The latest list of Top 25 highest paid authors was released recently and shows that the highest author is Zheng Yuanjie. This author writes mostly children's fairy tales!

Zheng Yuanjie reportedly earned 20million! Wow!

There are a lot of complaints about the methodology used to get the income, such as "it ignores eveything but royalties earned from highly popular books" so if you want to nitpick here is how the list was drawn up.

Anyhow, I am just glad that people and their kids appreciate reading as proven by the demand for stories.

Zheng Yuanjie started his own children's magazine in 1984, named "King of Fairy Tales". Back then, he was the only writer at the magazine. The magazine has been continually publishing stories, reaching 1 million copies circulation during its heyday.

As I looked around about this guy, it turns out he is also admirable as a parent. I have always admired homeschooling parents, and it turns out he home schooled his son as well. He even wrote his son's own textbook, focusing on history, philosophy, law, finance, among other subjects,
all of which he considers "essential" knowledge. He believed "College education tends to make simple things complicated and hard to understand. What we should do is to teach our children the most essential and simple principles of life and ways to handle problems." I am in awe.

This highly successful author's favorite book is.. guess? the Modern Chinese Dictionary. Yes, he makes spelling mistakes too. His tip for parents: "Parents shouldn't blame their child for misspelling or something. Mistakes like that won't stop them becoming good writers in the future." Wisely said.


Article source about Zheng Yuanjie

Labels: Chinese Celebrities