People often wonder how people who are very successful got to be where they are. Did they know the right people? Did they work harder than anyone else? Did they just get lucky? While all of these have a factor in how successful people all, they don’t apply to everyone. The one thing that everyone who has achieved a great degree of success shares is persistence. People tend to only look at where a person currently is, and not the journey that led them there. The road to success is never a straight line to the top, and the people who are at the top realize that. J.K Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter series, and one of the wealthiest women in the world. This didn’t happen without overcoming some hardships though. Even as a child, she knew that she wanted to be an author, writing her first book at the age of six. She began writing Harry Potter in 1991, at the age of 25. While she was writing the book, J.K had to rely on state benefits, jobless and a single mother. She looked at herself as a failure. She stated that she had received “loads of rejections” from various book publishers that she sent her manuscript to. …show more content…
Three days after the book was published in the UK, Scholastic books offered $100,000 for the rights to publish the book in America, an unheard of amount for a children’s book at the time. Since then, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has sold over 120 million copies, and the whole series has sold over 210 million copies. The books have spawned 9 movies to date, generating over $8.5 billion dollars in box office revenue. J.K Rowling went from a broke and nearly homeless writer to a billionaire in a matter of a few years. She believed in her writing, and didn’t quit. She may have gotten discouraged, but she didn’t let that stop her from achieving her