JK Rowling's return to Harry Potter makes her world's richest author in 2017

As her wizarding world returns to the stage and screen, Rowling’s $95m pushes James Patterson into second place with $87m

JK Rowling will need to reserve a particularly large vault at Gringotts bank after a bumper year for the Harry Potter novelist magicked her back to the No 1 spot on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest authors, almost a decade after she last topped it.

Forbes – which uses a mix of print, ebook and audio sales data, television and film earnings and expert industry opinion to come up with its list – estimates that Rowling earned $95m in the year to 31 May. This figure is the equivalent of more than $180 per minute, thanks to the sensational sales of her play script, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. When the Harry Potter follow-up was released last summer, it sold more than 680,000 print copies in the UK in the first three days alone, and became the fastest selling book since the final Harry Potter novel.

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