$1,000,000,000
JK Rowling
Net Worth
Born in (City)
Yate
Born in (Country)
United Kingdom
Date of Birth
31st December, 1965
Date of Death
-
Mother
Anne Rowling
Father
James Rowling
Children
- Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes
- Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray
- David Gordon Rowling Murray
About
Joanne Rowling, famously known by her pen name, JK Rowling for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series is a British author, screenwriter, producer, and philanthropist. Her life was laden with so much difficulty, strife, and pain that it is often compared to a wheel with ups and downs.
Early Life
JK Rowling was born to James and Anne Rowling on 31st July 1965, in Winterborne. James was an engineer for Rolls Royce and Anne was a science technician. Rowling often wrote fantasy stories even as a child at the age of six. Her first story was a fairy tale about a rabbit, called Rabbit, who had measles. Mister His friends came to visit him with a giant bee, called Miss Bee. She would read these stories to her younger sister Dianne. Ever since Mister Rabbit, she knew she wanted to be an author. She had a happy childhood with encouraging parents, a loving sister, and her grandmother. She attended primary school in St Michael’s in Winterborne, a secondary school in Wyedean School, and college in Exeter University, where she studied French and classic Literature.
Road to Success
December 1993, she decided to move to Edinburgh to live near her sister. Dianne Rowling was the only person she could rely on and confide in. It was at this time that Rowling hit rock bottom. She relied mainly on government assistance, which could only afford her a small flat and barely enough money to get by. She now had two mouths to feed and was left to fight her demons alone. During this time she was diagnosed with clinical depression. Her illness led her to come up with a character known as Dementors, dark creatures that feed upon human happiness which she introduced in the Harry Potter series. She contemplated suicide more than just once during this time, but she overcame it. Rowling found her solace in writing and continued to work on the first book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone”.
In 1995, after five years of writing, she finally finished the first book in the series. After writing the first book, she knew how the whole story would play out and end. Rowling is said to have rewritten the first chapter of the book, over 15 times. She printed several chapters on an old typewriter, put them in a folder, and sent it to several literary agents. Unfortunately, the manuscript was rejected not once or twice, but twelve times. She was shattered, but not defeated. She kept approaching other publications until she was successful. In August 1996, the book finally received a green light by Barry Cunningham, an editor for Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London. Alice Newton, the daughter eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury’s chairman, Nigel Newton, helped make the decision to publish the book. She loved the first chapter and demanded to learn of the others. But Rowling was advised to find another job, she had little chance of making money out of a children’s book.
Challenges
In the summer of 1990, on a delayed train from Manchester to London’s King’s Cross station Rowling came up with the idea of “Harry Potter”. She was consumed with the idea of a train taking a little boy to a land of fantasy and magic, a land where adventures awaited him. Over the next few years, she outlined the plot of all seven books in the series and amassed scraps of notes on different papers. That very same year her mother passed away due to her illness. Rowling took the death hard, she spiraled into depression. This halted her writing process for a while. It staggered her and pushed her to seek out opportunities elsewhere. She ended up in Portugal where she taught English as a second language to the locals. This was also where she would meet Jorge Arantes, a television journalist, who later became her husband. The relationship was short-lived and soon after the birth of her daughter, Jessica Isabel, three years into marriage, their union ended in a divorce, in 1993. Rowling spiraled further down.
Failures
Successful people tend to add in just a few lines in their struggles, as a spectator or reader of their story one can only imagine what do those words weigh at the time they experienced it. Because one likes to read and see what amazing things happen later rather than what the journey felt like. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, initial print-run 1000 copies. Today, the copies are estimated between $25000 and $39000. The greatest lesson one can learn from JK Rowling’s story is to keep trying, believing, and acting on your dream. Whether it’s to become a successful entrepreneur or to publish a book. If you have a dream or a passion and you keep getting rejected, or if you keep failing, don’t let that hold you back, don’t give up. If you do, you’ll be left wondering what could’ve been. Who knows, you might have ended up breaking records, just like she did. Rowling went from being a jobless single mother living on unemployment benefits to one of the best-selling authors of all time. A process that did not happen overnight.
Achievements
Nestle Smarties Book Prize|British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year|Whitebread Children’s Book of the year award|Book of the Year prize at the British Awards
Quotes
- Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
- It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.