…Eh, excuse us, we should’ve said “authors.” That’s what Forbes calls these wordsmiths, who are making way too much dinero to care what they’re called, other than, maybe, “Sir:”
Forbes’ 15 Highest Earning Authors List – by Zoe Triska
Yesterday, Forbes released their annual list of the world’s highest earning authors.
Unsurprisingly, thriller kings James Patterson and Stephen King come in at numbers 1 and 2. Janet Evanovich came in third, with estimated earnings of $33 million, one of several women on the list this year.
Favorite YA/middlegrade series writers also made their list: Suzanne Collins (“The Hunger Games” series), Stephenie Meyer (“Twilight” series), JK Rowling (“Harry Potter” series), Jeff Kinney (“WImpy Kid” series) and Rick Riordan (“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series).
The list is not precise, but rather based on computations done by the Forbes staff.According to Forbes, they get their numbers by “talk[ing] to authors, agents, publishers and other experts and review[ing] data including Nielsen BookScan sales figures.”
After all the “50 Shades of Grey” hubbub so far this year (including the book becoming the UK’s best-selling novel of all time), we wonder if E.L. James might be stealing the #1 spot for the next list. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait a whole year to find out!
Yeah, Mom, we know we’re supposed to be encourage by all these greenbacks flying around. But just to be straight, the comparo between the lives of these folks and ours is making us feel more than a tad…depressed.