JK Rowling’s £2.5bn empire

JK Rowling is the highest-earning author in the world according to  US business magazine Forbes. The Harry Potter writer amassed  £170m  ( $300m) last year after she wrote her first best-selling books about the boy wizard in 1997.

She beat the literature’s next biggest earner, James Patterson, of Along Came A Spider fame by six times.

“It was wizardry that transformed JK Rowling from a destitute single mother on welfare into a best-selling multi-billionaire. Over the big screen, her Potter franchise has already surpassed  £ 2.5bn ($4.5bn) across the world box office and she still has three more flicks yet to come.

Her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published,  which made a “literary sensation”,  and the series has taken the world by storm.  Her books have sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into 67 languages. The first instalment of the series, Deadly Hallows, has sold over 44 million copies since it came out last summer, including 15million in the first 24 hours.

No	Author	£ in millions	$ in millions
1	JK Rowling	170	300
2	James Patterson	28	50
3	Stephen King	25	45
4	Tom Clancy	20	35
5	Danielle Steel	17	30
6	John Grisham	14	25
6	Dean Koontz	14	25
8	Ken Follett	11	20
9	Jane Evanovich	10	17
10	Nicholas Sparks	9	16