For the first time in nearly a decade, J.K. Rowling tops our ranking of the highest-earning wordsmiths, displacing the freakishly prolific James Patterson, Forbes reports.
Fans of the printed (or digital) word will be cheered to know that although five writers on our list had novels made into movies this past year, they nonetheless earned the bulk of their bucks from their books. Together these 11 writers sold nearly 30 million volumes in the United States over the past 12 months, logging $312.5 million in pretax income.
We close the covers--for now, at least--on a couple of scribes who fell off the list this year: Game of Thrones' George R.R. Martin and The Fault in Our Stars' John Green. Both will likely return; Martin has four Thrones prequels in the works, and Green is publishing Turtles All the Way Down, his first novel in five years, this October.