More than the Queen...
JK Rowling is this year's biggest female earner with an annual salary around six times greater than the Queen. She earned £48 million through book sales and the box office. Meanwhile, the Queen's yearly earnings amounted to paltry £7.7 million. haha This does not include her civil list payment because this only covers the expense of being a Monarch. And here I thought it would be good to be queen.
Baby!
"In an exclusive interview with The Times, Rowling said not only that she has not been suffering from writer’s block but also that she is expecting a new baby to join her daughter Jessica next spring." Wow! What exciting news. I hope she gives birth to a new book before her new baby, though.
Read the rest of the times article...
Stouffer case thrown out of court:
"The court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that Stouffer has perpetuated a fraud ... through her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony,"
This casing has been dragging on for several years now, and JKR is thrilled it is finally over! As most HP fans know, Nancy Stouffer had claimed Muggles was a word she'd invented for her book The Legend of Rah and the Muggles in the 1980s.
A New York court threw out all the claims, stating that Stouffer had lied and changed evidence to make her claims stronger. Stouffer has been fined £30,000 ($50,000) and even had to pay some of the money it cost JKR to defend herself.
Good Fences Make Good Neighbours: From Ananova
JK Rowling has become embroiled in a row with her neighbours over plans to increase security at her house.
The Harry Potter author wants to increase the height of the walls surrounding her £500,000 property and install an electronic security gate.
JKR Images: I did a images search at Google.ca, and found the motherload of JKR images (although there are quite a few other bizarre pictures included for some unknown reason) - click here to view the site.
JKR's signature
JKR on Rich List: According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2002, JK Rowling is number 147 with on the list with 226 million pounds in the bank... Wow. Wish it was me.... I'd settle for book 5 though.
JK Rowling has been elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
A spokesman for the society said,
"She is of outstanding distinction and has had an international impact in her own field. She had an impact in reversing the worldwide trend in decreasing literacy.
"Her writing has attracted a huge number of children who previously perhaps had difficulties in beginning to read, and the society sees that her work has dispelled the myth that children lack the attention span to engage with longer books."
J. K. Rowling and her husband Dr. Neil Murray are shown in this Nov. 6, 2001 file photo in London.
Congratulations Jo and Neil!
J.K. Rowling married her boyfriend at their home in Scotland, her spokeswoman said Saturday. JKR wed Dr. Neil Murray, an anesthetist, on Dec. 26, in a private ceremony. ``J.K. Rowling and Neil Murray were married privately on Dec. 26 at their house in Perthshire,'' Nicky Stonehill said. ``Their immediate family attended the wedding.'' The two met in Edinburgh, Scotland just over a year ago. Her first marriage ended in divorce. As a sinngle mother, bringing up daughter Jessica, Rowling began to write the best-selling books in Edinburgh.
Rowling was told she wouldn't ever make money writing children's books. JKR talks about her success in a BBC Omnibus special to be shown over Christmas. More...
J. K.
Rowling named Top Scot: HP
author JK Rowling was given the title of Top Scot at the glittering
Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards. The Edinburgh-based writer is
the fourth woman in a row to scoop the accolade. Elizabeth
Lafferty, of Glenfiddich, said: "This has undoubtedly been JK
Rowling’s year."
JKR has bought herself a new
mansion, Killiechassie House, in a secluded area in Scotland.
More...
JKR speaks out against lone parent poverty at a conference in London for the National Council for One Parent Families. More...
JKR at the Exclusive London Premiere on Sunday, November 04, 2001: ``Before seeing the film, I was very nervous, but I'm very pleased with it and think everyone will love it,'' she said. ``It was amazing to see everybody here today and I'm just so happy for all the children who came along to be part of this.'' As she left the cinema JKR gave her fans two thumbs way way up to express her approval.
ET online reports this reaction of JKR to the movie during a private screening seen earlier: Heyman told Reuters "She came across the aisle, sat down and put her arms around me. Her eyes were tear-stained. She said 'I loved it. Thank you."' More...
