The richest Russian writers. Success stories of modern writers. Lee Ann Tui

https://www.site/2017-02-15/kak_stat_uspeshnym_pisatelem_instrukciya_ot_kritika_otkryvshego_alekseya_ivanova

“If an author wants big fame and big money…”

How to become a successful writer. Instructions from the critic who discovered Alexei Ivanov

“The existence of a writer is extremely problematic. It is in competition with everything that was written before, with all modern information flows, with other leisure forms. Therefore, any way to make yourself read, to make you hear that such a writer exists, is already a great success, ”enlightened Alexander Gavrilov, a literary critic and editor, TV and radio presenter and cultural trader, famous, in particular, at a lecture at the Piotrovsky bookstore (Yeltsin Center). , by the fact that he opened the star of the writer Alexei Ivanov. At the end of the lecture, we asked Alexander Feliksovich in more detail: how to become a famous and successful writer today and in the near future?

“Vendors and security guards have almost completely switched to video and read almost nothing”

- Alexander Feliksovich, let's talk about the future of writing, and the future is at arm's length. In your lectures you draw attention to the fact that the electronic text, which is not identical to the classical, finished work, is constantly changing. Does this mean that the value of the original author of the original text is diminishing? That the original text can be edited by anyone, at the same time, it is not excluded, being even more successful than the author-demiurge?

- So far European and even Russian law designed to protect, protect and support the author. And I am convinced that, as before, the number of authors and passive consumers in any genre of storytelling and in any distribution channel will differ many times.

This year I ended up in London's Harry Potter Filming Museum. And I saw an amazing story. The world of Harry Potter in Rowling's books is spelled out in some detail, but it doesn't compare to the detail that the epic film requires: all these moving portraits, books on the shelves of the library, and each one has something written on the spine, and so on. This, it seems to me, is the answer to your question: Rowling created a world so big, energetic, charged that when hundreds of people invest in developing some of its areas, it does not lose either integrity, or self-worth, or belonging to the author.

- Is this the secret of Rowling's amazing success, that she came up with and described in detail a whole self-sufficient reality?

- Let's start with the fact that today's authorship is associated with new types of interactions and new types of texts. The type of book and book authoring that made Europe as culturally powerful and expansive as it was until the end of the 20th century arises at one particular moment - when Socrates tells his student: you don’t need to write anything down, you need to memorize; if a person writes down, he will not remember important things, he will not train his memory and gradually lose it. Nearby, as it were, stands another of his students, Plato, and, disobeying the teacher, writes down this dialogue. Plato saved these words of Socrates for us and sent them to travel through time. It was from this moment in Europe that the use of the book began as a technology for encapsulating meaning and carrying it unchanged through time. We also know well when this era ends - when YouTube appears, when everyone who needs some piece of oral speech- educational, entertaining, and so on - can request exactly it and see it unchanged, not in someone's retelling, but without a "procurer", imprinted directly.

- What does it fundamentally change?

Since Plato's time and for a very long period, the book has had an absolute monopoly on existence through time, there are only two types of authors who have remained through the ages - writers and artists. But now everything is changing, as moving pictures are robbing this monopoly from the book, occupying more and more new territories, reclaiming the sphere of reeducation and generally becoming the basis of the future cultural thesaurus.

Some funny half a century ago, a Soviet person was considered one who knew who Pavka Korchagin and Bazarov were (the last example, in my opinion, is especially funny, because "Fathers and Sons" is one of Turgenev's worst texts, it is not needed either for nothing but to show how democratic and people-loving Turgenev was, allegedly anticipating the October Revolution). Nowadays, a person who belongs to a large European culture knows who Han Solo from Star Wars is more likely than [writer] Philip Pullman's characters that were not included in the film adaptation of his novel Amber Telescope. Today serials fulfill the same role and function in exactly the same way as novels did in the 19th century. This is the same type of cultural behavior when people gather in a living room, sit in a circle, open a book or magazine and read another chapter of the Dickensian story about Little Dorrit. Today, this type of behavior is unimaginable in relation to the text: well, who will listen to oral reading? But to gather around moving pictures, the series is quite. We will continue to watch films that become franchise narratives, return again and again to the worlds that are dear to us, but with the help of moving pictures.

Writer Igor Sakhnovsky - about his new novel and the ineradicable problem of Russia

We see that reading is serious, thorough, reading large amounts of text with intellectual and emotional analysis competes with the flow of moving pictures that eat up territory from the book, and with the flow of new leisure forms. In Russia, the segment of entertaining mass reading, detective stories and science fiction, which until recently occupied a huge share of fiction reading, is shrinking very quickly. The consumer, who needed only entertaining stories, began to watch much improved and accessible video. Vendors and security guards have almost completely switched to video and read almost nothing at all. Which is easier - reading a book or watching moving pictures? What is more interesting - reading a book or going to a quest room with friends? This, from my point of view, explains today's demolition of types, technologies, volumes of reading. Faithful to the book remained those for whom the book is not only and not just leisure.

Therefore, the author, if he wants great fame and big money, must be ready to create not just a literary work, but Big world, which can be represented as literary works and other forms of telling about this world. And it’s good if there are a couple of hundred people, some of whom will build the scenery for the film adaptation, while others will write fan fiction, sitting in a stuffy night in their teenage attic.

“Today, serials fulfill the same role and function in exactly the same way as novels did in the 19th century. This is the same type of cultural behavior when people gather in a living room, sit in a circle, open a book or magazine and read another chapter of the Dickensian story about Little Dorrit.

- That is, the writer becomes even more a marketer, a specialist in promoting his works, a decorator, a showman, in the end. As a result, he has less and less time for his own writing?

- You know, I am constantly scolded for the fact that I talk about all the changes in culture in a non-tragic way. What can I do, I don’t like this mode: what poor things we are, how have we not died yet! I see the situation as follows: the author has the opportunity to directly influence what happens to his texts. There is such an interesting American writer Hugh Howie, who first released a series of best-selling thrillers and detective stories with a large publishing house, and then, after seeing what the publishing house was doing, he became angry and opened his own. Moreover, he created the website "Author's Earnings", gives master classes along the way, publishes an analysis of the situation on the book sales market in America and in the world. It so happened that Howie is a talented marketer and quite a decent writer.

If everything is so amazingly intertwined, the author has the opportunity to do it all himself. If it doesn’t intertwine, you can not do it, but at the same time remember that you didn’t do it. Some 20 years ago, the author said: my book is unpopular because the publishers are idiots: they didn’t show it to anyone, they didn’t place quotes in the press, they didn’t agree with critics, they didn’t put me on the radio ... Today, he must admit: I still don’t quoted his book on social networks, did not post fragments of it on Amazon, and so on. Can a writer still not do all this? Of course it can. But if earlier it was believed that he should deal only with literature, and then he may or may not be lucky with a publishing house (there are many examples when a writer was not lucky with the first publishing house, but was lucky with the second or third), then today he or not promoting your book is the author's choice.

