How does working for £136 per minute sound? That's over £8,000 every hour, by the way – and not bad work if you can get it.

And that impressive going-rate was what JK Rowling managed to average in her earnings over the last 12 months.

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The astronomical annual sum makes her the highest-paid author on Forbes' prestigious rich list, racking up earnings totalling over £72 million in the last year. Quite the magical time she's been having then.

Her resurgence is primarily down to the storming success of the script for the stage play The Cursed Child being published in book form, which sold over 680,000 in the first few days in the UK.

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Add in the earnings from JK writing the script for latest Potter-world film film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and you have her topping the cha-ching charts.

Second to Rowling on the list of authors is James Patterson, the man behind the Women's Murder Club series, who clocked up £66.3 million. There's then a pretty wide gulf down to the likes of Jeff Kinney and Dan Brown, who made £16m and £15.2m respectively, with Stephen King rounding out the top 5 by making £11.4 million over the last year.

Although we're sure that could change next year after the releases of IT, The Dark Tower and The Mist are accounted for.

Forbes producer Hayley Cuccinello expressed how encouraging the list is for fans of British writing talent: "Our celebrity lists tend to have a substantial percentage of international stars.

"But it is remarkable that nearly a third of the highest-paid authors hail from the UK. That said, I think it's more noteworthy that nearly half of the list members are women."

In total, three Brits made the top 10, and nearly half of that top 10 was made up of women, with Girl on the Train author Paula Hawkins reaching 8th with £9.9m earnings, and Fifty Shades' EL James in 8th with £8.7m.


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