And what’s the difference?
edit: She wrote the Harry Potter books.
edit 2: To rephrase the title of the thread: Did she make more MONEY on the books or the movies?
There’s probably no one who knows who would be willing to tell, it depends on how good her agent was in the negotiations over movie rights.
Her tax records aren’t likely to be publicly available and probably wouldn’t be broken up that way anyway.
Yeah, that would be a very complicated question.
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What about product sales? Do those tie into the books or the movies? While there’s more of it now there was certainly a LOT of it before the first movie came out.
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What about licensing rights? Books on tape? Foreign language editions and so forth?
Anyway, only her team of accountants would know for certain. It’s very likely that she, herself, couldn’t tell you.
In 2000 published reports stated that Rowling had sold the movie rights for the first 4 movies for £1,000,000, about $2,000,000. She is rumored to be worth over $1 billion so I think it is safe to assume that she made far more from the 400,000,000 books she has sold than from movie rights.
Almost certainly the books. A typical royalty rate for hardcovers is 10-12.5% of the cover price (and the rate goes up with sales numbers so Rowling is making the high end). Softcovers get 7.5-10%.
Note that J. K. Rowling is only (tied for) the 1062th richest person in the world:
And $1,000,000,000 is the highest estimate of her wealth. Other websites guess more like $800,000,000. So if you think that you can become fabulously wealthy beyond your wildest dreams from writing, forget it. Even in the absolute best case you won’t become one of the 1000 richest people in the world. In fact, you can’t enter the top level of income from a job in entertainment at all (unless you count investing in entertainment companies). The richest people in the world are largely people you never heard of. I suspect that the $2,000,000 she made from selling the rights to the first four movies isn’t nearly all she made from just those four movies. I presume that was just her initial payment. I presume she got some cut of the profits or of the gross.
Isn’t $800,000,000 considered “fabulously wealthy” by any stretch of the imagination?
Difference between what? The amount between the books and the movies? The difference between the books and the movies?
Yeah, I would think that having enough money to put one in the top .000000032% of the population would be more wealthy than most folks dream about. (When I buy my annual lottery ticket, I always figure that if I actually won, I would probably take home a few million, so numbers showing nine useful digits are generally beyond my dreams, either wildest or typical.)
It is true, of course, that even most successful writers never get into those income brackets and, depending on genre, a writer might be considered “successful” while barely cracking a six figure income, but the gap between making a good living and Ms.Rowling’s income is large enough to encompass a lot of wild dreams.
In my book, 80 million makes it.
If her agent couldn’t think of getting her a payment as a guaranteed minimum against a percentage of the gross income, he/she should be sued for malpractice (or whatever you would call it). Even I can think of that one, and I’m not an agent to the stars.
Writers don’t make a lot of money from selling books to films. No one, not even at the top of the food chain. There are just too many examples of wildly popular books not translating to film. I’ve never heard of a book deal that went for more than the low millions. Selling rights for the first 4 movies for £1,000,000 sounds right to me, whether that’s each or all together.
And almost all deals are for a set fee, one time payment. Rowling may be the exception, but I’ve never heard of a writer getting gross points. Even if Rowling got one gross point on the last four movies, that’s $10 million a movie worldwide. Good money unless you’re a billionaire, in which case it’s an additional 1%.
It’s highly unlikely that Rowling made even 5% of her money from movie rights. She probably made more than that from merchandising. And her books made the vast majority. Not close.
I’ll take your word on authors getting back end points, but deal-rules are made to be broken, and could the movie producers think they could actually lose money on the final three (now four) movies? It’s one of the biggest slamdunks in the history of movies. If actors get points, why can’t Rowling’s people negotiate for points?
Oh, I see you think it might have been 1M each. I had a paragraph about how these figures were almost impossibly low, but if it was 1M each, I can believe that.
My WAG is that she made more (as a % of the total take) on the movies vs the books, but she made more total on the books.
Interesting idea about the merchandising.
I could live quite merrily on the interest from a mere $2 million with nary a change in my lifestyle, save that I would be freed from the toil of gainful employment.
Just to start the venture debt-free and have a little “holy shit, I’s rich as a motherf&cker” mad money, though, I’ll take an even $3 million.
It’s possible, certainly. I’m just saying I haven’t heard anybody saying that it happened and it would be the talk of the writing community.
I don’t understand what you mean by this.
My definition of fabulously wealthy beyond your wildest dreams is being among the 1000 richest people in the world. No writer is in that group.
Mine’s in the richest 3 people that ever lived. Absolutely nobody alive today will ever be fabulously wealthy.
Really? You have $1 less than #1000 and you’re not fabulously wealthy? I’m getting wooshed right?
She’s the richest woman in England. Surely that must count for something, especially since it means she’s worth more than the Queen.
Personally, I think being richer than the monarch of the most powerful kingdom in the world is pretty fabulous.
It would really suck if you were J.K. Rowling then. If only your dream was to be among the 1063 richest people in the world. You’d have made it.