Want to get off welfare? Just write a series of best selling books that become a movie franchise

That's what J.K. Rowling did. The former single mother on welfare raked in a whopping $300 million just last year alone because of her Harry Potter series, making her the world's best-paid author by a wide margin. Since her first novel came out just 10 years ago, she has sold 375 million books and the box office on some of those books (there are still three more movies to come) has amounted to $4.5 billion.

Second place on the list of best paid authors is James Patterson, who cranks out an average of two novels a year, and last year earned $50 million, according to compilations reported in Forbes. Stephen King is third ($45 million), Tom Clancy fourth ($35 million), and Danielle Steele is fifth ($30 million). Remember, these figures are just for the last year.

The rest of the top 10 is Nicholas Sparks, Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, Dean Koontz and Ken Follett.