Books and Authors - Current Affairs for August, 2017

Harry Potter creator JK Rowling has been named the world's most highly-paid author with earnings of £72.2m ($95m) this year.

The Edinburgh-based writer beat Dan Brown, Stephen King and John Grisham to top Forbes' list of the 10 highest earners in the global industry for the first time in almost 10 years.

Fans recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of her first book.

She has written a further six Harry Potter titles.

Her books have been turned into eight blockbuster feature films, and last year she made her screenwriting debut with a prequel movie, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.

The mother-of-three, 52, first began writing about the wizarding world while struggling to make ends meet living as a single mother on benefits in Edinburgh.

The books' popularity soon made her a multi-millionaire and she has since released several other novels, founded children's charity Lumos.

She has amassed more than 11 million Twitter followers keen to keep track of her regularly-shared thoughts on political and social issues.

Aside from Rowling, the US business magazine's list also includes British authors Paula Hawkins and EL James–whose respective novels The Girl On The Train and 50 Shades Of Grey have both been turned into major movies in recent years - while the others are all American.

List organisers added that Game Of Thrones creator George RR Martin, The Fault In Our Stars writer John Green and Divergent trilogy author Veronica Roth, just failed to make the top 10.

A two-day national seminar was organized by the National body for book promotion and publication, National Book Trust, under Human Resource Development Ministry to coincide with the 60 Years programme of the Trust.

Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of State of Human Resource Development indicated that the Government of India is working on finalizing a National Book Promotion Policy, which will take care of providing a policy direction to the whole spectrum of book publication, writing and distribution in order to promote a culture of reading in the society.

The significant role is played by National Book Trust, India in creating a culture of reading and re-affirmed the commitment of the Government of India to support its endeavours to meet its avowed objectives.

Geographically India is surrounded by sea from three sides and its boundaries are open. We have been attacked several times by foreign invaders since ancient times and for about 200 years we were ruled by the British, even then we were able to preserve our culture and literature.

Moving ahead in empowering India because of wisdom provided by our ancient texts and sense of nationalism in our literature, the importance of printed books will not diminish.

On this occasion NBT books in Hindi tiled Aapki Sehat, authored by Dr Vijay Mittal and Dr Shyama Prasad: Ek Shikshak, authored by Ms Namrata Sharma were also released.

The speakers on the occasion included well-known writers - Dr Neerja Madhav, Dr Reeta Shukl, Dr Advaita Kala and Ms Malti Joshi.

They said that women writers like Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, Mahadevi Verma through their writings on nationalism tried to awaken the people of India.