Rowling Picks Up Another Award: J. K. Rowling, now a multi-millionaire, was honoured by the book industry on Friday the 21, 2001 as it paid tribute to its top authors. Rowling, who has been dominating bestseller lists for four years, was acknowledged at the Whitaker Gold and Platinum Book Awards for her immense success, having
Rowling did not attend the event, but sent a message through her publisher Nigel Newton, managing director of Bloomsbury. "Despite what you may have read, and probably to Nigel's immense relief, I am happily incarcerated in a rather chilly Edinburgh, busily writing Book Five," she said. This was a reply to rumours that she has been suffering writer's block.
An update on Red Nose
Day: Thomas
of
the
Dutch fansite Zweistein
Club after
speaking to
Mr. Martin Gill, the Event Manager at Comic Relief,
has that
the Harry Potter Comic Relief books have raised $7,5 million in the United
States. The German
and French publishing houses had already donated one million pounds, and over 2
million pounds were
made from
the UK sales. Fantastic!
If you missed
out on the live chat with JKR on March 12, for Red Nose Day, find it here!
Books Sold Worldwide: To date, Ms Rowling is reported to have sold over 100 million copies of the four HP books, and earned 62 million dollars! Way to go.
Guinness Book of World Records: Rowling's sales world wide equal approximately 40 million copies. The HP books are in the 2001 Guinness Book of World Records as the best selling children's book series in one year. In 1999 the first three books in the series sold 18.5 million copies in the U.S. and over 4.5 in the UK & Commonwealth. Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone sold over 10.4 million copies in the U.S. and 1.5 million in the UK.
JKR's awards
JK Rowling has been elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The organization comprises some of Scotland's foremost experts in science, technology, medicine, the humanities, arts and business.
J.K.R. Receives Order of the British Empire: It's official. J. K. Rowling has received the the Order of the British Empire. Prince Charles presented JKR with her the medal, and announced himself as a fan of her books. He also mentioned that he is anxious to see the movie.
Harry Potter Creator Given UK Excellence Award: (Thursday August 23 10:54 AM ET) EDINBURGH (Reuters) - JK Rowling, the creator of teenage wizard Harry Potter, was given an award on Thursday for promoting British excellence.
Author Receives Honourary Degree: J. K. Rowling received an honorary degree recently from Edinburgh's Napier University, the city where she wrote part of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Rowling lived on benefits and a small grant from the Scottish Arts Council while she struggled to support herself and her daughter.
More than 100 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide and Rupert Hambro, chairman of the committee for the Walpole Medal of Excellence, said of Rowling: ``She is an excellent product to advertise the country. ``She is the best-known author in the country, she is just about to launch a film, she is in the middle of writing her fifth book,'' Hambro said. Previous recipients of the Walpole Medal included actress Judi Dench and racing driver Jackie Stewart.
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
ROWLING, J.K.
July 31, 1965
Author
Biographical Statement: 2000 Biography from Eighth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators:
Pronunciation: (ROLL-ing)
Joanne Kathleen Rowling entered the world in Chipping Sodbury General Hospital in Bristol, England, a fitting beginning for someone who would later enjoy making up strange names for people, places and games played on flying broomsticks. Her younger sister Di was born just under two years later.
Rowling remembers that she always wanted to write and that the first story she actually wrote down, when she was five or six, was a story about a rabbit called Rabbit. Many of her favorite memories center around reading-- hearingThe Wind in the Willows read aloud by her father when she had the measles, enjoying the fantastic adventure stories of E. Nesbit, reveling in the magical world of C. S. Lewis's Narnia, and her favorite story of all, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.
