While many bloggers in the 'sphere hope to one day grow up to write words on, you know, paper, it turns out that penning fiction is not as lucrative as one might think.
The 10 best paid authors in the world netted only $563 million in one year, according to Forbes. (Actually the info on their websites reads "June 1, 2007 to June 1, 2007" as the timeline for this moneymaking, but since its doubtful even the best novel writers combined made that sum in one day, we're going to assume it's a typo.)
Now, that may seem like a lot of money, but consider most of that sum goes to one writer (named later) and the rest of the mills are split up over the other nine.
As it turns out, just because he looks like Bill Gates doesn't mean that Stephen King makes as much as him: King makes $45 mil annually from book deals and royalties and all those movie adaptations that inevitably suck, which is nothing to sneeze at. But still, before last week there were probably some guys down on Wall Street that could boast the same.
So who is the number one best paid writer in the world? The answer is not really that surprising:
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Hari Puttar is the Bollywood film by Mirchi Movies about a young Indian boy who moves to London and, with the help of his parents, saves the world. Puttar also bears a resemblance, in name at least, to the marvelously fantastical gay wizard books by J/K Rowling. Which is why Warner Brothers, the distributors of the Harry Potter films, decided to sue the Indian film company to prevent its release.
Well, suck it Bugs Bunny:
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Jay/Kay Rowling, the British author with the great rack who wrote those children's fantasy books everyone loves so much, finally released herself from the curse of New York courtrooms yesterday.
The ex-school marm was embroiled in a civil case with publisher RDR Books for months, trying to halt the printing of Steven Jan Vander Ark's unauthorized Harry Potter Lexicon book, which turned all of her made-up words into a jam-packed dictionary explaining the nonsense. Though there were some tears, some magic, and some spooky litigious proceedings, Rowling and Warner Bros. prevailed. Now no one can use her gay wizards for monetary gain unless she says so.
Which means your Harry/Professor Snape slashfiction remains in the immaterial realm of the Internet unless you want all of Hogwarts' magical attorneys on your ass.
Last week, author and bajillionaire J.K. Rowling issued the commencement address at Harvard, the university most famous for purchasing sexy love letters between Norman Mailer and Carole Mallory. Encouraging the Class of 2008 to "imagine better," Rowling told graduates that "we do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already." Also: High-powered litigators can be pretty awesome, too, but it's not like these kids can cast Imperio spells.
The Harry Potter lawsuit currently making its way through New York courtroom testimony is nothing if not a tearfest. Author J.K. Rowling and film distributor Warner Bros. are suing publisher RDR, which wants to print Steven Jan Vander Ark's encyclopedic Harry Potter Lexicon, a print companion to Ark's website of the same name, which explains all those made up words from the bestseller. But the real story here is all the breaking down on the witness stand.
On Monday, it was Rowling's turn … or almost: She "came to the edge of tears" and had to "regain her composure" during testimony. "It’s very difficult for someone who is not a writer to understand," she told the court. "The closest I can come is to say to someone, ‘How do you feel about your child?'"
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• Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson look just like you thought they would in bathing suits, which is to say, not that sexy.
• Tila Tequila dresses just like you thought she would, which is to say, immodestly.
• Drew Barrymore behaves just like you thought she would, which is to say, belligerently.
• Daniel Radcliffe dates just who you thought he would, which is say, his co-stars.
• Amy Winehouse destroys her career just like you thought she would, which is to say, she won't attend the Grammy's because of her drug problems.
• Rihanna has all the body parts of a regular person, just like you thought she would, which is to say, there are pictures of her nipples available online.
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Even for those who have never a Harry Potter book, the whole empire is undeniably amusing.
First, there are the twenty-somethings who swear the book is real literature, even though the last novel they read was in Freshman English. Then there’s Daniel Radcliffe, whose development from boy wizard to man gave us a new respect for whoever did the casting for The Philosopher’s Stone. Add a closeted gay character to the mix, a ridiculous reaction by the press and you’ve got some real entertainment there.
So this year Entertainment Weekly named J.K. Rowling Entertainer of the Year, crediting the author with getting "people to tote around her big, old-fashioned printed-on-paper books as if they were the hottest new entertainment devices on the planet."
Hey, it’s a better choice than the color green. And she’s even entertained those of us who couldn't care less about wizardry.
Forget about the whole momentarily shocking kerfuffle surrounding "Harry Potter" scribe J.K. Rowling and her decision to "out" fictional character Albus "I'm Secretly Gay" Dumbledore. Now, Rowling is involved in another equally boring controversy. A legal one! Pertaining to copyright infringements!
Author J.K. Rowling and the maker of the Harry Potter films are suing a small publisher in Michigan over its plans to release a book version of a popular Web site dedicated to the boy wizard. The suit claims that RDR Books will infringe on Rowling's intellectual property rights if it goes ahead with its plan to publish the 400-page Harry Potter Lexicon on Nov. 28.
