London (PTI): Harry Potter creator JK Rowling earned more than 3 million pounds a week last year, making her the world's highest paid author.

Her income was more than the combined annual earnings of the nine other best-selling writers on a list compiled by Forbes magazine.

Rowling who was an impoverished single mother living on benefits when she wrote the first of her seven books, netted about 170 million pounds last year, bringing her fortune to more than 560 million pounds.

Harry Potter has sold more than 375 million copies and been adapted for major films.

The writer had just divorced her Portuguese husband and was living in a mouse-infested flat in Edinburgh when she started work on her first book, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone.

Since then each new book of wizardry has created a frenzy with children and adults queueing up overnight to buy the book world over.

Rowling, a friend of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, donated one million pounds to the Labour Party recently.