How rich is Stephen King?

Stephen King made headlines in spring 2015 for allegedly leaving his native Maine for Florida, where residents don’t have to pay income tax. At least that’s what Governor Paul LePage said. But King vehemently denied this accusation, which was in no way true. While it’s true that Stephen King and his wife own a vacation home in Florida, their primary residence is still in Maine, so the Kings pay their income taxes there as well. With an estimated  fortune of 368 million euros  , it is of course not surprising that envious people keep appearing who spread precisely such untruths about one of the richest bestselling authors of all time.

During his career to date, more than 350 million copies of Stephen King’s books have been sold worldwide. In addition, King has already won over 50 awards for his diverse literary works, some of which have even been filmed. In Germany, for example, Stephen King was honored with the German Fantasy Prize. Incidentally, the American ranks third in the list of the 50 richest authors worldwide. Only Candy Spelling and JK Rowling , the Harry Potter author who is now worth a billion US dollars, have earned more with their books than Stephen King.

Many ups and downs lead Stephen King to an incredible fortune

Although Stephen King should now at least know no more financial worries, his life was not without its downs either. When Stephen King was only two years old, his father abandoned his family. His mother barely managed to keep herself and her children afloat with odd jobs. In addition, as a child, little Stephen had to cope with the death of a friend who was very close to him, who was killed by a train. The current best-selling author brought with him an enthusiasm for horror and fantasy stories early on and studied English at the University of Maine from 1966 to 1970. The American also met his wife there. Their marriage, which produced three children, some of whom have taken up writing themselves, has lasted since 1971. Tabitha King is also an author.

After graduating, Stephen King first worked as an English teacher, although his income was not enough for his family. King did not give up writing, however, and continued to refine his ideas in his admittedly rather limited free time. His wife Tabitha eventually found one of his manuscripts and convinced her husband that he should definitely finish it. King also did this and was already able to celebrate commercial success with his first work “Carrie”, which was sold under the “Doubleday” label. All of a sudden, Stephen King was 400,000 US dollars richer, which was quite a proud sum for the teacher, who had been rather poor up to that point.