JK Rowling named the highest-paid author in the world with a ridiculous net worth

Even though the last proper Harry Potter novel was published back in 2007, JK Rowling is still the highest paid author in the world.

Over a decade after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hit the shelves, Rowling has topped the all-important Forbes list.

According to their rankings, Rowling’s net worth is a whopping $650 million (about £500 million) in 2017.

The seven-book Potter series in total has shifted over 450 million copies, which presumably makes up a big part of it.

Then there’s the movie adaptation royalties, spinoff fiction and non-fiction guides, and her script for recent movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Along with director John Tiffany and script writer Jack Thorne, Rowling also has a story credit on the hit West End play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is due to move to Broadway with much of the stunning original cast.

“The spell cast by Harry Potter on readers, now 20 years in its grip, seems unlikely to lift anytime soon,” said the website.

Of her immense wealth, it added: “That figure would be higher had she not donated an estimated $150 million to charity over the years. Yet still it climbs.”

As well as the Potter and Potter-related books and movies, Rowling has also sold plenty of other novels.

She has published three books in the Cormoran Strike series as Robert Galbraith, the first – The Cuckoo’s Calling – hitting shelves in 2013 before anyone knew she had actually written it.

A year earlier, she had released The Casual Vacancy under her own name

Way off in second place on Forbes’s rankings was James Paterson, with a mere $87 million in the bank.

JK Rowling has long been an LGBT ally and supporter of equal rights.

And despite having to backtrack after sharing a misleading video of Donald Trump, Rowling still definitely has the better of her social media foe Piers Morgan in their semi-regular exchanges.

Rowling received the Order of the Companion of Honour from the Queen in this year’s Birthday Honours list.