The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis
Being a Historical Exploration of the Creation and Reception of the
Third Book of the Chronicles of Narnia

English-language Editions:

Last date in print:

Total copies sold:

Over 100 million copies of all seven Narnia books (combined) have been sold since 1955. The books are frequently sold in box sets of all seven. (Source)
According to Publisher's Weekly, since 1994, over 1 million copies of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader have been sold. (Figures before 1994, when the Narnia books moved to Harper Collins, are not available.)
On the Publisher’s Weekly list of all-time top-selling children’s books, compiled in 2003, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader places 373^rd, ahead of The Last Battle and The Silver Chair. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is 91^st. (Note that the Narnia books made this list using only sales figures from 1994 and after. If the list had been made using all-time sales, the series would surely place much higher. The list's top-seller, The Poky Little Puppy, has sold 14,898,341 copies. 100 million divided by 7 comes out to 14,285,714 copies of each book, if each book sold evenly. However, it is clear that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has sold more copies than the others in the series.)

Sales by year:

In 2005, the year the Walden Media film of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was released, a Harper Collins publicist announced that nine times more Narnia books were sold than in 2004. (Source)
In December 2005, a box set of the seven Narnia books was the top-seller on Amazon.com. (Source)
Currently (October 2010), the Narnia box set is ranked 3, 957th on Amazon.com, and it is 61st in “Children’s books – Classics.”
The stand-alone paperback edition of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is currently (October 2010) ranked 40,366^th on Amazon.com. For comparison, the most popular book in the series, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, is ranked 12,072^nd and Prince Caspian is 388,724^th.

Advertising copy:

I was unable to find any advertisements for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader or the first two Narnia books. However, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle all appeared in full-page ads run by Macmillan showcasing new children’s books. Macmillan ran similar “New Books for Young Readers” full-page ads before the release of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, so I am not sure why the first three Narnia books do not seem to have been advertised in the US.
Here is a PDF of an ad for The Silver Chair.

Stage, film, music:

In 1986 a stage production of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was produced by Vanessa Ford Productions at London’s Westminster Theater, following a 1984 production of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. (Source)

From 1988 to 1990 the BBC produced a Narnia miniseries, which dramatized The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; and The Silver Chair. It is available as a DVD box set. (Amazon product description)
In the late 1980s the BBC also produced radio versions of the complete Chronicles of Narnia, which are available on CD. (Amazon product description)
Focus on the Family’s Family Radio Theater produced radio drama versions of all seven Narnia books, which are available on CD. (Amazon product description)
In 2000 Harper Audio began releasing its own series of Narnia audiobooks. Voyage of the Dawn Treader was released in 2003. (Amazon product description)

A live-action film produced by Walden Media will be released on December 10, 2010. It is the third in their series of live-action Narnia films, following The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in 2005 and Prince Caspian in 2008. The first two Narnia movies were co-produced by Disney, but after Prince Caspian made only $420 million (compared to $745 million for The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe), Disney dropped the Narnia franchise and Fox Studios picked it up and co-produced the Dawn Treader film. (Source)
Video games based The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian were both released after the two films were released. Plans were made for a Voyage of the Dawn Treader game, but it was cancelled when the Dawn Treader movie moved from Disney to Fox.


Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie poster, 2010	Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie tie-in cover, 2010

Translations:

The Chronicles of Narnia have been translated into 47 languages.

Serialization:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was published first in hardback book form, not as a serial.

Sequels or prequels:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was written and published as the third of seven Narnia books, although the original editions did not number the books. However, in 1994, when the books were taken by Harper Collins, they began to be numbered in chronological order (as suggested by Lewis’s stepson, Douglas Gresham, and by a letter C. S. Lewis wrote to a child). In chronological order, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the fifth book in the Chronicles of Narnia.
Regarding the order of the series, Lewis responded to a child’s letter in 1957:

I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.

Works Cited

Amazon.com. Web. 20 October 2010.
"The Chronicles of Narnia." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 December 2010. Web. 1 December 2010.
Dorsett, Lyle, and Marjorie Lamp Mead, eds. C. S. Lewis Letters to Children. New York: Macmillan, 1985.
Downing, David C. Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.
GoodKnight, Glen. Translations of the Chronicles of Narnia. Web. 19 October 2010.
Guthmann, Edward. SF Gate. “’Narnia’ tries to cash in on dual audience.” Web. 19 October 2010.
Kelly, Clint. "Dear Mr. Lewis". Respone 29:1 (Winter 2006).
LaMonica, Paul. “The Fox, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.” CNN Money. Web. 20 October 2010.
Roback, Diane, Jason Britton, and Debbie Hochman Turvey. "All-Time Bestselling Children's Books." Publishers Weekly 248.51 (2001): 24.
Schakel, Peter. The Way Into Narnia: A Reader’s Guide. Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005.
Sommer, Mark. Examiner. “No video game for Dawn Treader.” Web. 20 October 2010.
Torrance, Kelly Jane. “Fox Saves Narnia From Disney.” Washington Times. 30 January 2009.
Wagner, Richard. C.S. Lewis and Narnia For Dummies. Hoboken: Wiley Publishing, 2005.