Day 29 : The World's Top Earning Authors

Okay. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bookworm. I love reading them, preserving them, researching them, nitpicking them, annihilating them, sleeping with/on/beside them, forcing others to read them. By extension, I've always had a love-hate relationship with the people who write them.

So, each year I Google for the writers who have made it big the previous year; mostly out of curiosity to see if my favorite ones, and partly out of jealousy and spite. The World's Top Earning Authors

2014 didn't surprise me much. This year as well the big bucks went to young-adult writers, long-standing crime series writers and creators of romance sagas. In other words Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, Nora Roberts. Sure there are still mentions of Dan Brown, John Grisham, Danielle Steel in the list; which is not so surprising knowing that they've written so many books so far that some are bound to sell in some corners of the world. Take Steel for example, 120 books, mostly romance sagas so it's bound to earn her some moola as long as there are teen girls dreaming of their prince charming. Same applies to Nora Roberts with her 145 romances. With the sheer number of tomes with their names/copyrights on it, they are bound to earn their keep each year even if the sit at home twiddling their thumbs all day.

The list also had Stephen King, who’s Doctor Sleep a sequel to The Shining released in late 2013 so he had earnings coming in from there through into 2014 from his die-hard fans (me included) who'd just gobble up anything his pen outputs. Same goes with J K Rowling, who had two releases in the Cormoran Strike series under the penname Robert Galbraith. The only reason we've helped her earn her paycheck, is because of her past wonderful magical works. I've only read the Cuckoo's Calling so far, umm it's alright, but then you cannot always expect her to churn out another character like Potter.

The real surprise entries in this year's list were Veronica Roth and Jeff Kinney.

Kinney writes the Wimpy Kid series which has been a huge success and has been made into a successful movie series. So as is the trend off late - if you get a movie based on your book, in comes the millions!

Next comes Roth, she's also 26 like yours truly, only she's 17 million dollars richer. She's the writer of the Divergent series, another YA fantasy/action trilogy much like Hunger Games. I've not read the book yet, but according to what I've heard about it's supposed be pretty addictive. There's also a movie based on this book starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, if that is not a recipe for teenager hit I don't know what is. In Wiki it says, it earned more that 150% for its budget in profits, so maybe my assumption is right even if the actors are playing brother and sister in this movie and not the star crossed cancer-patient lovers they were in FIOS. Another movie based on a book, who’s author also shows up in this list.

Plus, she is cute!

Each year, I read this list and each year I wonder. How do they do it? These are the people who have made it big doing what they love doing. Sure their quality of writing may differ (E L James = yuck!), or selling out to marketing hacks for higher profits (Collins), but despite all that they have earned enough to spend the rest of their days basking in the fame and frolicking in the riches. Some even are capable of using all that down time to hone their skills, and produce better their literary output in their later years (Wilbur Smith - "Desert God").

I have immense respect to any man or woman who is able to do something they love, create something out of thin air, and earn money for doing that each day for the rest of their lives. To these people each day is an adventure, not the ponderous torture chamber that it is for the rest of the 9-to-5 masses. That is why I am so jealous of Anthony Bourdain. He gets the big money to travel all over the world, eat delicacies and spout swear-words on camera.

These guys have actually figured it all out. But what is that exactly?

Today, I think I am going spend the day pouting and pondering.