The family moved twice while she was growing up. The first move was across Bristol to Winterbourne, where she and her sister played with a group of children in the neighborhood. Two of the children had the surname Potter, a name she remembers liking very much. Her own name, pronounced "Rolling," led to annoying jokes about rolling pins from the other children in school. When Joanne was nine the family moved again, this time to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean. Her parents were both Londoners and had a dream of living in the country. Wandering across the fields and along the river Wye with her sister was very pleasant to Joanne, but her new school was small and old-fashioned and the teacher was strict and frightening to the quiet, imaginative young girl.
Her high school years were spent at Wyedean Comprehensive, where her favorite subject was English and she did not excel in sports; she actually broke her arm playing net ball. Her favorite activity was telling stories to her studious and serious friends over lunchtime--serial stories, in which they all performed heroic feats and good deeds. She was made Head Girl in her final year.
At Exeter University Rowling took her degree in French and spent one year studying in Paris. After college she moved to London to work for Amnesty International as a researcher and bilingual secretary. The best thing about working in an office, she has said, was typing up stories on the computer when no one was watching. During this time, on a particularly long train ride from Manchester to London in the summer of 1990, the idea came to her of a boy who is a wizard and doesn't know it. He attends a school for wizardry--she could see him very plainly in her mind. By the time the train pulled into King's Cross Station four hours later, many of the characters and the early stages of the plot were fully formed in her head. The story took further shape as she continued working on it in pubs and cafes over her lunch hours. Rowling had been writing short stories and working on two unpublished novels for adults, but now the idea of Harry Potter took over her writing time.
In 1992 Rowling left off working in offices and moved to Portugal to teach English as a Second Language. In spite of her students making jokes about her name (this time they called her "Rolling Stone"), she enjoyed teaching. She worked afternoons and evenings, leaving mornings free for writing. After her marriage to a Portuguese TV journalist ended in divorce, Rowling returned to Britain with her infant daughter and a suitcase full of Harry Potter notes and chapters. She settled in Edinburgh to be near her sister and set out to finish the book before looking for a teaching job. Wheeling her daughter's carriage around the city to escape their tiny, cold apartment, she would duck into coffee shops to write when the baby fell asleep. In this way she finished the book and started sending it to publishers. It was rejected several times before she found an London agent, chosen because she liked his name--Christopher Little, who sold the manuscript to Bloomsbury Children's Books.
Rowling was working as a French teacher (with students who serenaded her with the theme song from Rawhide -- "Rolling, rolling, rolling, keep those wagons rolling . . .") when she heard that her book about the boy wizard had been accepted for publication. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in June 1997 and achieved almost instant success. It won the Smarties Book Prize Gold Medal for ages 9-11 and was named the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year. It was also shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award and Carnegie Medal (for which it received a "Commended" citation). At the Bologna Book Fair, Arthur Levine, an editorial director for Scholastic Books, bought the American rights for $105,000.00, an unprecedented figure for a first-time children's author. The advance for the American edition made it possible for Rowling to quit her teaching job and write full-time. She had always conceived of the stories as a seven-book saga and now had the luxury to concentrate on writing the sequels to the first installment.
With the publication of the American edition, retitled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in 1998, Rowling's books continued to make publishing history. Harry Potter climbed to the top of all the bestseller lists for children's and adult books. Indeed, the story of the boy wizard, his Cinderlad childhood, and his adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry caught the imagination of readers of all ages. In Britain a separate edition of the first book appeared with a more "adult" dust jacket so that grown-ups reading it on trains and subways would not have to hide their copy behind a newspaper. In the United States, those eager for the second book started ordering it from Amazon.uk, prompting Scholastic to move up the publication date from September to June of 1999 for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And when Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released in September of 1999, all three titles captured the first, second, and third slots on the New York Times Bestseller List, remaining there for months afterwards. In Britain Rowling has won the Smarties Book Prize three years in a row, the first author to do so, and has requested that future Harry Potter titles not be considered for the award.
