In an age where bookstores are closing and sales are tumbling, it's amazing that winner James Patterson earned $84 million.
Mr Patterson, the creator of Alex Cross, the crime-solving single father, is also a prolific writer of children's stories and writes online film reviews in his spare time.
He currently has a 17-book deal with Hachette, signed two years ago and worth $150 million.
No fewer than 20 of his titles were on last year's bestseller lists and his forthcoming list includes Kill Me If You Can this month, Daniel X next, then Christmas Wedding in October, followed by Kill Alex Cross in November, Witch and Wizard for December and Private #1 Suspect to start the new year.
He sold more than 10 million books last year and Amazon reported his Kindle sales passing one million too ... more
What they earned in 2010:
James Patterson - $84m
Danielle Steel - $35m
Stephen King - $28m
Janet Evanovich $22m
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight teen novels) - $21m
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson juvenile novels) - $21m
Dean Koonz - $19m
John Grisham - $18m
Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid mid-grade novels) - $17m
Nicholas Sparks $16m
Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games juvenile novels) $10m
In 2010, J.K. Rowling earned only $5 million, but that's still pretty good, considering she didn't have any new books out. The things to note from this list are the continuing importance of name authors and the rise of juvenile literarature.
Ten years ago, there would have been only a single children's author on this list: J.K. Rowling, the first of the hugely best-selling children's authors.
With his team of co-authors, Patterson dominates the murder mystery genre (putting out 20 bestsellers last year), but he's also branched out into Young Adult books. His Maximum Ride and Witch & Wizard franchises each sold more than 1 million copies last year.
On March 3 in Toronto, Brian Henry will lead a "How to Write a Bestseller" workshop with New York Times #1 bestselling author Kelly Armstrong as his guest speaker. Details here.
Brian will also lead workshops on "Writing for Children, and for Young Adults" in Gravenhurst in Muskoka on October 1 (see here), and in St. Catharines on January 14, 2012 (see here).
And "How to Get Published" workshops on August 27 in Woodstock, Ontario, (see here), on September 24 in Guelph with guest Monica Pacheco of the Anne McDermid literary agency (see here), on Sunday, Oct 23, in Sudbury (see here) and on December 3 in Oakville with guest Ali McDonald of The Rights Factory literary agency (see here).
See Brian full schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Kingston, Peterborough, Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Georgetown, Oakville, Burlington, St. Catharines, Hamilton, Kitchener, Guelph, London, Woodstock, Orangeville, Barrie, Gravenhurst, Sudbury, Muskoka, Peel, Halton, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.
Isn't having his name on these books a farce, considering there's no way he can be writing anywhere near that much, that quickly? His input per book is probably no more than a basic idea, perhaps a page or two of an outline, IF even that much. This sort of sharp practice is turning authorship into a joke.
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