Bookplanet: writers and the money some make

From Forbes Magazine: Tastemakers: Literature -- by Leah Hoffmann

It is common to think the world is becoming increasingly illiterate and inattentive. The many media that compete for our attention are louder, brighter and faster than books. Libraries, bookstores and publishing houses are swallowing budget cuts and layoffs. The National Endowment for the Arts says that literary reading is in dramatic decline.

At the same time, truly interesting and original literature continues to be published--and not all of it is languishing in the sale bins at Barnes & Noble (nyse: BKS -news -people ). J.K. Rowling 's Harry Potter books fly off the shelves just as fast as they are printed (the most recent in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , has generated over $200 million in sales since its release in July). Elmore Leonard 's best-selling mysteries keep us up at night. And whether the authors are old lions, such as Philip Roth, or young ones such as Jonathan Safran Foer, serious literature still sells. In fact, in 2004, Americans spent an estimated $8.8 billion on adult trade books, $3.1 billion on juvenile trade books, and $2.9 billion on mass-market paperbacks, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade organization based in New York City. In fact, U.S. consumers will spend nearly 5% more on books in 2005 than they did in 2004, BISG predicts.

Good writing does more than just keep us entertained. It should also make us think. So this season, Forbes.com set out to identify the ten literary (as opposed to purely popular) writers whose work is having the greatest impact on our culture. These authors help determine the future of literature--in the case of Don DeLillo , by establishing an original style that influences and inspires other writers, and in the case of Dave Eggers, by helping them get their works into print. They have also spawned imitators and wannabes; Eggers' smart, meandering style was adopted by legions of aspiring writers after the success of his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius .

To come up with our list of tastemakers, Forbes.com surveyed literary critics and industry insiders, polled our readers, tracked print media coverage over the last year through Factiva, tallied up the awards each author had won, and assessed their recent projects. Finally, we threw in a dash of our own expertise and took a long, hard look at the numbers (through figures collected by Nielsen's Bookscan) to determine each author's commercial success.

Earnings, of course, aren't the best yardstick for literary worth--Poe died penniless, and Kafka's best work wasn't even published until after he'd succumbed to tuberculosis--but they do provide authors with the freedom to write—and do--what he or she wants. By any measure, Stephen King is a literary force to be reckoned with (he is reportedly worth over $200 million), and he has used his bankability to break publishing paradigms through e-books and serialized online distribution. Eggers invested much of his fame and his publishing royalties into the McSweeney's literary empire, and has thus helped other young writers rise with him. And Potter creator Rowling, the former welfare mother who for two years in a row has graced our annual list of the world's wealthiest people with an estimated net worth of $1 billion, has persuaded scores of children across the globe to drop their videogames and pick up a couple of books.

There are, of course, also a number of authors with high earnings but lower literary esteem--so while Dan Brown, James Patterson and Anne Rice have kept us turning pages over the years, they didn't make the list.

It's a diverse group of authors. Some are relative newcomers to the literary world while others are considered classics in themselves. Some are brash and fiery, while others burn with a quieter determination. Zadie Smith and Safran Foer--who reportedly received a million-dollar advance for his second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close --struck both commercial and critical success well before their thirtieth birthdays. Five years later, both have proven that they were more than one-hit wonders. But even well-established writers such as Joan Didion and J.M. Coetzee aren't resting on their laurels. Each continues to find new stories to tell and invent new ways to tell them. Their books, to paraphrase poet Ezra Pound, are news that stays news, and they will entertain and enlighten for years to come.

This is their alphabetical list:

1. J.M. Coetzee:
Notable Works: Slow Man (2005), Disgrace (1999), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)
2005 Year-To-Date Domestic Book Sales: $902,955
Awards: Nobel Prize (2003), Booker Prize for Fiction (1999, 1983), Jerusalem Prize (1987), and many others
Press Mentions: 773
Quiet but forceful, John Maxwell Coetzee--who originally hails from Cape Town, South Africa--has been capturing us with his precise, unaffected prose for over three decades. "It is in exploring weakness and defeat that Coetzee captures the divine spark in man," the Novel Foundation asserted when awarding him the 2003 literature prize. Coetzee's intellectually honest works never shy away from confronting some of humanity's darkest urges, and he is surely among the most fearless of contemporary writers.

2. Don DeLillo:
Notable Works: Cosmopolis (2003), Underworld (1997), White Noise (1985)
2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $368,558
Awards: Jerusalem Prize (1999), PEN/Faulkner Award (1991), National Book Award (1985), six others
Press Mentions: 408
Brainy and unapologetically "difficult," DeLillo has pioneered a distinctly American kind of postmodern novel. Packed with large themes and small details--and giddily juxtaposing high and low culture--his works do not so much describe contemporary society as challenge it to a boxing match. His influence can be felt in the works of younger writers such as David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. A new play, "Love-Lies-Bleeding," is set to premiere in 2006.

3. Joan Didion:
Notable Works: The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), The White Album (1979), Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $1.2 million
Awards: National Book Award Finalist (2005, 1981), and many others
Press Mentions: 670
Didion's intensely personal style and keenly analytical observations have won her worldwide admiration and acclaim. A former journalist perhaps best known for wide-ranging commentaries on her native California, Didion is a sharp critic of American politics and culture. A new book about the death of her husband, The Year of Magical Thinking , was published in October to glowing reviews--it has already been named a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award. Didion is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books , and continues to amaze with her humanity and her insight.

