Dear Stephen King, Can You Give Me $5

Forbes' list of the world's 10 top earning authors (via My Open Wallet) doesn't offer a lot of surprises, nor trivia, except this: #4 Danielle Steel's earnings include a $1 millin settlement from her former assistant who was caught embezzling from her. So really, that's not so much "income" as "a previous unknown expense which has now been stopped," right?

Here's some more trivia from the authors whose names we have all seen everywhere a million times:

• #6 Dean Koontz has had hair transplant surgery. (Cost: probably under $18 million.)
• #1 James Patterson (Inc. -- he mostly writes the outlines) has 17 books due to his publisher by the end of 2010. So if you're reading this, JP Inc., get back to work.
• #10 JK Rowling would probably be considered the most inactive on this list since her last book, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, was published in 2007. Drowning in a bathtub full of money, no doubt.
• #5 Ken Follett is a major political contributor to a UK politician named Ed Balls. (Sorry, the Right Honorable Edward Michael Balls.)
• #7 Janet Evanovich is the only one whose copyright information in the books grants the title to Janet Evanovich Inc. So the joke I just made about James Patterson, in retrospect, was not that great. Get back to work too, JE Inc.
  
• With the money #3 Stephen King made last year, he could give $5 to 6.8 million people, so you'd better ask him soon.

I have read 5 of these 10 authors, though I'm not sure they were the right 5.