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Ms. J K Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, England. Her given name at birth was Joanne Kathleen. Ms. Rowling has one sister, Di, who was born 2 years after J K. She is interesting to note tha claims that she has actually been writing since she was 5 or 6 years old. Her first story, called Rabbit, was filled with interesting characters, such as a large bee called Miss Bee.


J K Rowling was voted author of the year at the 1999 British Book Awards (Nibbies) and won the Booksellers Association Author of the Year award two years in a row (1998 and 1999). She won the W H Smith Children’s Book of the Year for 2000 and in 2004, she was awarded the WH Smith’s Fiction Award. Most recently, in 2006, Jo was Winner of the Nibbie’s (Children’s Book of the Year) for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.She was also awarded an OBE for services to children's literature in June 2000 and in 2003 received Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for Concord. She has honorary degrees from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire USA, University of Exeter, University of St Andrews, Napier University, Edinburgh, and University of Edinburgh.

One of the few billionaires on our list, J.K. Rowling is preparing to close the book on her "Harry Potter" series. The next installment, the seventh in the series, is rumored to be her last, although she'll continue to write and will likely explore other parts of the Potter milieu. Worldwide sales of the Potter books have topped 300 million copies worldwide. "The Goblet of Fire" was last year's highest-grossing film, with a worldwide box office take of $892 million.

The summer of 2000, she had reportedly earned over $400 million for her first three Harry Potter books, which have been printed in 35 languages and sold over 30 million copies. Her fourth book in the popular series, entitled Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, pre-sold over one million advanced copies, with a first printing of 5.3 million. Because of her domination and incredible success on the New York Times bestseller list, the decision was made to introduce a bestseller list for children’s books, which would eliminate the dominating factor of these bestsellers on the current The New York Times bestseller list. This brought a tremendous amount of relief and happiness to a lot of competing authors - and a tremendous honor to Ms. J K Rowling.