How many eragon books were sold

Published on 8 November, Inheritance sold more than 76, copies in its first week of publication in the UK, its publisher Random House Children's Books said, the biggest first-week sale in all formats and genres since Stephenie Meyer released a new title in her Twilight vampire series, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner , last June.

That sold 90, copies in just one day, despite also being available for free online. Paolini started work on Eragon , the first novel in his bestselling series, when he graduated from high school aged 15, self-publishing it when he was 19 before landing a major book deal.

The books chart the journey to greatness of the farm boy Eragon and his dragon Saphira, with Inheritance the fourth and final title in the series. I loved that idea so much of a young boy finding a dragon egg that I started asking myself all sorts of questions — who might find a dragon egg out in the middle of nowhere, how did the dragon egg get there, who else might be looking for the dragon egg, and just by asking myself questions like that I was able to develop the world, the story, the characters.

As far as naming the characters? The names have all come from many different places. Some are invented using the rules of my invented languages, some are wordplay such as Saphira being a play on Sapphire or Eragon being Dragon with the first letter changed. And then others are historical names, I use a certain amount of old English, Germanic names for some of the humans, stuff like that and some of them are just little hidden in-jokes as well, which gives me a little bit of amusement when I'm writing.

You know, no one has caught all of them! I've mentioned a few of them in interviews but no one has caught all of them but maybe one day I'll write a little article or something for the fans and talk about all of those. I think my favourite character is either Angela the Herbalist, who is based on my sister Angela, or the dragon Saphira. I think her relationship with Eragon is really the heart of the series.

I'm very fond of her character so I think any of the scenes with her or from her point of view rank at the top of my list in terms of favourite parts of the series. I'm always going to be fond of Eragon, just because it is the first book of the series and the first book that I wrote. But I think that the last book I wrote is usually my favourite book, just because I continually try to improve myself as a writer and push myself as a writer and I like to think that I am improving and so I definitely think that Inheritance is the best book of the series and it's certainly my favourite one at the moment.

Why are humans different colours? I think dragons are different colours because, one, it would be kind of boring if they were all the same colour and, two, because the dragons want to be different colours.

In my world, the dragons get to do what the dragons want to do and so no one's going to tell a dragon it can't be purple or pink or rainbow coloured so I think it's just because the dragons want to be different colours. Molly — if you could have a dragon, what colour would it be and why? It would definitely be blue but I'm partially colour blind and so the blue I'm thinking of is probably actually purple.

But that, to me, is my favourite colour and that's why Saphira is blue as well. Catherine - do you make up all the characters before you start a book or do you add characters as you go along? I do both. Some of my characters I invented before I started writing the series. All of the main characters, I'd say, were invented before I started writing the series and they have to be because if you're going to figure out where the story's going, which you really need to do if you're creating a large, multi-volume story, in an imaginary world, it's best to put together a framework or roadmap to know where you're going before you dive into it.

In that case, you really need to have a feel for who all the main characters are before you start so, for example, I outlined the whole series before I began Eragon and then I outlined Eragon specifically in pretty extensive detail before getting into it and I've done that with each of the books of the series.

So, for Brisingr for example, I did a fourteen or fifteen page outline, single spaced and each paragraph dealt with one main story point. So, one paragraph would be Eragon goes to such and such a city, this this this happens, and then the next paragraph will say meanwhile, Roran does this this and this — things like that. I think it's important to do that because if you think about it in terms of music, first you compose a piece of music and then you can concentrate on performing it as beautifully as possible.

But t is very hard to compose while perform. Some people can do it — I don't want to say it's impossible and some people prefer to work that way — but for me, and very many other authors, our brains just don't work that way.

The rest of my characters evolved out of the needs of the rest of the story as I was writing the rest of the books. In the case of Angela the Herbalist, I didn't plan to put her in the story at all and she just ended up popping up as a bit of a surprise and taking over her scenes. Did anything surprise you about the story as you were writing, despite having it all planned out?

Even if you plan things out you have to be open to realising that your characters are no longer who you thought they were or who you thought they would become and you have to be able to let the story change to accommodate those changes in the characters.

If you don't, you end up trying to force them to do things that just don't feel right and then your story will ring false. I've had that happen a couple of times where I'll start writing a scene and it just doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work and I'll get through it and then look back on it and think "you know what, that's not whose these people are anymore".

I'm misreading the situation or I'm not thinking about them the way I ought to and so I'll go back and rewrite it and change it sometimes dramatically and then think, yes, that now feels right. So, for example, in Inheritance, the ultimate fates of several of the main characters changed from what I originally imagined — there are some dramatic differences.

The second story in the collection is not written by Paolini himself, but rather his sister Angela. It focuses on the backstory of the traveling herbalist Angela, who first appeared in Eragon alongside her werecat companion Solembum and has been a consistent if eclectic presence in the series ever since.

She was, in fact, based on Angela Paolini, and now the real Angela and the fictional Angela have come together on the page. It was a lot of fun. She did it really well. Her writing style is quite different from my own, but she did a good job of matching it to the world while retaining her unique flavor. In doing so, the story gives a different perspective on both Urgals and dragons. During the initial meeting, Haut watched him give his presentation to a classroom.

He really connected with those kids in the school. The marketing and publicity wheels for the book began churning many months ago. Since then, there have been multifaceted publicity and marketing efforts every week in order to keep the buzz going and strengthen it through the November 8 on-sale date. It was launched at Comic-Con and has been a huge hit with fans close to , likes. The app calls for players to complete over 50 challenges, eventually earning your Inheritance medallion.

He will have a short break until heading to Europe in the spring to begin another tour. If previous appearances are any indicator, the tour will feature many packed rooms filled with diehard fans. For someone who began an especially huge undertaking at such a young age, and has dealt with innumerable pressures of writing a succession of bestselling books, Christopher Paolini exudes the grace and charm of someone twice his age.

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