“It is a little easier for a novice writer than his colleague fifty years ago”

- Today, anyone can become a writer: you don't need to graduate from the Gorky Literary Institute, become a member of the Writers' Union ...

“And never needed to. Homer did well without both. And Dostoevsky managed somehow.

— … To have connections in the circle of publishers and critics. To be in demand, it is "enough" to have a gadget and Internet access and be talented or lucky. Today, it is harder for a diamond to shine from under a pile of manure, or vice versa, is the demand for true craftsmanship - a dizzying plot, complex composition, elegant style, and so on - becoming stronger?

- "Adult" writer - harder. First of all, because quite recently the reading array was strictly divided into bestsellers and novelties - this is what you can see in a decent bookstore, into broad classics - this is what you can get in the library, and for everything else - this is a huge a storage archive, something that can be requested by interlibrary loan, to be delivered to you from Hamburg on horseback in three weeks. Today, as the global information cloud is formed and the library moves there, access to the literature of the past has rapidly become easier and faster. No need to go to the library - just click on the application on your phone. This means that the modern writer finds himself in a much more competitive environment. Every day, as new type books and reading expands its presence, it becomes harder for anyone who wants to write and publish a text.

Why is it a little easier for an aspiring writer than for his colleague fifty years ago? When a writer starts, he is in a state of almost despair: will anyone hear what I say?! Today, he can immediately get access, if not to the entire array of readers, then to readers who are interested in exactly the type of literature that is interesting and important to him. Relatively speaking, within the same fantasy genre, some love Roger Zelazny, while others love William Gibson. Those who revel in Remarque cannot stand Celine, and vice versa.

- Is the segmentation of the readership deepening?

“Segmentation has always happened. The difference with previous times is that until quite recently it was believed that there is an omnivorous reader. And then one day, being one of the founders and for several years the program director of the Moscow Book Festival, I watched the consumer behavior of book buyers for several days in a large bookstore "Moskva" on Tverskaya. And he was shocked. The same person behaves completely differently in the fiction department and in the business literature department. In the first case, he reacts seriously to the price, but he buys a lot, trusts authorities little, and postpones the evaluation of the work until he has read it: give me fresh science fiction (or all fresh detective stories), then I'll figure out which ones are good. In the department of business literature, the same person begins to trust authorities and the press very much (“I read in the Kommersant newspaper that this book on marketing is the best that was before”), he has a fundamentally different attitude to the price, is ready to lay out decent money, because he regards them as an investment in reeducation, he buys few books because they need to be read slowly and caustically. In one person - completely different people, different readers and different reading strategies.

And network services such as Facebook, VKontakte, LiveJournal allow the writer to speak not with the entire population of readers, but with a selection. Sometimes this is disastrous, because before, when a conversation about any book began with harsh criticism, a young author, before appearing before “evil judges”, polished his statement for a very long time, hoping to express himself in such a way that they would understand, write in such a way that they would not find fault. Today, light social “strokes” in social networks (“Well done, I wrote a book!”) Are pushing many debutants, so to speak, to insufficient tension in the preparation of the text. By the way, this also applies to mature writers who have already received their audience, “strokes” and encouragement from it. The late Pelevin no longer even writes with his feet, but smears his tail on the computer keyboard, and sends everything that came out to the publisher.

— In your lectures, you talk about the customization of modern literature, its adjustment to the needs of the consumer. This quality will develop? Will literature more and more often satisfy, first of all, the current, even momentary needs of the audience, bring practical benefits to readers?

- The fact is that, in addition to the situation of a book changing its main carrier (and this is always a very big event in the life of society), in addition to the loss of the monopoly function of letters to transmit information unchanged through the centuries, in addition to the appearance of the world of moving pictures, there is another process of such the same values. Just because it has been going on for a long time, approximately since the beginning of the 20th century, we notice it less often and think about it. I'm talking about the massification of culture - about which Ortega y Gasset wrote in his famous essay "The Revolt of the Masses", and Korney Chukovsky - in pre-revolutionary literary criticism. Then he never advertised this journalism, so as not to remind the Soviets of his collaboration with the Socialist-Revolutionary press, and there were considerations of amazing subtlety and depth.

Korney Ivanovich says quite a lot about the fact that the mass consumer demands a completely different culture than the one we are used to (the Soviet Union tried to conserve the elite type of culture consumption, so “we” can be used today). European culture from its beginning to the middle of the 20th century was designed for a very small circle of people, very educated and very isolated from the bulk of their fellow citizens. From the beginning of the 20th century, from the moment the factory worker numerically becomes the main type of city dweller and the main consumer of culture, it has been forced to change.

And when we exclaim: “How so! The works that defined the language of the eras and are able to change the outlook on life are in the shadows, they are overshadowed by insignificant handicrafts! We lose sight of the fact that this has always been the case. Bulgarin was a much more popular author than Pushkin, Ivan Vyzhigin was a much more popular book than Boris Godunov. True, then they were at least comparable in terms of their impact on the readership, but today comfortable reading, a comfortable spectacle fill vast spaces, and reading-work, watching films as work for the sake of development, spiritual and intellectual enrichment are increasingly covered by the shadow of this huge colossus of mass cultural consumption.

- Classics become a "dead" warehouse?

— Absolutely. Classics are revered, but not read. I have two "shameless" friends who once, on Pushkin's birthday, went out on the Arbat in front of his museum-apartment and loudly read Lermontov's poems. It is remarkable that not one of the listeners doubted what was happening. And one of the passers-by, after listening to a few poems, smacked his lips and said: “No, after all, Pushkin is boring. I love Lermontov more. That is, the point is not only that we honor them without reading them, but that there are some images of them that function outside the texts. So what? It's good? Badly. Do we have a different culture? No, and for a long time. This situation is almost a century old.

— More to the question of customization. Logically, will a writer of the near future write to order for his audience?

No more than now. It often happens in the transition of the book world to the Web: we think that this is the technology of tomorrow, but it is already here, literally under our feet. The vast majority of writers already communicate quite energetically with their readers on the Web. Examples are Oleg Divov, Sergey Lukyanenko, Neil Gaiman, Neil Stevenson, Frederic Begbeder. It was the Web, with its instant reader response, with its constant sense of contact with the audience, that changed writing practices and allowed to a large extent conduct testing of the language, plot, character practically on-line. Author of the book “Imaginary orphanhood. Kharms and Khlebnikov in the context of European modernism”, and he writes on behalf of his audience, however, these are the three people who read the book even before its circulation began.

"The book has reached the state of the absolute Platonic idea, it is an eternal pattern"

- Alexander Feliksovich, everything you say is true when the gadget becomes more accessible than paper ...

“Even if we look at poor countries, we find that gadgets are already significantly cheaper and more accessible. The latest UNESCO study shows an exponential increase in reading on the African continent, due to the fact that some charities are giving away smartphones to African children. And this is the only book - in the house, the village, the savannah - that is available to the child.

That's a million books at once!

— Quite right. Therefore, I have no feeling that the financial resource is the deterrent.

