Men still top the list of the world's highest-earning authors, but this year it's the women on the list who've been making the boldest moves, led by a trio of genre phenoms: Suzanne Collins, E.L. James and J.K. Rowling.
To generate the earnings estimates, Forbes talked to authors, agents, publishers and other experts and reviewed data including Nielsen BookScan sales figures.
Following are the Forbes' 2012 rankings of the fifteen highest-earning writers in the world:
Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan [Getty Images] Earnings: US$13 million
If your adolescent kids know suspiciously a lot about Greek and Egyptian mythology, it's probably because of Riordan's books. Either that or they're weird cultists.
