Here’s the incredible rags-to-riches story of one of the most influential people, and world’s first Billionaire writer; J.K. Rowling, who turned rejection into an unprecedented success!

The Success story of J.K. Rowling itself isn’t less than any fairytale. But behind this enormous success, she went through a lot of pain and misery. Creating her book series wasn’t as easy as scribbling down notes on a few dinner napkins. It wasn’t a one, two, or even three-step process. It would take years of perseverance to become the success she is today.

“By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.” – J.K. Rowling
Those are the words of J.K. Rowling – an author whose book series has been translated into 73 languages, sold more than 450 million copies, and accrued over $20 billion through movie adaptations and sponsorships. So why does she admit to being such a failure?

It was the delayed train journey from Manchester to London, where the characters Harry Potter, Ronald Billius Weasley and Hermoine Jean Granger began to grow up in the mind of Joanne Rowling. For every passenger, it was a simple journey but for her, it was something else. She saw a vision of a young boy, of which she was unaware that the whole world would soon fall in love.

She continued to imagine the world of witches and wizards of Hogwarts, Azkaban where the full cast of characters started to take shape. And at that time, she had no idea that these characters would make up a magical story and she would publish “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone “, the very first novel of the “Harry Potter” series.

In this way, the journey of the world’s beloved series of “ Harry Potter ” started. She considered herself as “the biggest failure [she] knew” before beginning her first novel. She linked each of the bad incidents that happened in her Novel. Let us have a look, how this all started.
 

The story of the novel was gradually developing when she was living with her mother in Manchester, but destiny had something else for her.

At the age of 25 in 1991, she lost her mother. The death shattered her completely. This happened six months after when she began writing “Harry Potter,” and Rowling lamented that her mother never knew that she was writing it, which is why, Harry Potter, had to suffer the death of his parents because in real life she too had suffered the demise of her mother.

After the death of her mother, Rowling moved to Portugal for a change and taught English as a foreign language. In 1992, she married a Portugal TV Journalist Jorge Arantes. She became pregnant, gave birth to her daughter, Jessica.

But the marriage didn’t last long, and only after 13 months Rowling divorced him and moved to Edinburgh, with her daughter and the first three chapters of “Harry Potter.”

By the end of 1993, the situation became more miserable for her. She was a single parent of a newborn baby living in a cramped apartment, penniless and she had no permanent work. She had no job, no finished product, and two mouths to feed. She had hit rock bottom, experiencing depression and Rowling admitted she had considered suicide.

But she didn’t give up on her dreams. Her depression helped her to invent the evil characters of the series like dementors, which were dark creatures who feed upon happiness. These were introduced in her third novel, Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban.

Rowling absolutely loved writing; so she spent much of her time writing in cafes after her daughter had slept. For the sake of survival, she rented her apartment and was forced to live on state benefits. She used the money to look after the needs of her daughter but was often left feeling ashamed, distressful, with no idea where her life was going. But the tough situations didn’t break her, Rowling spent most of her time writing while sitting in her local cafe, keeping her faith in herself and in the boy who lived, “Harry Potter.”

She became so obsessed with her book that she not only portrayed the main characters by herself but she wrote down the name, house, and magical powers of every single student of Hogwarts. By this time, all the failures, setbacks she faced, had made her stronger. And after the sheer patience and hard work of 5 years, she finished her first book and the first edition of Harry Potter was complete.

It was the year 1995 when the struggle of getting it published began. She rewrote the first chapter of her book fifteen times! Rowling knew that getting it published was never going to be easy. She received replies from the publishers such as, “It is too difficult for children, “It's too long”, and “Children would not be interested in it.” In total, her manuscript was rejected by 12 publishing companies. Her mailbox filled up with rejection letters, but she didn’t let it stop her.

“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.”- J.K. Rowling

Finally, the publishing house in London, Bloomsbury gave her the green light. She added “K” to her pen name and for just $4000, Bloomsbury brought the rights of Harry Potter from J. K. Rowling. Her book hit the shelves and was an instant hit. The book won the British Book Award for Children’s Book of the year.

Eventually, In 1998, a US publishing company, Scholastic Inc. brought its rights for $105,000 and this was the time when the whole world was about to hear the magical story of Harry Potter.

By the time the whole world fell in love with Harry Potter, her third and fourth edition had broken all the records. Her series of seven books sold more than 450 million copies, which transformed her life completely. Later on, Warner Bros. Entertainment purchased the film rights to the first two novels for $1.5 million. In 2011, Forbes estimated her total worth about $1 billion and that made her the wealthiest author in the world.

Rowling had a long journey to success. The sudden death of her mother, her failed marriage, being an unemployed single mother- all the things going against her, but she didn’t give up on her dream. She continued to write. It took five years to finish her first book, facing multiple rejections from publishing companies, but at last, she made it! She could have taken the job of an English teacher, but Rowling pursued her long term passion for becoming a writer. And eventually, following her passion made her the wealthiest writer in the world. It is a perfect example of how important it is to carry through because every random idea may prepare a runaway success.

If you have a dream or a passion and you keep getting rejected or running into the failure, don’t let that stop you. If you’re going through a tough time in your life, just keep on working on it and don’t give up. Success won’t come overnight. All the dreams and desires of yours can’t be accomplished overnight. It requires prolonged patience and persistence to achieve our ambitions in life. If you do, you’ll never know what could have been. Who knows, you might end up breaking records!

Do what you really like. Don’t give up easily on your dreams. It’s not going to be easy and there will be times when the life (situations) will test you, try to break you. But like this inspiring success story of J. K. Rowling, you just have to keep moving forward and eventually, everything will come into place.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.”- J.K. Rowling