Talk about an Income Gap!

Hudson News, airport news stand

(photo: wikimedia.org)

Let’s call a temporary moratorium on grousing about how little money most aspiring book authors make—90 percent make absolutely $0—and peep through the keyhole at how the rich fare. Forbes last month published a list of the world’s top-earning authors and it includes some newcomers who demonstrate the appeal of “young adult” lit for people of all ages. Maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise since American adults, on average, read at the 8th grade level.

We all know that royalty checks arrive by the cartload to James Patterson—presumably shared generously with the humming hive of workerbees who help him produce 14 books a year—and brought in the top figure, around $90 million last year, June to June. In a laggardly second place is Dan Brown, with $28 million.

Three women writers complete the top-earning five: Nora Roberts ($23 million), Danielle Steel ($22 million) and Janet Evanovich ($20 million). Suzanne Collins, who hit it big with The Hunger Games, had to be satisfied with a measly $16 million. Speaking of falls-from-financial-grace, I’ll be a snob and confess my delight that E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey scam netted her only $10 million last year, precipitously down from the $95 million of the previous year.

She was beaten out by young adult author Veronica Roth, a recently young adult herself at age 26, who earned around $17 million from print and ebook sales of the Divergent series over the past year—not counting income from the film adaptation. John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, received some $9 million from U.S. book sales, plus more from last summer’s movie. He ties for 12th place with Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl (a review of that movie posted here Oct 6).

J.K. Rowling had $14 million in earnings, putting her in 8th place. Others in the double-digit list are John Grisham, tied with Stephen King at $17 million, George R. R. Martin ($12 million), David Baldacci ($11 million), and Rick Riordan ($10 million).

OK, enough wallowing in piles of filthy lucre. Back to reality.