We now see the transition from one type of reading to another, as in the case of the transition from papyrus to parchment, from scroll to codex, from manuscript to typescript. During the transition period, it becomes clear how much rituals mean in the matter of reading, how much they determine. Lying down with a good book under a warm checkered blanket and, listening to the raindrops, reading about beautiful love is a ready-made ritual that we can take from culture and “put on” ourselves. Now, during the transition to a new type of reading, his rituals are not yet ready. When I communicate with people who read a lot "electronic", the first question that is always asked, without exception: how to disconnect from the information flow? We don't even have this skill. The book is a kind of indulgence: if people see an open book in my hands, they understand that it is not worth pestering me. And if I have a smartphone in my hands, who knows - whether I “google” some nonsense, or climb on Facebook, or really read a book.

“The number of people who devote more and more time to electronic reading will grow not due to the cheapness of devices, but due to the establishment of rituals. Relatively speaking: when I put on a red hat and pick up a smartphone, it means that I am reading a book, take everything away from me.

- Manipulations with a smartphone are not perceived as a serious, intellectual activity?

- Yes, and it is not clear to the environment whether it is necessary to lag behind me at this moment? Is not a fact. Therefore, I think that the number of people who practice electronic reading and devote more and more time to it will grow not due to the cheapness of devices, but due to the establishment of practices, rituals of reading. Relatively speaking: when I put on a red hat and pick up a smartphone, it means that I am reading a book, take everything away from me.

Second important point is connected with the social position in which we find ourselves together with the European part of humanity, differing from readers, say, in India and China, where, by the way, reading of paper publications and reading in general is growing at a fairly rapid pace. The fact is that these are the only large territories where large masses of people are currently moving from poverty to poverty, from agrarian to industrial labor. And such promotion is always accompanied by an increase in reading (remember Vseobuch), specifically “paper” reading, because it implies more control and commitment.

So, we, in turn (and this is confirmation that Russia is part of the world that unites Europe and North America), we see that the most important limiter, severely limiting reading, is not a shortage of finance, but of time. Today you can access all the literature from the Sumerians to the modern writers of North Africa. Will you read? No. We live in a state of monstrous information overload. And we still have one head, there are still 24 hours in a day, and this is terribly insulting. Once again, when a person's dream came true, he was not ready for it, he is the “weakest link” in the entire information chain.

- In the late 80s, in the 90s, during perestroika and immediately after it, a stormy flow of information fell upon us, which the Soviet government had been hiding all 70 years before. And nothing, not only survived, but were happy ...

— Yes, it was useful and good. We remember the situation of information deficit in the Soviet years. Either you "got" Tsvetaeva's blue volume for a lot of money, or you don't have Tsvetaeva. Either you snatched the vinyl layer of Albinoni, or you don’t listen to Albinoni, but listen to the song “Valenki”. End of story. And the 90s for me as a reader were a feast, I read books that I never dreamed of.

Action artist Olya Kroytor talks about loneliness, conversations with the public and envy of the 90s

Only modern literature has suffered: poor fellow "Pupkin" just wrote his debut novel "How We Played in the Sandbox", but it turned out that he had nowhere to stick himself between Pilnyak, Nabokov, Platonov, Orwell and Huxley. For the writing community, this time was so competitive, painful and difficult to bear that the Debut award, invented by Dmitry Lipskerov for young Russian writers, came in handy. When I asked him: “Dima, why are you doing this?” - Lipskerov, a man, it must be said, is gloomy and not noticed in excessive philanthropy (which can be seen from his novels, and in personal communication is the first striking), answered with the utmost seriousness: “I’m afraid to be a representative latest generation Russian writers, I want the next generation of Russian writers to be.” And the award really supported many.

- How, taking into account the information flicker, will the book itself, its volume change? Will it get smaller, thinner?

— This question has long been asked by both book theorists and practical publishers. The basic premise was that the e-book would give life to very small forms of literature - the miniature, the short story, the "how it works" short non-fiction narrative. But practice has shown: no, people, flipping through micropages on the screen, read huge texts in tiny pieces. It turned out that readers want to stay inside the narrative space that they love for a long time, do not want to leave it, re-invest their reader's attention and time, which is necessary to settle down in the world of the book and appropriate it for themselves.

Please note: recently, the main discussion has been caused by such bestsellers, not only American ones, such as The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt or A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, but also ours - Pitchfork and Tobol by Alexei Ivanov, novels by Mikhail Shishkin, " The house in which ”Mariam Petrosyan, the main teenage bestseller of recent times. They are all huge, 700-800 pages is the standard. Electronic book removed a completely different limitation: this is not a small book, but a light one. It’s hard to carry a book of 800 pages, the iPhone in which this book is downloaded is much more convenient to carry.

“An e-book is not a small book, but a light one. It’s hard to carry a book of 800 pages, the iPhone in which this book is downloaded is much more convenient to carry. ”

One more, final doubt. Do you think "electronics" is more reliable than paper? The gadget needs access to electricity, the Internet, components, it is fragile, it is easy to break it. And you can't break paper.

— The answer to the question — Network. The texts that we read on terminal devices - smartphones, tablets, desktops, and so on - they are not inside these little things. Remember, Carlson could not understand how such a big aunt got inside such a small box. There was no aunt in the box, and this is important to keep in mind. The book has reached the state of an absolute Platonic idea. This is an eternal pattern that is printed as long as we need. After reading something from Dostoevsky and cracking the phone in anger, we, having sobered up, will continue reading on the computer, exactly from the same page.

The web is much more resilient than we are used to thinking about it. And if the global information cloud suddenly collapses, then the inaccessibility of e-books will be the least of our problems. Cars will stop, planes will fall, telephones will fall silent, and only after that we will think: what should we read? And of course, we will find good old paper books. I hope they don't burn out by then.

We would like to thank the Piotrovsky bookstore and personally Mikhail Maltsev for arranging the interview.

Russian news

10 main writers of modern Russia

When it comes to contemporary literature, the reader often forms his reading circle based on existing ratings. But each niche of the book market has its own leaders, and none of them is an absolute literary authority. We decided to hold a kind of championship of Russia among writers. Out of 50 different writers, from best-selling authors to darlings of intellectual criticism, through complex calculations, we have identified 10 champions. These are writers who broadcast those ideologies that are in demand by the majority of readers and therefore are important today for the whole country.

1st place

Viktor Pelevin

What did you get
For the painstaking and consistent decoding of the present and the explanation of the life of the new Russia through absurdity and metaphysics.

How he does it
Starting with the first stories published back in the late 1980s, Pelevin has been doing the same thing: X-raying contemporary society, revealing the “true” background of any events in Russia’s recent history.

He seems to offer us another Russia - a metaphysical, magical, absurd empire, in which "werewolves in uniform" turn into real wolf people ("The Sacred Book of the Werewolf"), cadets at the Maresyev Flight School are amputated ("Omon Ra") , instead of real politicians, the country is controlled by PR people through digital characters from the TV (“Generation “P””), and oil appears because the skull of a motley cow is crying with real tears over the bitter lot of Russian security forces (“The Sacred Book of the Werewolf”). At the same time, Pelevin’s portrait of Russia is almost always photographically accurate: in “Chapaev and Void” (1996) he gave a cut of the 90s with their “new Russians” and kitsch fashion for Eastern esotericism, in “Generation “P”” (1999) predicted the coming realm of PR and the agonizing search for a national idea that we embarked on in the 2000s.

