According to a story in The Telegraph (UK), here are the top 10 authors by earnings for Jun 1 2007-Jun 1 2008:

1) JK Rowling £160 million ($282.5M)
2) James Patterson £26.7m ($47M)
3) Stephen King £24m ($42M)
4) Tom Clancy £18.7m ($33M)
5) Danielle Steel £16m ($28M)
6) John Grisham £13m ($23M)
6) Dean Koontz £13m ($23M)
8) Ken Follett £10.6m ($18.7M)
9) Janet Evanovich £9m ($16M)
10) Nicholas Sparks £8.5m ($15M)

It appears that rags-to-riches seems to be useful in becoming a well-paid author:

J. K. Rowling went from being on the dole to the highest paid author in the world. In fact, last year, she earned approximately 6 times more than the next closest writer on the list! Not only that, but her total income for the year actually comes out to more than the other nine authors earned when added together. Harry Potter is definitely magical in more than one way!

Another current trend looks like fiction sells and sells well. All of the top 10 authors specialize in writing stories and novels, although a few have branched off into non-fiction, too. (Nichols Sparks put out an autobiographical book, Stephen King has written books about writing, and Tom Clancy has co-authored books about weapons and war, just to mention a few.)

Given the names on the list, it also seems that people are currently biased towards reading and buying mysteries, be they based in the espionage, romance, thriller, crime (or magical) genres. How long that trend continues, it’s hard to know. The economy drives book sales to a big degree – with what’s going on now, what are you interested reading or think people will want to read? (Personally, I’m just trying to get my hands on the rest of the Harry Dresden books – magical mysteries are my poison for now.)

For a guy who has ‘retired’ from writing, Stephen King sure has a lot of books coming out all the time.

Of course, 2007′s BLAZE is actually a book that was written decades ago and released ‘posthumously’ after Richard Bachman (Stephen King’s alter ego) had died of ‘pseudonymous cancer’ (as he puts it). However, DUMA KEY is a new work, the first of a series he’s set in Florida. (Guess he’s gotten tired of Maine finally…!)

According to an interview done for Lilya’s Library, here’s what he had to say about the new book:

“Sure, it’s about a construction worker who is involved in a terrible accident. He lives in the northern part of the United States, Minnesota, and he’s hurt very badly and loses an arm, sustains head injuries and is not expected to live but he does and he comes out of a coma and because of the head injuries he has uncontrollable rages and memory lapses. It’s very difficult and his wife divorces him so he decides he’s going to move to Florida but he’s also thinking about suicide just because of his pain and because he doesn’t like being angry all the time and this psychiatrist kind of talks him out of it and one of the things he says is, “Is there anything that you do that you can use as a kind of buffer against this depression? Is there any kind of new life for you besides working on buildings?” and this guy says, “I used to draw, I used to paint a little bit” and the guy says, “Well, try that” and he discovers that, after this injury, that he is really a very talented painter and he moves to Florida and he starts to paint these pictures and then strange things start to happen with the pictures. They have this power so that sometimes if he paints things into the world they kind of appear and if he paints things out they disappear, including people. And there is something going on, on this island, this Duma Key that is actually amping that talent up and making it stronger because there is something wrong there. That’s the real basis of the story.”

Guess since he calls it the first of the series, his little ‘break’ is over, hmmm?