And from a legal standpoint, Rowling's absolutely right. But really, what's the harm in putting an invisibility cloak on this lawsuit long enough to let the Michiganders sell one crappy Harry Potter knockoff book? Jeez, Rowling. You'd think after crushing the right-leaning Midwestern children's dreams by telling them way too much info about their beloved grandfatherly wizard and his "magic wand," you could have maybe, just maybe, let this one slide.
• Jessica Simpson to co-host The View in November, presumably to take Elisabeth Hasselbeck's spot as "the dumb blond one" while Lizzy pops out a tiny, uber-conservative baby.
• A mysterious woman who makes giant cow-sculptures out of butter just might catapult Barack Obama to victory in the Iowa primaries.
• TMZ gets called out for resorting to Ebonics, refusing to "keep it real."
• Dan Abrams tackles the Dumbledore (a.k.a. "OMG, a fictional character is gay!" story with the requisite amount of tact and decorum.
• After that whole embarrassing "Hurricane Katrina" debacle, President Bush isn't taking any chances. He's already officially pronounced those scary California wildfires to be a "major disaster." Presumably, the over 1 million people who've already been displaced from their homes would agree.
• Apparently, we're the only ones who think bedsharing is old news. The Times article about parents who sleep in the same room as their well-adjusted eight year-olds is currently #2 on the "Most Emailed" list.
Although we can’t always shake the nasty habit of writing in the royal we, occasionally one of our editors decides to shake off the cloak of anonymity to write a short, pithy statement long, rambling diatribe about a topic of their choice. Today, Debbie Newman is that editor.
Days after outing Dumbledore as a same-sex oriented magician, author J.K. Rowling is already soaking up criticism from all ends of the crazyperson spectrum.
Naturally, we have the religious zealots, who don't want their precious tots reading about same-sex anything (or, for that matter, sex itself) because it's "dirty." Then, of course, we have the self-appointed literary ombudsmen, who've questioned her motives and wondered whether England's Richest Person By Far has overstepped her bounds.
During a recent Q&A session with audience members, Rowling answered a young fan who asked if (Headmaster) Dumbledore ever finds true love.
"Dumbledore is gay," she said, adding he was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, who he beat in a battle between good and bad wizards long ago.
The audience gasped, then applauded. "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy," she said.
"Falling in love can blind us to an extent," she added, saying Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down" and his love for Grindelwald was his "great tragedy".
–J.K. Rowling, surprising "Harry Potter" fans by belatedly outing her elderly fictional character Headmaster Albus Dumbledore as same-sex oriented. [BBC via Queerty]
Calling all adults with too much spare time on their hands! Don't you just hate it when you've dropped the kids off at day camp, set the VCR to record your daytime soaps, and rushed down to the street to the local Salem, Oregon library (to check out the final gripping installment of a children's book series) only to discover, to your complete and absolute horror, that it's missing pages 371 to 402?
Well, that's exactly what happened to "a major Harry Potter fan," Oregonian Barbara Klein. Fortunately, the publishing company (Scholastic) was quick to offer up its sincerest (and heartfelt) apologies.
• What is it about New York that makes rappers break the law? Could it be the overabundance of money-cash-hoes?
• Two new water cruises to be offered in New York and they are sure to delight the whole family (by which we mean anyone over the age of 65).
• Finally, a way to make Harry Potter enjoyable for everyone!
• For those of you who haven't been outside, or looked out the window—or are unemployed, 27 and living in your parents' basement—it's raining. All day! Which means your flight (undoubtedly to somewhere sunny and pleasant) is most likely canceled.
• Have you heard? The South Bronx is so the new Williamsburg. Which is to say, it's currently affordable and trendy, soon to be ridiculously overpriced and totally over.
"Potter casts his final spell," proclaims the Baltimore Sun. "Read it and weep," writes the Melbourne Herald Sun. "Harry Potter's story has a happy ending (for the book shops, anyway)," teases the Independent (U.K.).
Yes, we've all seen the glowing reviews for J.K. Rowling's final Harry Potter book, what about the sales? As it turns out, those were pretty magical as well.
The final book in the Harry Potter series sold an estimated 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of sale, setting a new record for the book industry, according to U.S. publisher Scholastic.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" went on sale at midnight Friday to the delight of fans, who have been eagerly awaiting the last in the seven-book series about the boy wizard.
Borders Group, the second-largest U.S. book chain, said it sold about 1.2 million copies of "Deathly Hallows" worldwide on the first day, the highest single-day sales of any title in its history.
Proving once again that Harry Potter is safe from harm's way, at least in terms of would-be spoilsports. And that no matter how many trashy reality tv shows, celebrity weeklies or Britney Spears' cd's they buy, muggles simply can't get enough of the pubescent wizard and his suddenly large-breasted maybe-girlfriend, Hermione Granger.
Finishing is emotional because the books have been so wrapped up with my life. It's almost impossible not to finish and look back to where I was when I started.
…I was very lonely with it. It's not like being in a pop group, where at least there would be three or four other people who knew what it was like to be on the inside. Only I knew what it was like to be generating this world as it became bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more people were invested in it.
I can never write anything as popular again. Lightning does not strike in the same place twice.
–J.K. Rowling, finally ready to close the "Harry Potter" chapter of her life [via Forbes.com]
Editorial Director
