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Forbes' 15 Highest Earning Authors List (PHOTOS)

PHOTOS: World's 15 Richest Authors
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Senior Editorial Product Manager, HuffPost

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Yesterday, Forbes released their annual list of the world's highest earning authors.

Unsurprisingly, thriller kings James Patterson and Stephen King come in at numbers 1 and 2. Janet Evanovich came in third, with estimated earnings of $33 million, one of several women on the list this year.

Favorite YA/middlegrade series writers also made their list: Suzanne Collins ("The Hunger Games" series), Stephenie Meyer ("Twilight" series), JK Rowling ("Harry Potter" series), Jeff Kinney ("WImpy Kid" series) and Rick Riordan ("Percy Jackson and the Olympians" series).

The list is not precise, but rather based on computations done by the Forbes staff. According to Forbes, they get their numbers by "talk[ing] to authors, agents, publishers and other experts and review[ing] data including Nielsen BookScan sales figures."

After all the "50 Shades of Grey" hubbub so far this year (including the book becoming the UK's best-selling novel of all time), we wonder if E.L. James might be stealing the #1 spot for the next list. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a whole year to find out!

Here's the full list for this year:

Highest Earning Authors
James Patterson: $94 million (01 of15)
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(credit:Flickr: Das blaue Sofa)
Stephen King: $39 million(02 of15)
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(credit:Flickr: steph_lawton)
Janet Evanovich: $33 million(03 of15)
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(credit:AP)
John Grisham: $26 million(04 of15)
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(credit:Flickr/Scott Brenner)
Jeff Kinney: $25 million(05 of15)
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(credit:Flickr/Gary Dunaier)
Bill O'Reilly: $24 million(06 of15)
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(credit:WikiMedia: Nehrams2020)
Nora Roberts: $23 million(07 of15)
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(credit:Flickr/Devillibrarian, puis modifiée par Guil2027)
Danielle Steel: $23 million(08 of15)
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(credit:Getty)
Suzanne Collins: $20 million(09 of15)
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(credit:Flickr/David Shankbone)
Dean Koontz: $19 million(10 of15)
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(credit:Getty)
JK Rowling: $17 million(11 of15)
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(credit:AP)
George RR Martin: $15 million(12 of15)
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(credit:Flickr/Johan A)
Stephenie Meyer: $14 million(13 of15)
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(credit:WikiMedia: Gage)
Ken Follett: $14 million(14 of15)
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Rick Riordan: $13 million(15 of15)
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(credit:Flickr: IngaMun)

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