Pelevin is the most sought-after writer in our country, in which the conspiracy spirit is still strong and many are sure that the authorities are hiding everything from them, but no one knows exactly what and how.

Points

• Prizes - 3("National Bestseller", 2004, "DPP NN" - 300 thousand rubles).
• Confession experts -5 (Even his consistent critics recognize Pelevin's importance for modern culture).
• Circulations - 5(since the mid-2000s, the starting circulation of his new books is about 200 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 5(the collective madness around Pelevin has been around for 15 years, in 1999 a rally of his fans even took place in Moscow).
• Publicity - 3(ignores the press, gives one or two interviews a year, but is still one of the key cultural newsmakers).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 5(The film "Generation "P"" is released in February 2010).
• Reputation - 5(no one knows his political views; people of various views find confirmation of their hypotheses and conjectures in his prose).
• Total 31

2nd place

Ludmila Ulitskaya

What did you get
For affirming the simple truth that modern man is essentially not so bad.

How does she do it
Ulitskaya is most interested in people. In this sense, she is unique. The focus of her attention is not fashion, not current politics, not the surprises of history, but people, our contemporaries with their shortcomings, virtues, sins, talents, faith and unbelief. She feels sincere sympathy for her characters - something like main character novel "Sincerely yours Shurik" feels sympathy for all women on his way.

Until 2006, Ulitskaya described simple, sometimes even average people, showing different facets of their characters. And then she created a “superman” from the same material - the translator Daniel Stein from the novel of the same name, who set as the goal of his life nothing less than the reconciliation of different nations and religions.

Points

• Prizes - 5(“Russian Booker”, 2001, “The Case of Kukotsky” - 300 thousand rubles; “Big Book”, 2007, “Daniel Stein, translator” - 3 million rubles).
• Expert recognition - 5(Ulitskaya is loved by critics of various kinds).
• Circulations - 5(“Daniel Stein, translator” - more than 400 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 1(Ulitskaya's novels are usually about too intimate experiences, so her fans usually keep quiet and hide their feelings).
• Publicity - 3(does not like publicity, although he periodically gives interviews).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 5(film "The Case of Kukotsky" (2005) based on the book of the same name).
• Reputation - 5(the human theme chosen by Ulitskaya turns out to be a universal key to the hearts of a wide variety of readers of all age groups and sometimes opposing views).
• Total 29

3rd place

Leonid Yuzefovich

What did you get
For explaining our present through the past and our past through the present.

How he does it
Yuzefovich composes historical thrillers, and in real history finds plots richer and more interesting than any fiction. In his books, there is a conspiracy of Esperantists in the Urals during the Civil War; a Mongol prince trying to sell his soul to the devil; Russian impostor wandering around Europe in the 17th century. All this is a hybrid of historical reality and myths, which every time turns out to be relevant and helps the reader to understand the events of today. Yuzefovich nowhere claims that history is cyclical, but at the same time, for example, the Time of Troubles from his novel "Cranes and Dwarfs" is strikingly reminiscent of the Russian 90s, and the problems of the police in Russian Empire the end of the 19th century are very similar to those that are decided by the "cops" today. It turns out that we have already gone through all this, but we have not drawn any conclusions.

Points

• Prizes - 5(“National Bestseller”, 2001, “Prince of the Wind” - 300 thousand rubles; “Big Book”, 2009, “Cranes and Dwarfs” - 3 million rubles).
• Expert recognition - 5(unanimously approved by almost all critics).
• Draws - 3(less than 100 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 1(The books of Yuzefovich did not give rise to a fan movement as such; he requires the reader to think and analyze the facts, and the mass audience is not always ready for this).
• Publicity - 3(does not rush into public characters, but communicates with the press).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 5(the film "Detective of the Petersburg Police" (1991) based on the story "The Situation in the Balkans"; the series "Kazarosa" (2005) based on the novel "Club" Espero ""; the series "Detective Putilin" (2007) based on the novels "Harlequin Costume", " Dating House”, “Prince of the Wind”).
• Reputation - 5(causes respect in different political camps - caution and deliberation of statements).
• Total 27

4th place

Vladimir Makanin

What did you get
For a detailed and merciless analysis of the most painful and acute social issues.

How he does it
Makanin keeps his own chronicle of Russian life, recording and analyzing such important components as the fate of the intelligentsia (“Underground, or Hero of Our Time”) or the war in the Caucasus (“Prisoner of the Caucasus” and “Asan”).

Makanin works as a mirror of Russian reality with the effect of multiple magnification. This is not to say that he shows what is not there, but not everyone likes his pictures - just like few people can like the reflection of their own face with all its pores and blackheads. Six months after the Big Book award was presented to him, the novel Asan was awarded the title of “worst book of the year” on the Internet: this happened through the efforts of veterans of the Chechen wars, who were deeply offended by the writer.

Makanin is sometimes accused of "cheap provocations." Cheap or not, but “provocation” is the exact definition: the writer chooses the most difficult topics for society and presents their research to the reader. And then everyone is free to either be indignant that everything is so bad with us, or to admire how skillfully the writer shows that everything is so bad with us.

Points

• Prizes - 5("Russian Booker", 1993, "A table covered with cloth and with a decanter in the middle" - $ 10 thousand; "Big Book", 2008, "Asan" - 3 million rubles).
• Expert recognition - 4(liberal-minded critics appreciate Makanin for the "truth of life", patriots are indignant and accuse the writer of distorting historical facts).
• Circulations - 5(At the end of the Soviet era, Makanin was published in thousands of copies).
• The presence of fans - 1(As such, Makanin did not acquire fans, there are only loyal readers).
• Publicity - 3(does not seek publicity, but gives interviews from time to time).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 5(the film "Eagle and Tails" (1995) based on the story "On the first breath"; the film "Prisoner" (2008) based on the story "Prisoner of the Caucasus").
• Reputation - 4(he enjoys absolute authority among liberals, for the conservative-patriotic part of society he is a liar and a provocateur).
• Total 27

5th-7th place

Alexander Kabakov

What did you get
For a true reflection of our fear of the future.

How he does it
Kabakov managed to capture the spirit of the times back in the late 80s, when he wrote the story "Defector" - a dystopia that captured the foreboding then hanging in the air civil war. For the first time in Soviet history, the future began to frighten the broad masses, and Kabakov verbalized the fear that was popular in those years: the total circulation of official publications alone exceeded 200,000 copies.

20 years after The Defector, Kabakov again wrote a dystopian novel, The Fugitive, set in 1917, the last months of pre-Soviet Russia. It would seem that these are things of the past, why be afraid of them? But the events of 1917 are painfully similar to our time. And most importantly, both then, and now, and 20 years ago, the future still scares us. In modern culture, Kabakov plays the role of a pessimistic reasoner who pronounces his “memento mori” (remember death) in place and out of place.