4. Dave Eggers:
Notable Works: How We Are Hungry (2004), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) 2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $2.1 million
Awards: Independent Book Award (2003), four other awards
Press Mentions: 677
Eggers burst onto the scene in 2000, tongue pressed firmly in cheek, with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius . The memoir brought him both fame and critical acclaim, boosting circulation of his quirky lit journal, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern , and allowing him to add a McSweeney's book imprint, both committed to nurturing new writers. There are writing workshops in Brooklyn and San Francisco, but Eggers still finds time for his own prose: a serialized political novel on Salon.com and two children's books, written with his younger brother Christopher, are some of his most recent projects.

5. Jonathan Safran Foer:
Notable Works: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), Everything Is Illuminated (2002) 2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $2.9 million
Awards: Guardian First Book Award (2002), Zoetrope Fiction Prize (2000), and many others
Press Mentions: 1199
He might be young, but he's making a whole lot of noise. It's the kind of story most writers can only dream about: after receiving a reported advance of $500,000, Foer's quirky first novel, Everything Is Illuminated (completed when he was a tender 24 years old), enjoyed both critical praise and enormous popular success. It was also made into a movie starring Elijah Wood (directed by Liev Schreiber and distributed by Warner Brothers). Foer's second novel came out in April to mixed reviews, but don't write him off just yet. He's smart, savvy and fearless, and we're betting that he's got more tricks up his sleeve.

6. Stephen King:
Notable Works: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004), Bag of Bones (1998), Pet Sematary (1983), The Shining (1977), Carrie (1974)
2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $15 million
Awards: O. Henry Award (1996), six Bram Stoker awards, six Horror Guild awards, 11 others
Press Mentions: 3462
The literary establishment was slow to take him seriously, but his publishers knew they'd struck gold with the runaway success of Carrie in 1974. The King of suspense, his books are among the best selling ever, and many of them have been made into equally successful movies, from The Shining to The Shawshank Redemption . They have made him a multimillionaire--and they have also made him a star. But King has also proven that he's no empty-headed pen-pusher. His books often include serious meditations on the nature of good and evil, and 2000's short, snappy study, On Writing, revealed his dedication to the craft.

7. Elmore Leonard:
Notable Works: The Hot Kid (2005), Get Shorty (1991), The Bounty Hunters (1953) 2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $2.3 million
Awards: Edgar Award (1992, 1984), International Association of Crime Writers, Shamus Award (1991), and many others
Press Mentions: 1378
Dutch (as his friends call him) has been writing steadily since the 1950s, and he has very nearly done it all: westerns, mystery novels, crime novels, screenplays. His well-formed characters and snappy dialogue make him a Hollywood natural, and Get Shorty ,Out of Sight and Rum Punch (which Quentin Tarantino renamed Jackie Brown ) have all been just as good on-screen as they were in print--not to mention profitable. Though he just celebrated his 80th birthday, Leonard isn't putting on the brakes--or losing his relevance. Recent projects include a serialized novel in The New York Times Magazine ,Comfort to the Enemy .

8. Philip Roth:
Notable Works: The Plot Against America (2004), The Human Stain (2000), Sabbath's Theater (1995), Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $2.5 million
Awards: PEN/Faulkner Award (2000, 1993), Pulitzer Prize for fiction (1997), and many others
Press Mentions: 2290
Philip Roth is best known--some might say most notorious--for Portnoy's Complaint , first published back in 1969. Ironic, comical and highly sexually explicit, the novel follows the monologue of narrator Alexander Portnoy as he complains to his therapist. It was banned in schools and libraries across the country, but became a best-seller nonetheless. But Roth has published over 25 novels and countless stories and essays. Not only has his writing continued to evolve, his recent work is considered by many critics to be his finest. His last novel, The Plot Against America , is a tightly wound meditation on what might have happened had Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency in 1940.

9. J.K. Rowling:
Notable Works: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2005), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997)
2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $254.2 million
Awards: British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year (1997, 1998), and many others
Press Mentions: 10,607
Who hasn't heard of Harry Potter? The success of Rowling's imaginative books is unprecedented--over a quarter-billion have sold so far in over 200 countries--and the young wizard has been charming both children and adults for the past eight years. There have been high-grossing Potter movies, Potter merchandise and even Potter pop. Rowling herself, a former welfare mother, has appeared on our annual list of the world's richest people since 2004. Simply a phenomenon.

10. Zadie Smith:
Notable Works: White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty (2005)
2005 YTD Domestic Book Sales: $1.4 million
Major Awards: Whitbread First Novel Award (2000), seven other awards
Press Mentions: 1,337
Born in North London to a Jamaican mother and an English father, Zadie Smith is sharp, sassy and smart. From her linguistically daring debut in 2000, White Teeth , to On Beauty , her most recent work, Smith's writing is both comic and absurd but always hints at something deeper. Nonchalantly multicultural and unabashedly brilliant, she has been hailed as the poster child of a new world literature. But she's more than an intellectual success-- On Beauty was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and has been climbing the best-seller lists.