J.K. ROWLING – $1.5 BILLION
The writer who made us believe in magic, J.K. Rowling rose to fame with her Harry Potter series. But achieving success was not easy for the writer. Rowling’s initial work was rejected by many publication houses for years before her book was finally accepted by a renowned publication house. Rowling conceived the idea of Harry Potter while on a delayed train running from Manchester to London in 1990. During the course of 7 years while she was writing the first Harry Potter book, Rowling went through a lot of personal loss and also suffered poverty until the First Harry Potter book was published in 1997. Following the success of her first book, Rowling wrote 6 sequels to the book, with the last book being releasing in 2007. The series was a huge success and had more than 500 million copies being sold all across the world.
Apart from writing these books, Rowling also became a successful screenwriter, film producer, television producer and philanthropist and received several awards for her books and her work. No wonder, she became a billionaire within a very short time span. However, she gave up her billionaire status after she donated a huge part of her money into charity. As of currently, the brilliant writer has a net worth of $1.5 billion and is one of the best-selling living authors in the world.