James Patterson has once again taken first place in Forbes’ annual list of the world’s highest-earning writers. Patterson is estimated to have made a whopping $94m, far ahead of second-placed Stephen King on $39m. But the real story is that women are finally starting to make a real impact on the list, and there are even the first signs of self-published authors entering the running.
Janet Evanovich is third on the list, while other prominent female writers include Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel and Suzanne Collins. But as the Forbes article notes, E.L. James is raking in huge sums with her Fifty Shades… trilogy and is highly likely to take a high-ranking slot on next year’s list; if she does, she’ll show that authors who start out self-published can achieve success by any measure.
The other notable trend from this year’s list is that genre fiction and young adult novels seem to be the most popular, along with romance titles. Perhaps that’s not really very surprising, since literary fiction has never tended to do particularly well on the Forbes list.
Sigh, wow, and even with 16 titles under my name and counting, the plateau these people are reaching still seems like such a dream. However, all those names are huge big hitting names, not really indie. I would love to find a place where I could read about all the middle men and women, just pulling in maybe 1000$ a month with their ebooks.
Cheers and all the best,
Damien
Posted by Damien Darby | August 10, 2012, 11:15 amThis site lists top-selling indie authors http://selfpublishingsuccessstories.blogspot.ca/
Posted by Jo Cabot | August 10, 2012, 1:31 pm