Good point. A rough estimate would be she gets 10% of each of the 600,000,000 $15 Harry Potter books that have been sold worldwide. That comes out to $900,000,000.
A lot of that value came from the many workers involved in the publishing, marketing, translating, printing, shipping, etc. of the books. Did she get the surplus value of their labour? Does intellectual property count as means of production? How is that different from Youtubers and Twitch streamers benefitting from the labour put into their respective platforms?
If intellectual property is valid in at least some sense and she deserves monetary compensation for the sale of Italian translations, why does that not transfer to the licensing for movies and theme parks?
Btw I'm neither defending Rowling nor am I being antagonistic / trying to pull a gotcha or anything. I just think it's interesting.
But why does that line of reasoning not apply to rich YouTubers and Twitch streamers?
If influencers stopped working, their revenue would go down drastically, which can't be said of Rowling. So in a sense they have to work for a living, but they're also so rich that they could stop working if they wanted to. It just seems like they're similar situations.
If you can call an athlete or a movie star labour aristocrats, it seems like that label would also apply to successful authors and influencers. They're all propped up by the industries built around them.