Top 10 Richest Authors in the World

Have you ever wondered how much your favourite authors make? We have the answers. If you’re anything like us and find yourself wondering what it would be like to run away and make your millions as a world-famous author, then keep reading as we dive into the lives of some of the most successful authors of the modern day and discover just how much money they make.

To give you a better idea of what it takes to become a super successful writer, we have created a list of the richest authors from around the globe to explore their lives and uncover what has made them so successful.

So, grab a brew and sit back as we dive into the 10 of the wealthiest authors in the world.

J.K. Rowling

Worth - £820 million

Known all over the world, the works of J.K. Rowling are loved by book lovers, film buffs, and video game enthusiasts alike for the rich and exciting plots, characters, and, of course, magic. It was during her time working as a teacher in the city of Edinburgh that Rowling first began writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone which was published in 1997. And so, the legacy of Harry Potter and his magical friends began, quickly gaining traction in the UK and across the UK. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is now the best-selling book series ever recorded.

Just four years after the first Harry Potter book was published, the first film adaptation of Harry Potter was released which proved to be just as successful as the books. Rowling’s wizarding world grew into a global franchise featuring two film series, multiple Harry Potter video games, numerous board games, and even its own theme park. So, it’s no surprise that off the back of all this success J.K. Rowling comes in at the top of this list of the richest authors in the world.

James Patterson

Worth – £621 million

Renowned author of best-seller titles like Along Came a Spider, 1st to Die, and Kiss the Girls, James Patterson is now one the highest-paid authors of the last four decades. Patterson started his writing career in 1976 when he published his first book a thriller by the name of The Thomas Berryman Number, which went on to win the Edgar Allen Poe Best First Novel by an American Author.

Since his first success, Patterson has released multiple books, each captivating the minds of new readers and loyal readers from all over the world. In 1996 he retired from his career in advertising to focus on his writing and continued to publish new and exciting books with his signature writing style of short and punchy chapters that are still popular today.

Danielle Steel

Worth - £465 million

As the world's best-selling author (that’s still alive), it’s no surprise that Danielle Steel has made this list of the wealthiest authors. To date, Steel has sold over 800 million copies of her popular romance novels. It's Steel’s unique talent of being able to juggle several writing projects at once that allowed her to complete several books a year.

Steel began her writing career early, completing her first novel when she was only 19 studying at the University of New York. This was only the beginning of a flourishing career, and since then, Steel has written more than 210 books including 182 novels including best-sellers like The Gift, Sisters, Message from Nam, and Heartbeat.

Paolo Coelho

Worth - £388 million

Author of the international best-seller The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. Coelho had a rough time during his childhood, when he was only 17 his parents sent him to a mental institute, then he dropped out of Law School, and wondering the world jobless for a time, he eventually found his feet back in Brazil as a songwriter for some of the most iconic Brazilian musicians of the time. Coelho’s troubles weren’t over yet though, in 1974 he was arrested and tortured by the ruling military government under the suspicion of conducting “subversive” activities.

Through all the turmoil of his younger life, Coelho never gave up on his dream of becoming a writer, and in 1982, in his mid-thirties, his dream was finally realised when he published his first book Hell Archives. While his first publication wasn’t particularly successful, it wasn’t long before he published his next book The Pilgrimage, and then, The Alchemist a few years later. Since then, The Alchemist alone has sold over 150 million copies worldwide, and it's only one of 9 books in its series.

Stephen King

Worth - £388 million

Next on our list is one of the most well-known names in the horror genre, Stephen King. As the author of ground-breaking novels like It, The Shining, The Stand, and Pet Cemetery, King's reputation as an incredible horror writer has been set in stone by the numerous films and TV series adapted from his writing.

Born in Portland, Maine in 1947, King was first given the surname Pollock, after his father, but when he became an adult, he decided to change it to King, after his mother. King was heavily influenced, during his childhood, by both films and comic books, using them to create and write his own stories from as young as six years old. He debuted his first novel, Carrie, in 1974, and since published 65 novels/novellas, sold more than 400 million copies worldwide.

Nora Roberts

Worth - £372 million

American Author of over 225 romance novels, Nora Roberts is leading the way when it comes to finding love in the pages of the book. With a net worth of approximately £372,000,000 (yes that’s right, six zeros), Robert’s literary empire has taken the world by storm, selling more than 500 million books worldwide.

Roberts had rather a story-book-like introduction to writing, when she and her two children were stuck indoors during a blizzard with nothing but a dwindling supply of chocolate to keep them entertained, so with nothing else to do, she picked up a pen and began writing. She quickly got the bug and soon she had completed three manuscripts. After being rejected multiple times by publishers and getting embroiled in a plagiarism scandal, Roberts eventually published her first book in 1981, Irish Thoroughbred, and went on to publish hundreds more in the following years.

