Just for the record

Here in the books corner, we try not to think too hard in August. So here are some fun facts from the just-released "Guinness World Records 2007" (Guinness World Records, 288 pp., $28.95).

• Best-selling fiction author: Dame Agatha Christie, whose 78 crime novels have sold 2 billlion copies in 44 languages.

• Fastest-selling nonfiction book: Hillary Rodham Clinton's "Living History," which sold 200,000 copies on its first day of sale in 2003.

• Highest annual earnings for a children's author: J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter creator, who purportedly earned $59.1 million in 2004, according to the Forbes Celebrity 100.

• Highest annual earnings for any author: Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code," who earned $76.5 million in 2005, according to Forbes.

• Longest novel: "Remembrance of Things Past" by Marcel Proust, which contains an estimated 9,609,000 characters.

• First graphic novel: The word "graphic novel" first appeared in 1976 on the jacket of "Bloodstar" by Richard Corben and Robert E. Howard. Two other self-labeled graphic novels, "Beyond Time and Again" by George Metzger and "Red Tide" by Jim Steranko, also appeared that year.

If you're asking how a world-records volume with "2007" in the title could be published in the middle of 2006; we're not available — that would be thinking too hard.

Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times book editor