condie worked as a high school English teacher before her writing career took off. Her dystopian romance novels have sold over 5 million copies and have been published in more than 30 languages.
While these authors have built dedicated followings and achieved success, they haven't quite reached the mainstream recognition of our top three contenders.
Our Contenders
Orson Scott Card
Sometimes considered the godfather of modern Latter-day Saint fiction authors, Orson Scott Card is one of the most well-known Latter-day Saint authors. Not only has he written a whole library of books—we're talking almost 100 works, including over 50 novels and 45 short stories—he has also written some highly successful ones. He is probably best known as the author of Ender's Game and Speakers for the Dead, novels that won him both a Nebula award and a Hugo awards, the highest honors in science fiction. That makes him the only person (as of 2024) to have consecutively won these awards in back-to-back years.
In an interview with WIRED magazine leading up to the release of the movie adaptation of Ender's Game in 2013, Card spoke about how being a Latter-day Saint can influence your writing process. He said:
In a way, being a Mormon prepares you to deal with science fiction, because we live simultaneously in two very different cultures. The result is that we all know what it's like to be strangers in a strange land. It's not just a coincidence that there are so many effective Mormon science fiction writers. We don't regard being an alien as an alien experience. But it also means that we're not surprised when people don't understand what we're saying or what we think. It's easy to misinterpret us. I understand it. So, you know, I don't get upset by that.
The movie adaptation gained Card even wider recognition, getting the book back on the New York Times Best Seller list. The movie did not do particularly well at the box office, despite having Harrison Ford in it, but to date, it seems the Ender's Game novel has sold between 7 million and 10 million copies.
Brandon Sanderson
Over in the fantasy genre, we can look to the writing powerhouse that is Brandon Sanderson.
Sanderson initially garnered notoriety by finishing off Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, one of the most successful fantasy series ever written. But he has also made his own way with his New York Times bestselling Mistborn series (which hit the charts with the final book in the trilogy), along with the epic Stormlight Archives.
Sanderson's publishing journey started off slow. He was told that every author's first five books are generally bad, so he decided to move fast to get those out of the way. He wrote five novels before even trying to get one of his novels published, and then started working to get his sixth book, Elantris, published. He worked a graveyard shift at a hotel in order to buy himself time to write more and started going to writing conferences to network and find editors that might be interested in his work. He eventually found one that agreed to read his manuscript basically because he was so nice, and Elantris was published in April 2005 (which sold 24 thousand copies in its first year).
He credits another big leap in his popularity to being an artist son of an accountant mother and business-owner father, which primed him to look for opportunities in the market. He saw one in the way that movies and video games would offer premium content to bigger fans and tried to get his publishers to give it a shot, but it just wasn't in the cards. In the end, Sanderson decided to do it himself and made an incredibly successful Kickstarter for premium leather-bound editions of his books that raised over 7 million dollars.
His biggest breakthrough moment came during the COVID-19 pandemic. When lockdowns halted his ability to travel for book signings and tours, he suddenly found himself with some extra time. And what did he use it for? To write more books, of course. He finished five novels in secret, sharing them only with his wife, and then slowly seeding them out to other members of his team. As he revealed these secret books to everyone, he loved seeing their reactions and realized he might be able to replicate this for his readers.
So, Sanderson decided to make an apology video. The video began as a somber confession, with Sanderson appearing contrite as he admitted to keeping a secret from his readers. Just when viewers might have been bracing for a scandal, he revealed his actual "crime": writing four new novels during the pandemic without telling anyone. The stunt worked. His subsequent Kickstarter campaign to publish these secret books shattered records, becoming the highest-funded Kickstarter project in history and raising over $41 million from more than 185,000 backers.
Sanderson is definitely a household name now, and he is widely recognized as one of the best fantasy authors of our time. Both his Mistborn series and his Stormlight Archives series have sold over 10 million copies each—and that's only so far.
Stephenie Meyer
From epic fantasy, we can move to the phenomenon that captivated millions of teenagers (and their mothers).
In contrast to Brandon Sanderson, Stephenie Meyer's first book is her most famous one, and she had never intended to be a writer. But one day, Meyer woke from a dream of a young woman and a vampire talking in a meadow (a scene that later made it into the final book). She didn't want to forget, so Meyer started writing the dream down—and found she couldn't stop. While balancing everyday life, Meyers kept going for the next three months, squeezing in writing hours in the evenings after getting her three kids to bed.
But Meyer still didn't see herself as an author or think of her story as a potential "book." It took her sister's encouragement to help her see the potential in her 130,000-word manuscript and begin submitting query letters to literary agents—and to keep submitting them. After another three months, Meyer secured a three-book deal with Little, Brown Publishing worth $750,000, the biggest offer they had ever given a debut author.
Once published, and with the simple but evocative cover, Meyer's book Twilight rocketed to the New York Times' Best Seller list and into the hands of many new fans. But what truly catapulted Meyer to global fame was the movie adaptation.
The film adaptations and the creative team were remarkably faithful to the source material—much more so than many successful book-to-film translations, including The Lord of the Rings. The Twilight films largely maintained Meyer's vision, with only minor changes to timeline, daily activities, and occasionally adding lines like "Hold on tight, spider monkey." On the other hand, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings retelling dropped Tom Bombadil entirely, rolled Glorfindel's role into Arwen, and missed the entire "scouring of the Shire." (This is not to say that the Twilight movies are necessarily better than Lord of the Rings, just more directly faithful to the books they adapted.)
Not only were the movies faithful, they were also a hit, and this only fueled the book sales of the already best-selling series. As of 2020, Twilight has sold over 160 million copies and has been translated into 49 languages.
And the Winner Is . . .
As of right now, when examining the raw numbers and worldwide recognition, Stephenie Meyer takes the crown as the most famous Latter-day Saint author by a considerable margin. The Twilight phenomenon reached audiences far beyond traditional book readers, hitting popular culture in a way that even Card's and Sanderson's impressive achievements haven't matched—yet.
The race isn't over. Brandon Sanderson writes at a speed hard to match, and with at least another entire Mistborn Trilogy alongside several other works planned for release by 2030, there may come a point where Meyer is knocked off her throne. Or maybe Ender's Game will see yet another resurgence, as Orson Scott Card continues to appear on "best science fiction novels of all time" lists decades after publication.
But for now, Meyer stands at the top with 160 million books sold, translations in 49 languages, and a cultural phenomenon that defined a generation.