Nora Roberts also published works under different pseudonyms including J.D. Robb, Jill March, and Sarah Hardesty.

John Grisham

Worth - £310 million

Novelist, Lawyer, and former politician. John Grisham is a man of many talents, and that couldn't be more evident than in his writing. Best known for his captivating crime thrillers, Grisham is the author of some of the genre’s biggest titles like A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Client, and The Pelican Brief.

After a successful ten-year career in law, Grisham won the election to become the Democrat to the Mississippi House of Representatives between 1983 and 1990. Meanwhile, he had already begun his literary legacy releasing his first novel in 1989 based on a particularly harrowing court case that stuck with him. This first attempt at publication didn't go so well, as it was rejected by publishers not once, not twice, but 28 times before a relatively unknown publisher agreed to publish it with an initial print run of 5000 copies. From then on, Grisham’s popularity grew until he became a figurehead of the crime-fiction genre.

In a feat few others can lay claim to, Grisham has written no fewer than 37 consecutive number-one fiction best-sellers. As it stands, John Grisham has sold over 300 million copies of his books.

Barbara Taylor Bradford

Worth - £174 million

Born in May of 1933 British American author Barbara Taylor Bradford is one of the UK’s and America’s most beloved novelists. Since her first publication, Bradford has gone on to publish 40 books and sell over 91 million copies worldwide.

Bradford had the makings of a writer from an early age, she got the bug for writing when, at the age of ten, she was paid 7 shillings and a sixpence by a local magazine for a story that she had written. By the time she turned twenty-one Bradford had left her job as a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post and moved to London where she became the fashion editor for Women’s Own Magazine and a columnist for the London Evening News.

Bradford's first proper attempt at novel writing came in the form of four suspense novels, but she quickly dropped the genre entirely. Through gritted teeth, Bradford set herself the goal of publishing a novel before she turned 55, and soon she was publishing her first novel, A Woman of Substance. A Woman of Substance quickly became a best-seller and was soon followed by 39 other novels.

Dean Koontz

Worth - £155 million

With a host of accolades and titles under his belt, Dean Koontz is one of the world's most popular suspense thriller writers. Under his real name and a variety of pseudonyms, Koontz has published over 105 novels as well as numerous other novellas and short story collections. Today Koontz has a net worth of roughly £155 million, largely thanks to the whopping 450 million copies of his work sold worldwide.

After being born and raised in the state of Pennsylvania, and attending college there, Koontz began his professional writing career in 1968, when he received his first publication, a science fiction book called Star Quest. He went on to write over a dozen science fiction novels, but sometime in the 1970s switched up his genre to horror fiction. After ten or so years of writing a range of “hit-and-miss” novels, Koontz had his first breakthrough novel in 1980, with Whispers. Picking up over two million sales in just one year, Whispers launched Koontz’s career into a new gear and since then he has published dozens of books many of which have reached number one on The New York Times Best-Seller List.

R.L. Stine

Worth - £155 million

Finally on our list of the richest authors of all time is the writer of the beloved children’s horror series, Goosebumps. Known by his pen name R.L. Stine, Robert Lawrence Stine has managed to sell (not personally) over 400 million copies of his Goosebumps series worldwide, making it the second best-selling book series of all time. And that’s not to mention all of the other books that Stine has written including titles from the teenage horror fiction series Fear Street (which alone have sold over 80 million copies) and dozens of humour books for children.

Born in the State of Ohio in 1943 to a mother and a father, Stine spent his youth growing up in the city of Bexley. Stine’s life of writing began when he happened to stumble upon an old typewriter in his attic. After this potentially life-changing discovery, he quickly began typing up stories and joke books. As he grew older Stine graduated Ohio State University in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and began his writing career in earnest by writing a collection of children’s books under the pseudonym Jovial Bob Stine. It wasn’t until 1986 that Stine wrote his first horror novel, Blind Date, and then in 1989, he began writing the now-popular series Fear Street, which, in turn, was the prelude to his Goosebump series.

So that brings our list of the wealthiest authors in the world to an end. It’s fair to say that it’s a pretty varied list, and even though most of the names on this list are known the world over, they have all come from fairly normal backgrounds, each having built their wealth with only a dream, and what we can only speculate to be ‘a few’ repetitive strange injuries.

So, if you secretly fancy yourself as the next entry onto a list of the richest authors of all time, we hope that this may have given you some hope, because whether you get rejected 28 times like John Grisham, or you’re just bored at home with nothing else to do like Nora Roberts on a snowy day, you have the potential to hit the jackpot through your writing.

Starting out your career in writing might not always pay top dollar from day one, so why not find a little financial respite by selling all the books you have already read to WeBuyBooks? Get rid of the books you no longer need and earn money, it’s a no-brainer really.