Points

• Prizes - 4(“The Big Book”, 2006, “Everything is fixable” - 1.5 million rubles).
• Confession experts -4 (causes respect, but not everyone, often scold him).
• Circulations - 5("Defector" - over 200 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 1(Kabakov has no ardent fans).
• Publicity — 3 (does not rush into public characters, but often appears in the media).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 5(film "Defector" (1991) based on the story of the same name).
• Reputation - 4(His moderate-liberal and moderate-conservative views both attract and repel both camps of critics).
• Total 26

5th-7th place

Sergey Lukyanenko

What did you get
For the popularization of conformism and traditional values.

How he does it
Like Pelevin, Lukyanenko shows the hidden mechanisms of the functioning of the reality around us. In "Patrols" and "Draft" you can find an explanation for a variety of events in modern life, from political to everyday. But the explanations offered by Lukyanenko are much simpler than Pelevin's: his world is Manichean-style divided into good and evil, black and white. At the same time, each political force tends to see its opponents in the "dark" Day Watch, and itself in the "light" Night Watch.

True, sometimes it turns out that evil is not so evil, and good uses its fists for no reason. But still, against the background of social postmodernism, which does not fundamentally distinguish between good and evil, Lukyanenko's prose looks like a breath of traditionalism. He continues to bend the line of Soviet science fiction, familiar to everyone since childhood. And his characters are for the most part conformists: even the most heroic of them now and then cease to be heroic and go with the flow. In this, the writer managed to catch the spirit of the time: the mass reader of the 2000s, a man of the “stability” era, gladly accepted this conformism, combined with the patriotic-conservative views of Lukyanenko himself.

Points

• Prizes - 1(did not receive).
• Expert Recognition - 3(Lukyanenko is the only one of the science fiction writers who is regularly written about by critics who are not from the science fiction crowd. True, he is rarely praised).
• Circulations - 5(starting circulation of 200 thousand copies for Lukyanenko's books is a common thing).
• The presence of fans - 5(For a good ten years now, Lukyanenko has been the idol of the masses, role-playing games are being played based on his books).
• Publicity — 3 (does not like publicity, but shows up in public and gives interviews).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 5(films “Night Watch” (2004) and “Day Watch” (2006) based on the novels of the same name; film “Aziris Nuna” (2006) based on the book “Today, Mom!”; several more films are planned).
• Reputation - 4(he is an authority for a large group of adherents of traditional values ​​\u200b\u200band “stability”; others rather repel his views).
• Total 26

5th-7th place

Boris Akunin

What did you get
For creating the escapist myth of Russia's golden age.

How he does it
The first novels about Erast Fandorin had a dedication: "To the memory of the 19th century, when literature was great, faith in progress was boundless, and crimes were committed and revealed with grace and taste." In the late 1990s, at the height of the revision of Russian history from new ideological positions, the novelist Akunin began to create an escapist myth for the "smart" but not very intelligent reader - the myth of beautiful Russia at the end of the 19th century.

Akunin found an era that, on the one hand, is well known to everyone, and on the other, does not cause much controversy. From the language of classical literature XIX century, familiar to everyone from the school curriculum, out of elegant detective constructions and the general good-heartedness of heroes, even negative ones, he created the ideal world of an escapist, where one could escape from default, wars in Chechnya, politics and troubles at work. Akunin gave a whole generation of Russian office workers a safe haven from the present.

Points

• Prizes - 1(He was not nominated for a prize and has no chance: prizes do not like entertainment literature).
• Expert Recognition - 3(“Intellectual” critics don’t like him, but for glossy publications he is a favorite).
• Circulations - 5(average circulation - more than 200 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 5(The world of Fandorin, Pelagia and other Akunin characters has been the subject of mass insanity for almost a decade).
• Publicity - 3(does not like to appear in the press, but sometimes reminds of himself with bright media gestures: for example, an interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Esquire magazine).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 5(films "Azazel" (2001), "Turkish Gambit" (2004), "State Councilor" (2005), as well as the series (2009) "Pelagia and the White Bulldog").
• Reputation - 4(known as a convinced liberal, for which we appreciate some and hate others).
• Total 26

8th place

Dmitry Bykov

What did you get
For the ability to find a common language with everyone - regardless of beliefs, political affiliations, etc.

How he does it
They once joked about Bykov that he, like a gas, fills any space allotted to him. He hosts programs on radio and, until recently, on television, publishes articles, reviews and columns in newspapers and magazines of various kinds. For lovers of poetry, he offers poetry, for lovers of prose - novels, moreover, written in a stream fashion trends of his time. For those who don't like fiction, there is non-fiction: biographies of Boris Pasternak and Bulat Okudzhava.

For intellectuals, Bykov draws a portrait of Okudzhava as a representative of a special Soviet aristocracy, for pessimists - a scary dystopia "Decommissioned" about how a variety of people suddenly found themselves in ominous lists compiled by someone who knows why. The ideal universal writer of the era of the total crisis of all ideologies.

Points

• Prizes - 5(“National Bestseller”, 2006, “Boris Pasternak” - 300 thousand rubles; “Big Book”, 2006, “Boris Pasternak” - 3 million rubles).
• Expert recognition - 4(some critics do not like his ideological omnivorousness, but each new book by Bykov becomes an event).
• Draws - 2(not a single book has yet been published with a circulation of more than 50 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 3(there is a small but well-organized fan movement and fan clubs).
• Publicity — 4 (one way or another, he is constantly present in the media: he writes columns in magazines, a program on the City-FM radio, hosted the TV program Vremechko).
• Availability of screenshots 1 (so far they are only being negotiated).
• Reputation - 4(Bykov could be an authoritative writer, but he is harmed by the fact that he is not “above” any ideologies, but, on the contrary, is in solidarity with any of them).
• Total 23

9th-10th place

Evgeny Grishkovets

What did you get
For the chanting of the joys of life and everyday life of a simple modern person.

How he does it
Lenin stated that "the electron is as inexhaustible as the atom". Evgeniy Grishkovets proves that a person - and first of all his life, daily actions and thoughts - is as inexhaustible as an electron. His stories, novels and plays are statements of the most ordinary tales, diary entries, memories of his youth, school and university years, anecdotes about neighbors, fellow travelers or casual acquaintances, which are interspersed with reflections on the meaning of being. Readers can easily recognize themselves in all the above stories, tales and anecdotes, and even reflection in the works of Grishkovets is quite archetypal.

At the same time, Grishkovets' life of an ordinary person turns out to be joyful: even if there are sad episodes, they still cannot spoil the overall bright impression. All the troubles are drowned in a sweetly benevolent and forgiving style of presentation. Grishkovets, like a good storyteller, lulls the neurotic generation of 30-40-year-olds who have survived more than one crisis.

