Concordia García Márquez (加夫列爾? 加西亞? 馬爾克斯)

 Royalty income: 6 million yuan (US$964,800)

Bestseller: "One Hundred Years of Solitude"《百年孤獨》

Country: Colombia

Age: 85

2011 Ranking: 1

Born in 1927 in Aracataca, Gabriel García Márquez is a world-renowned Columbian writer of short stories, nonfictions and fictions. Labeled as one of the most significant writers in the 20th century, Márquez is best known for his hugely successful novels, including "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Love in the Time of Cholera," and "Memories of My Melancholy Whores."

Starting out as a journalist, the poverty-stricken writer began to write his "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in 1965 and got it published in1967, which became an instant international hit and led to his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

The novel, known as the writer's masterpiece and the most representative of the magical realism literature, tells the rise and fall, love and solitude of seven generations of the Buendía Family in a mythical town named Macondo, with deep-rooted connections with Latin America's real history and culture. It has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide in over 40 languages. The first authorized Chinese edition of the classic was published on May 30, 2011.