April saw Rowling publish a slightly different type of book. Her 2008 commencement speech at Harvard University (which you can watch below) was printed in an illustrated book called Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and The Importance of Imagination. In her speech, Rowling drew on her own experiences (including going from a single mother struggling for money to a billionaire author) to offer advice to anyone at a turning point in their lives – something she is certainly qualified to do after turning Harry Potter into a multi-million pound empire, in spite of her original manuscript being rejected by 12 different publishers before it was bought by Bloomsbury for just £1,500.