Points

• Prizes - 1(didn't get anything).
• Expert Recognition - 3(critics treat him coldly, but new books are still reviewed).
• Circulations - 4(in last years average circulation - more than 100 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 3(there are active fan clubs of Grishkovets).
• Publicity - 4(Flashes in the press and on television, hosted his own TV show, but in the end he considered this experience unsuccessful).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 4(there are many theatrical productions based on the works of Grishkovets).
• Reputation - 3(it is not a moral authority of its own choice, since it prefers not to speak publicly on global issues at all).
• Total 22

9th-10th place

Aleksey Ivanov

What did you get
For the glorification of the Russian provinces and equalization of its rights with the capitals.

How he does it
Ivanov cut a window to the east of Russia, giving his Perm a semi-sacred status. It is possible that it was through this window that Marat Gelman and state money for culture came to Perm.

It cannot be said that before Ivanov no one had ever written about the Russian provinces. For example, Leonid Yuzefovich himself lived for many years in Perm, and in this city the action of his "Kazaroza" unfolds. But it was Ivanov who managed to create a stable myth about the self-sufficiency of the province in our centripetal country, where, according to the generally accepted opinion, everything that exists tends to move to Moscow, or at least to St. Petersburg.

In "Heart of Parma" and "Gold of Riot" the Permian version of history is much more interesting than the official one, which comes from Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the official version - kings, emperors, serfdom, decrees, ministers, riots and wars, everything is boring and faceless; in Perm - magic, fighting elks, siege sleds, mysterious Voguls, beautiful rituals and the great river Chusovaya.

Points

• Prizes - 1(did not receive anything, although he was shortlisted several times).
• Expert recognition - 4(Among critics, Ivanov has both ardent supporters and ardent opponents).
• Draws - 3(the average circulation is not more than 100 thousand copies).
• The presence of fans - 5(The Permian public wears Ivanov in their arms, especially in his confrontation with Marat Gelman. Role-playing games are held based on his books, and in the summer of 2009, the Ivanov Heart of Parma festival was held in Perm).
• Publicity - 3(rarely leaves Perm, does not rush into public characters, but gives interviews).
• Availability of screen adaptations - 1(negotiations are underway, but the shooting has not yet reached).
• Reputation - 5(moral authority, has a reputation as a sage from the Ural hinterland, who can be contacted on especially important issues).
• Total 22

Illustrations: Maria Sosnina

James Patterson - 1st ($70 million)

Alexander Sergeevich also noted - "inspiration is not for sale, but you can sell the manuscript." This is what representatives of the writing fraternity are doing safely, in our time, in some cases, earning no less than the stars of show business.

The authoritative Forbes magazine recently published a list of 10 writers who earned more than other colleagues in the shop in the period from June 1, 2009 to June 1, 2010. Moreover, the publication took into account income not only from the sale of books, but also from transactions with film companies, television, the gaming business, and so on.

Topping the list with $70 million is detective author James Patterson, with 51 works on the New York Times bestseller list. By the end of 2012, his "piggy bank" will replenish: Patterson has a 100 million contract for the release of 17 books.

Second place went to Stephenie Meyer, who gave the world the "Twilight Saga". During the year, about 100 million copies of Mayer's vampire novels were sold, which formed the basis of the super-popular epic movie with and, which brought the writer $ 40 million.

Stephenie Meyer - Runner-up (40 million)

Stephen King left behind the third position. "King of Horror" collected "tribute" from its fans, the total amount of which amounted to 34 million dollars. Eight of them brought King early works. His last novel, Under the Dome, came out at the end of last year.

Stephen King - Third ($34 million)

In fourth place is Danielle Steele. In a year, the author of romance novels "saved" $ 32 million. The writer, by the way, is preparing a revolution: on Amazon.com, electronic versions of her 71st book will soon go on sale.

Daniella Steele - 4th (32 million)

Rounding out the top five most successful writers is Ken Follett with $20 million. According to a survey conducted by The Times, his novel "Pillars of the Earth" became the second greatest novel of the last 60 years (the first - "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee).

Ken Folett - 5th (20 million)

Dean Koontz - 6th (18 million)

Janet Ivanovic - 7th (16 million)

John Grisham - 8th (15 million)

Nicholas Sparks - ninth (14 million)

JK Rowling - 10th (10 million)

In 2013, two near-literary records were set. The initial circulation of the new novel by the Japanese writer Haruki MURAKAMI "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage" was 1 million copies, and the writer's fee, excluding interest on sales, was $5 million. An unknown 15-year-old Pakistani Malala YUSUFZAI will receive $3 million for a book of memoirs about how her school bus was shot at by the Taliban and how difficult it is to get an education in third world countries. To tell how much writers in Russia earn, we asked our staff writer, writer Vladimir KAZAKOV.

The history of the Russian fee is not simple. This word itself, translated from Latin, means "honor", hence the word "arrogance". For the curious, I’ll say that “gonorrhea” is not from that opera, it’s not Latin, but Greek roots.
So, in Rome, only foreigners and slaves could write for a fee. It was a shame for a real Roman to take money for odes, verses and other tragedies. Therefore, they came up with symbolic valuable prizes - a ring or a golden cup. It was also considered indecent in Russia among the nobility - and literature was predominantly of the nobility - to take money for writing.
But Alexander Pushkin changes everything. He makes writing a profession for the first time. Having spit on the vague notions of noble dignity, he began to sell his poems. We are often told that Pushkin was a poor poet, heavily in debt. This is only partly true.
Alexander Sergeevich spent a lot, squandered, lost fortunes in cards. His wife Natalya Nikolaevna devoured a lot with balls and receptions. But contemporaries wrote that the poet's favorite pastime was drunkenly throwing gold coins from the Anichkov Bridge and watching them shimmer in the water in the sun. Why such excesses?

Pushkin's salary in 1831 at the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, where, however, he did not really go, was 5 thousand rubles. in year. This is very big money. The Mikhailovskoye estate and 200 peasant souls that belonged to the poet gave another 3 thousand rubles. annual income.
Here are some of his fees:
1824 - publication of the first edition of the Fountain of Bakhchisaray, 1200 copies, fee - 3 thousand rubles;
1825 - publication of the book "Poems of Alexander Pushkin", 1200 copies, fee - 8040 rubles;
1827 - The Robber Brothers were printed, the fee was 1500 rubles;
1828 - the release of the second edition of "Ruslan and Lyudmila", a fee - 7 thousand rubles.
In 1824, for "Eugene Onegin" he generally received astronomical for those times 12 thousand rubles.
This is not all the fees of the poet. For comparison: a chic dinner in a restaurant, including sturgeon and caviar, cost no more than a ruble. A skilled young blacksmith with his wife and two children for export cost no more than 500 rubles.

