Stephen King Total Net Worth: How Much Does He Earn?

You might have known Stephen King from the movies you have watched or the books you have read. The books he had written were sold worldwide in over 350 million copies.

Stephen King is famous for his uniqueness and creativity in making horror, supernatural, suspense, fiction, and even fantasy movies. He had published 61 novels and six non-fiction books.

Most of them were actually made into movies such as “It”, “Carrie”, “The Stand”, “Stand by Me”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, “Misery”, and “The Shining”.

His current net worth is at $500 million as of to this date. Let’s go and check on where Stephen King started and how he reached where he is right now.

Table of Contents

Personal Details

Stage Name: Stephen King

Real Name: Stephen King

Occupation: Author

Gender: Male

Birthday: September 21, 1947

Place of Origin: Portland, Maine

Age: 73

Height: 6’3

Nationality: American

Total Net Worth: $500 million

Early Life

Stephen King was the son of Donald Edwin King and Nellie Ruth. He was born in Portland, Maine on September 21, 1947. Donald, the father of Stephen left their family when Stephen was still young. His mother, Nellie, raised both Stephen and his adopted brother, David, alone. They moved to Wisconsin, Indiana and Connecticut before finally deciding to settle at Durham, Maine. Her mother worked as a caregiver in a facility that handles mentally illed people when Stephen King was still eleven years old.

Even at a young age, Stephen King was already fascinated in horror movies and astonished by them. He grew up to love EC horror comics which was the one who published “Tales from the Crypt”. He started writing even when he was still a kid. This has become his leisure time hobby. He even sold some stories to his friends which he had written based on a movie he had seen. The first ever story he had written was titled “I was a teenage Grave Robber”.

He attended his younger years at Durham Elementary and Lisbon Falls High located in Maine. Stephen King at college attended the University of Maine where he had earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree major in English. He brought his hobby in writing in college and was assigned to write the school newspaper.

Career

Even after graduating, Stephen King loved to write so much that he started to sell short stories in men’s magazines. He also started teaching high school. Year 1971 when he was hired to be a teacher at Hampden Academy located in Maine.

It was in 1973 when the story written by Stephen King, titled, “Carrie” was bought by Doubleday. “Carrie” was the fourth story that Stephen had written but it was the first one to be published. Because of the story “Carrie”, this has laid the grounds for Stephen to become a significant novel writer with a horror genre. “Carrie” became so hit that it was turned into a movie in 1976 starring Sissy Spacek.

It was the year 1970’s when Stephen King wrote “Salem’s Lot”, “The Shining”, and “The Stand”. Fall of 1977 when Stephen King took the position of teaching creative writing in a university in Maine.

In 1982, he wrote “Different Seasons”, which is a collection of a dramatic novellas with four stories. The book became significant because of the 3 stories in it that were made into movies. They were “Stand By Me”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, “Apt Pupil”.

Stephen King published “It” in 1986. It is a story about 7 youngsters in Dairy, Maine, who are about to face their worst nightmare. The antagonist of the story is a clown, named Pennywise, who can take up the shape of your worst nightmare. The book became the best-selling hardcover novel in the United States that year. Stephen also had written “Cujo”, “Pet Cemetary”, “The Green Mile”, and many more.

Other than writing, Stephen King also owned a radio station named, Zone Radio Corp., which is a radio station group consisting of WZON/620 AM, WKIT-FM/100.3 & WZLO/103.1.

Personal Life

Stephen King married her wife Tabitha Spruce on the year 1971 of the 2nd of January. They were blessed with three lovely Children. A daughter and two sons. Stephen King’s daughter Naomi and her wife Rev. Dr. Thandeka are both Unitarian Universalist Church ministers that are now living in Plantation, Florida, while both of his sons are authors and writers. Owen, son of Stephen, published “We’re All in This Together:

A Novella and Stories” in the year 2005. Joseph, also Stephen’s son, writes under the name Joe Holl, and published a collection of short stories such as “20th Century Ghosts”, and a novel “Heart-Shaped Box”, in 2005 and 2007 respectively.

Stephen and Tabitha are both major philanthropists. Stephen donated as much as $4 million each year to certain libraries, schools, and organizations that were funding arts, and also local fire departments that are in need of equipment that are new, such as Jaws of Life.

Stephen and his wife created a foundation namely “The Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation”, which ranked sixth among other charities located in Maine with an annual giving in the amount of $2.8 million or more.

November 2011 when King’s foundation donated an amount of $70,000 in matched funding to help the families that are in need in Bangor, Maine for their heating bills.

Salary Highlights

Did you know that when the book “Carrie” was published, Stephen King received a $2,500 salary advance just for the book? That is equal to $14, 525 today. The paperback rights to the book had also received an amount of $400,000, in which, if you try to calculate that amount for today would be $2.3 million.

Real Estate

King and his wife, Tabitha had split up their time between three different homes. In Bangor, Maine, they have a Victorian home that was built in 1870, which became their main residence for years but is now looked upon to become a museum and a writer’s retreat.

They also own a summer home located in the lake region of Lowell, Maine which is located near the border of New Hampshire. And lastly, in Sarasota, Florida, they own a waterfront mansion on the Gulf of Mexico.