The World's Best Paid Authors

So Forbes has published its list of the world's best paid authors and I'm not on it. In fact, neither are most of the writers I know, which doesn't mean that we don't get paid to craft stories. It just means that we don't get paid well.

Topping the list is , of course, J. K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, who according to Forbes, "banked a jaw-dropping $300 million over the course of the year." Next in line is James Patterson who has moved from thriller author to screen-play creator, having crafted the series Women's Murder Club for Disney. His take: $50 million in a year.

And in #3, is Stephen King who earned $45 million in twelve months, probably most of it in royalties.

So who doesn't want to be an author?

The problem is that there are probably only ten who make these big bucks--Grisham, Steele, Koontz and Follett are all on the list--and the rest of us are happy when an agent returns our phone calls.

In the same week that Forbes unveiled this list, I received another list of new literary publishers, who are trying to break into the business by discovering their version of these superstars. They are all young, very well-intentioned and seem like decent people but I am afraid that they may all fade into obscurity unless they get lucky.

When son #2 was in middle school, he attended some sort of basketball camp where the pros gave talks about how difficult it was to make it in the big leagues. The statistics meant more to the parents, of course, but it was something incredibly discouraging like 1 out of every 5,000 (I'm making this up but you get the idea) is good enough to play in the pros. It might even be harder than that.

Of course, these young kids continued to dream of being the next Alan Iverson and of course we writers continue to harbor similar fantasies of our own. And actually, who's to say some of us aren't just as talented as those who earn millions?

The problem is that the longer the system continues to over-reward the ones at the top, the less is available to publishers to take a chance on the future.And the more we continue to dream...