Dostoevsky counted Turgenev's money

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky went further in the development of royalties. He managed to get quite decent sums for novels not yet written. In 1869, from Florence, in a letter to the publicist Nikolai Strakhov, he, among other things, reports: “... Here is what I am forced to answer: since I always need money extremely and live only by work, I have always been almost forced, all my life, wherever he worked, take money in advance. True, and everywhere they gave me. I left Russia soon two years ago, already owing Katkov 3,000 rubles, and not according to the old calculation with Crime and Punishment, but according to a new one. Since then, I have taken from Katkov up to 3,500 rubles. Russky Vestnik will send me money this year as well, although I owe a little to stay there.
It takes six months to sit down and write a novel for me. To write it for half a year, you need to be secure at that time ... You constantly write me such news that Ivan Goncharov, for example, took 7 thousand rubles. for his novel, and Katkov himself gave Turgenev 4,000 rubles, that is, 400 rubles each, for his "Nest of Nobles". per sheet. (A literary sheet is approximately 24 typewritten pages. - VK) My friend! I know very well that I write worse than Turgenev, but not too worse, and finally I hope to write just as well. For what, with my needs, I take only 100 rubles, and Turgenev, who has 2 thousand souls, 400 rubles each. From poverty, I am forced to hurry and write for money, therefore, without fail, spoil.
In those years, the highest paid writers were Goncharov and Turgenev. But, in principle, Dostoevsky received quite decently. He could afford to travel all over Europe, play in a casino and indulge in all sorts of excesses in general.

Gorky earned money for a villa in Italy

The end of the 19th century was marked by a rise in wages for writers. Leo Tolstoy receives 1 thousand rubles. per sheet, Nikolai Leskov and Anton Chekhov - 500 each. Beginner "singer of the revolution" Maxim Gorky - 150 rubles, more than Dostoevsky!
The pre-revolutionary time is just fantastic for literary income. Gorky receives 1200 rubles. per sheet, Chekhov - 1 thousand, Kuprin - 800 rubles, Bunin - 600 rubles. That is, we again take the average book of that time in 10 sheets, multiply by Chekhov's 1 thousand rubles and get three years of living in a luxurious hotel like the Metropol. This is for one book. And they tried to publish every year and even more often. Chekhov, for example, realized in time and gave way to the St. Petersburg publisher Adolf Marksuprav for all his previous creations for 75 thousand rubles. And he successfully supported a large family, a mansion on the Garden Ring, the Melikhovo estate, a house in Yalta.
The prose writer Fyodor Sologub was not one of the leaders of the then rating, but a valued and high-quality poet and prose writer, author of the famous novel “The Little Demon”, paid 135 rubles for an apartment in Grodnensky Lane in St. Petersburg. per month. The writer's dwelling looked prestigious: expensive Art Nouveau furniture, palm trees...
Leonid Andreev built a beautiful mansion in a prestigious suburb of St. Petersburg, on the Black River. Construction, including interior decoration, cost 38 thousand rubles. Andreev received a ruble per line.
For a ruble you could buy a whole goose, for 50 kopecks. - a couple of chickens. The monthly salary of an average official was 100 rubles.
Gorky rents the most luxurious villa in Italy, on the island of Capri, and contains numerous relatives, mistresses and hangers-on.

Mayakovsky became an official millionaire

In Soviet times, writers also did not get bored. In the 1920s, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin were the highest paid writers. Mayakovsky was considered an official millionaire. He ordered cars of prestigious brands from abroad, traveled a lot, and supported the Brik family.
In later Soviet times, the issuance of fees in connection with the formation of the Union of Writers of the USSR was streamlined. It must be said that the union, in addition to fixed prices, also gave a lot of advantages that were not there under the tsarist regime. Benefits for rent, getting an apartment out of turn, increased pension, the opportunity to relax and create for free in numerous creative houses scattered in the best resort areas of the USSR. Opportunity to buy a dacha in writers' villages like Peredelkino or Komarovo for a symbolic price. The state stimulated intellectual, literary work.

Venerable writers, sometimes quite mediocre, sometimes received fantastic money. For example, a case is known how the now forgotten writer Anatoly Sofronov, editor-in-chief of the Ogonyok magazine, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU and laureate of three orders of Lenin, received more than 200 thousand rubles for a collection of works in 6 volumes, published for the 70th anniversary. A three-room cooperative apartment in a prestigious area could be bought for 15 thousand.
But even for ordinary writers, solid, very good earnings were guaranteed. For example, two rubles per line were paid for poems and plays. Plus copyright, additional payment for circulation, etc. For one book, the writer was guaranteed to receive several annual salaries of an ordinary Soviet person. By the way, if a writer wrote a book in Russian and it was translated into one of the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, then the author was entitled to an additional 60 percent of the fee paid for the first edition. If the book was translated into foreign language, then the author of the original was entitled to 30 percent of the first fee.
I had a friend who was a Mordvinian, he wrote poetry in Russian, he was published, then he translated himself into Mordovian, he was published again, and so he lived.

Writers also made scripts from books. The average scenario cost 5 thousand rubles. - this is the price of the Zhiguli, a prestigious car at that time. They also wrote plays based on their own works.
The leader here was Vladimir Voinovich, who in the 70s created the dumbest stories about real Soviet foremen at the construction sites of socialism and successfully processed them into plays.
- While the performances were going on, - the writer recalled, - my fees grew in arithmetic progression. One month - 600 rubles, another - 800, the third - a thousand. When the monthly fee reached 1,200 rubles, the accountant, writing out a money order for me, became nervous and shouted to her employees: “Look at the living millionaire!”
That is, a very mediocre writer Voinovich, churning out dreary plays about working everyday life, received a monthly salary only on theatrical performances. ordinary person. Being a writer in the USSR was prestigious, and just very good.

JK Rowling outdone

The USSR collapsed. Other times have come. 99 percent of writers fell into poverty. But one percent began to receive even larger fees. Of course, they are incomparable with the fees of writers in the West, where the incomes of the top equate to the fees of pop stars and show business. For example, JK Rowling's income has exceeded $1 billion. Of course, this is mainly money for the film adaptation of her Harry Potter, but millions of copies of the saga bring her considerable income. In total, about 500 million copies were published. wizard books. But she is not among the leaders of the modern Western rating. Forbes magazine has published the earnings of the most successful writers over the past year.
1. James Patterson - $ 84 million The author of numerous thrillers and detective stories is best known for his series of books about the American psychologist Alex Cross.
2. Daniela Steele - $35 million. The total circulation of her women's novels exceeds 800 million copies. Thanks to this, Steele took the eighth place in the list of the best-selling authors of all time.
3 Stephen King - $28 million creative life managed to work in many genres, including mysticism, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, drama.
4. Janet Ivanovich - $22 million
5. Stephanie Meyer - $21 million American housewife and mother of three children wrote a series of vampire novels - "Twilight".
6. Rick Riordan - $ 21 million Author of mystical detective stories about a private investigator and professor of English medieval literature Treze Navarre.
7. Dean Koontz - $19 million Teacher in English from Pennsylvania is considered one of the masters of action-packed thrillers and horror films.
8. John Grisham - $18 million Master of "legal" dramas and thrillers, many of which have been filmed.
9. Jeff Kinney - $17 million Online game developer and cartoonist made famous writing with the children's series Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
10. Nicholas Sparks – $16 million

