James Patterson Out-Earns Next Top 4 Money-Making Authors

Are you struggling to make sure you don’t lose money on your self-published book? Perhaps you are wishing to earn beyond your paltry advance from a traditional publisher? Are you doing okay as a writer but fall a few million copies short of what some authors sell? Cheer up. Even though the Author’s Guild has shown in a recent study that the majority of authors earn at the poverty level, some writers are banking it big time.

Forbes released its annual list of the World’s Highest-Paid Authors today.  The top 13 wordsmiths earned a combined $269 million over the past 12 months.  James Patterson was No. 1 for the third straight year, earning $95 million, while children's author Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) placed a distant second, earning $19.5 million.  It’s hard to believe you can make nearly 20 million and then the person ahead of you more than quadruples that.

The only newcomer is Paula Hawkins (Girl On the Train) with $10 million in earnings.

JK Rowling, with $19 million, placed third overall and was the top female earner. It’s hard to believe that in the book world, which employs mostly women, and in the book consumer market, which consists mainly of women, that the top female writer earns one dollar for every $5.00 that the top male writer brings home. But at least six out of the top nine earning slots were women

For more information, please visit http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2016/08/03/the-worlds-highest-paid-authors-2016-james-patterson-jeff-kinney-and-j-k-rowling-top-ranking/#16a40cf52186

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2016.