Joanne Rowling

Ella Petrová

Joanne Rowling is a British author, best known for the seven-volume Harry Potter series of books about the wizard's apprentice, which has received worldwide success including numerous awards and has now sold more than 500 million copies. In addition to writing books, Rowling is also known for her life story, where she went from living on welfare to becoming a multi-millionaire in five years.

I feel like there are two types of people, one is a huge fan and is obsessed with Harry Potter and the other one does not care about Potter and may never even have read or seen it. I'm someone who has always known what Harry Potter is, however as a kid I didn't really have the desire to read it. I have never been into fantasy. Somehow I knew that there were also movies, but I always only saw a piece of one of the movies and didn't even know which one it was. I saw the entire saga for the first time when I was about 16 years old when my best friend convinced me to do so. It's definitely cool and something huge, however, it has never appealed to me.

Rowling got the idea for the story about the sorcerer's apprentice while traveling by train from Manchester to London. At the final stop, she already had most of the characters and the basic plot of the first part of the series Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone figured out. She married a Portuguese man and they had a daughter, but the marriage did not last. She was unemployed after the divorce and at that time began work on the first Potter book. After the huge success of the first volume, Rowling wrote 6 more sequels. Sales of the book made Rowling a multi-millionaire.

The official name of the writer is Joanne Rowling, not Joanne Kathleen Rowling, as is often stated. When publishing the first volume of Harry Potter, Bloomsbury wanted the author's first name to appear on the covers as just two initials. They were worried that sales of the opening piece would be lower if it were obvious that its author was a woman. Since Rowling has no middle name, she used her grandmother's name Kathleen as her middle initial. J.K. Rowling appeared on the covers.

In 2004, Forbes named Rowling "the first billion-dollar author". By 2012, Forbes concluded she was no longer a billionaire due to her charitable donations and high UK taxes. She won many awards.