Most of these citizens, with the exception of King, Steele, Grisham and a little Meyer, are unknown to our people. But what about domestic writers?
Finding information is extremely difficult. And verifying its authenticity is even more difficult. Because the circulation of books in one case is artificially lowered so as not to pay taxes, and in others they are inflated to the skies in order to emphasize the significance and popularity of the author.
On average, an author receives 10 to 15 percent of the publisher's selling price from books sold. This is the so-called royalty. By the way, the selling price of the publishing house is on average less than 100 rubles. for the book. The rest is cheating distributors and shops. Plus a fixed amount for the transfer of rights.
Having published two books in the “fat” years of the Russian economy, in 2007 and 2008, I received 150 thousand rubles for the first one, and 300 thousand rubles for the second one. Plus 300 thousand - for the third, which the publisher never released. This is a lot, because I am not Daria Dontsova. I did not receive royalties, and it is almost impossible to check how many books were published and how many were sold. This is the biggest secret of any publishing house. (By the way, the volume of the Russian book market now ranges from $2.5 to 3.5 billion annually. This is a fantastic amount, comparable to the proceeds from the arms trade.) Alas, now the royalties that I was paid no longer exist.
All this, of course, does not apply to our conditional "stars of the pen." According to rumors, Daria Dontsova earns about $150,000 a month from books. I think Viktor Pelevin, Boris Akunin get the same amount and Dmitry Bykov a little less. This amount includes fees for new books, reprints, royalties, film adaptations, performances.
At the peak of Boris Akunin's popularity, in 2005, Forbes magazine published data on his income: from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005, he earned a little over $ 2 million.
In short, if you rise to the top, you can live. Another thing is that, unlike the pre-revolutionary sales leaders, modern writers occupy an honorary writer's place not entirely deserved. But that's a completely different story.

The author of the Harry Potter series of novels, who, thanks to her writing talent, has turned from a modest former secretary on welfare, into a multimillionaire. On the occasion of Rowling's birthday, ELLE remembered the richest writers in the world.

Elizabeth Badinter. $1.1 billion

PHOTO REX

Surprisingly, the richest writer in the world is not JK ​​Rowling, but Elizabeth Badinter, whose name, frankly, is unknown to the mass public. Badinter, who turns 70 in March, holds the title of France's most influential intellectual. She is a historian, philosopher, writer, public figure, thinker and so on and so forth; one of the icons of modern feminism. The nuance is that Badinter’s fortune of 750 million euros ($1.1 billion) is unlikely to be fully earned by herself: she comes from a wealthy family (her father is the largest publisher in France), her husband, Robert Badinter, is a former Minister of Justice. The status of a billionaire does not prevent (or, conversely, allows) Elizabeth Badinter to teach philosophy at the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris.

Joanne Rowling. $1 billion

True - if we proceed from the fact that she earned her money only in literature - the leader of the list of the richest writers. Rowling's resume, if it made sense to compile one, would be full of various records: the best-selling writer in the world (400 million copies), the author of the most popular book series in history (Potterian); after all, No. 1 in the top influential women in Britain. And all these titles are absolutely deserved. Having finished the story of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling did not rest on her laurels, but pleasantly surprised her by giving out a strong prose text “Vacancy”, sustained in the best traditions of national literature. And then she decided to try herself in the detective genre, publishing the novel "The Call of the Cuckoo" under a pseudonym. Careful conspiracy (the manuscript was sent to the publisher without explanation and indication of the true authorship) quickly fell under the onslaught of local reporters, who found out who composed The Call. Rowling was very angry at first, but then she seemed to cool down. And the novel, after revealing the secret, took off in a few hours from some almost hundredth sales positions to the expected first place.

Danielle Steel. $610 million

A writer of the world of the rich and famous, Steele, who grew up in a diplomatic family, built her own life as if she were collecting plots for novels. Five marriages (including husbands - a banker, a drug addict, a writer), family tragedies (one of the sons committed suicide after learning that his father was actually his stepfather) - all this one way or another went to work. After releasing her first book in 1973, Steele gained momentum gradually and, surprisingly, has written more in the last ten years than at the beginning of her career. The writer is traditionally scolded by critics, but this is hardly embarrassing for both herself and the legion of readers (for whom Steele created the personal fragrance "Daniel").

Bill Watterson. $450 million

Like Elizabeth Badinter, he made this list with certain reservations. Watterson is the author of the famous children's comic about Calvin and Hobbs. Another thing is that he is not just an artist, but also a writer of plots and replicas, so you can still call him a writer. The story of the boy Calvin and his plush toy named Hobbs was conceived and produced by Watterson for ten years, from 1985 to 1995. Then the author fearlessly decided that he had nothing more to say, and instead of another story, he sent a notice to his editors about the closure of the project. Since then, Bill Watterson has nothing to do with comics. However, the cash flow does not stop: reissues, sale of rights, and so on.

Sydney Sheldon. $400 million

The son of immigrants from Odessa, Sheldon made his debut in literature late - after fifty. The experience gained by that time as a TV screenwriter helped in his writing career: Sheldon's novels are distinguished by a famously twisted plot and the ability to press the right emotional buttons. Corrosive and hard-working, he spent a lot of time and effort on working out the details (that's why he wrote "only" 20 novels in 35 years) and did not shy away from being led by the public - and in the most literal sense. If readers expressed dissatisfaction with the death of a character, in the film adaptation of the book, Sheldon left the hero alive.

Stephen King. $400 million

A great writer, an American national treasure, King tirelessly explores the genres, styles, attitudes and myths of literature. For forty years of work, he changed names, masks, composed pure horror, journalism, great novels, invented comics, told the secrets of craftsmanship in a fascinating way, and so on and so forth.

In recent years, it seemed that King took up "full-fledged" prose, but in 2013 he released the thriller "Land of Joy" and a sequel to the classic "The Shining" - the novel "Doctor Sleep". You read these books - and the feeling that the eighties are in the yard is the golden time of his work. In short, the writer is now (pah-pah) in great shape.

James Patterson. $310 million

Tom Clancy. $300 million

Ronald Reagan's favorite writer, Cold War singer and ardent anti-Soviet writer, Tom Clancy, who died last October, was best known for his Jack Ryan novels. "Technological thriller" - such a definition was given by critics to Clancy's writings, overloaded beyond measure detailed descriptions all kinds of technology and spy gadgets. However, this is a matter of taste. The writer successfully realized his passion for technology and action in a side business - production. computer games, which brought him no less, and perhaps more money than books.

In essence, a graphomaniac fascinated by conspiracy theories: he gives out wishful thinking, composes unimaginable hypotheses - and all this, frankly, is not a very good style. On the other hand, who said that passion is bad, especially when there is a stable demand for secrets in the world. As for the style, it seems that in the original Brown is read much more decently than in the Russian translation. In theory, the authorities of European capitals should pray to Dan Brown: The Da Vinci Code significantly increased the already considerable flow of tourists to Paris, and the recent Inferno will undoubtedly have a beneficial effect on the treasury of Florence.