Friday, August 19, 2011

They Earn How Much?!?!

This is a list that I want to be on someday. Forbes has come out with the top earning authors and they are making lots of money.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/08/17/the-worlds-highest-paid-authors/

Why? Books will never die but right now their format is changing. Whether the change will actually stick around or is just a fad, only time will tell. But I can guarantee, books will always be around because people like stories.

Even if you not a reader and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should know a couple of these top 10 authors:

1. James Patterson - $84 million
2. Danielle Steel – $35 million
3. Stephen King – $28 million
4. Janet Evanovich – $22 million
5. Stephanie Meyers – $21 million
6. Rick Riordan – $21 million
7. Dean Koontz – $19 million
8. John Grisham - $18 million
9. Jeff Kinney - $17 million
10. Nicholas Sparks - $16 million

Here are a couple of things I’ve noticed about this list. The number of male writers outnumbers the female writers (I think some women writers are going to be moving up the ranks). There are three young adult/children’s writers on the list (which is encouraging because, hopefully it means children and young adults are reading). And there are some names on this list that have writing for years and year and, well a really long time. I also noticed that one big name was missing from the top 10 list. JK Rowlings came in at only $5 million (her Harry Potter books have run its course). How could this be? According to Forbes the income estimates are based on sales figures supplied by Nielsen Bookscan (which gets year-end sales totals submitted by publishing houses to Publishers Weekly and input from numerous agents, managers and editors).

Right now I’d sell my book(s) for a just a couple thousand dollars (what a steal!) just to get published!

1 comment:

  1. geez, I don't know Riordan or Kinney!!!! Suspense? YA fantasy? That could explain it.

    And Patterson is amazingly way out in front of the rest. Haven't read any of his books yet. Strange, huh?

    Ok, get to that retreat and get to work on that book. I totally agree: a couple thousand would be grand, for starters!

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