Sphere Books

[citation needed] In 1976, Sphere paid $225,000 for the British publishing rights from Ballantine Books for the novelisation of a forthcoming science fiction film, Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker by George Lucas (ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster).

The book, like the film Star Wars released the following year, was an enormous success and sold out its initial print run.

[5] The occult writer Dennis Wheatley edited a series of books published under the umbrella title of The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult,[6] which included titles such as Dracula by Bram Stoker, Moonchild by Aleister Crowley, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[7] Sphere's involvement in science fiction was furthered with its Sphere Science Fiction Classics series published throughout the 1970s, which included The World of Null-A and The Pawns of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke's The Sands of Mars and Larry Niven's Neutron Star.

Sphere best-sellers have included Long Way Round by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, Ricky Tomlinson's autobiography Ricky, Sharon Osbourne's autobiography Extreme, A Brother's Journey by Richard B. Pelzer, Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis and Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?