British novelist JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has once again topped the Forbes’ list of the world’s richest authors following an estimated USD 95 million in earnings in 2016, mostly from sales of the scripts for ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, and ‘Fantastic Beasts and where to Find Them’.
The script of the stage play for ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ sold more than 680,000 copies in the UK in just three days. Bloomsbury recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter book, ‘The Sorcerer’s Stone’, which led to some of the literary world’s best known children’s characters.
American author James Patterson took second place with USD 87 million in earnings last year, with Jeff Kinney, author of the ‘Wimpy Kids’ series, third with USD 21 million. Dan Brown, author of ‘The Da Vinci Code’, ‘Angels and Demons’, ‘Inferno’ and most recently ‘Origin’, came in fourth with USD 20 million over the course of 2016, while novelist Stephen King took fifth place, with USD 15 million.