The books have been critically acclaimed in the United States as well as Britain. Named to the best-of-the-year lists in 1998 by School Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Parenting magazine, and the Cooperative Children's Book Center, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was also cited as an ALA Notable Children's Book and ranked Number One on the Top Ten list of ALA's Best Books for Young Adults. The two sequels that have appeared so far are also accumulating awards and enjoying worldwide popularity. To date the books have been translated into approximately 30 languages and have been issued in highly praised audio recordings as well as print; a major motion picture is scheduled for release in 2001.
What is the secret of Rowling's remarkable success? Many articles in journals, interviews on television, and discussions on the Internet have tried to analyze the ingredients that make the Harry Potter books irresistible to readers of all ages--the fast-paced cliffhanger action, the sparkling humor, the Dickensian names. But perhaps the true secret lies in what Rowling herself said in an interview published in Book Links magazine: "The book is really about the power of the imagination. What Harry is learning to do is to develop his full potential. Wizardry is just the analogy I use." While magic and wizardry inform many plot elements, the books are ultimately about the innate human desire to be unique and special, to form lasting friendships and connections with others, and to see forces for good triumph over forces for evil.
Jo Rowling lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her daughter Jessica and continues to work on writing the seven-book saga of Harry Potter.
Works by subject:
Selected works: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997 (U. S. edition retitled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, illus. by Mary Grandpre, 1998); Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1998 (U.S. edition, illus. by Mary Grandpre, 1999); Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 1999 (U. S. edition, illus. by Mary Grandpre, 1999.)
Works about subject:
Suggested reading: "Flying Starts," Publishers Weekly, December 21, 1998; "Keeping Up with Harry," Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1999; "Not for Muggles," New York Review of Books, December 16, 1999; "Talking with . . . J. K. Rowling," Book Links, July 1999; "The Truth about Harry," School Library Journal, September, 1999; "Wild about Harry," Time, September 20, 1999. Web sites: www.okukbooks.com; www.scholastic.com/harrypotter.htm
Profile of J.K. Rowling copyright © H.W. Wilson Company.
J.K.R. At Skydome: J. K. Rowling's reading at the Skydome Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2000, a feature event in the Toronto International Festival of Authors, was a tremendous success. About 15,000 people showed up to hear JKR do a dramatic reading from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In earlier interviews JKR told reporters she was terrified about appearing in front of that many fans, but after hearing their cheers and excitement she told the crowd "I've stopped being terrified now. I'd like to stay here all day!" Kids had a great time listening to Kenneth Oppel read Silverwing, Tim Wynne-Jones read The Boy in the Burning House, but judging by the robes, hats and lightning bolts, it was JKR they were there too see.
JKR at the Skydome in Toronto
Natalie MacDonald: Do you remember when the sorting hat called out the name of the first year Natalie McDonald in The Goblet of Fire? I just finished reading an article in the Nov. 6th issue of Maclean's Magazine and learned that Natalie McDonald was someone very special. She is the only character mentioned who was actually a real person. Natalie was a 9 year old girl who loved Harry Potter. Unlike most other children, when she read the books she escaped the world where she was dying of leukemia and lived happily in Harry's world, if only for a while.
A friend of the McDonald's family tried to reach J. K. Rowling on Natalie's behalf, but when JKR finally received the message, it was too late. Natalie had died. JKR emailed back, not knowing Natalie was gone. The letter she sent touched Natalie's parent's hearts (Among other things she gave Natalie the scoop on book 4 when nobody else knew anything about it). Over the course of time Mrs. McDonald and JKR have become friends. During Ms Rowling's visit to the Skydome this past fall, she took the time to visit the McDonald's at their home.
2. In an interview with a reporter from the Toronto Star:
QUESTION: Can you tell me anything about the next Harry Potter novel, which will be No. 5?
ROWLING: Well, it will be a papery object with pages inside. Harry, of course, will appear in it.
3. When discussing how things were while she was writing her books, JKR said,"Actually, the truth is that I didn't do any housework for four years.
What a woman...
4. On the big OotP death:
Jo: "I've just killed the person.
Neil: "Well, don't do it then."
Jo: "Well it just doesn't work like that. You are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer."