Potter’s Progeny - Or, how J.K. Rowling’s young hero transformed a sleepy kid-lit market into a big bucks genre.
Imagine Harry Potter hovering on his broomstick high above a vast field.
He's not scanning the horizon for a whizzing Snitch. He's not even playing Quidditch, the sport at which he excels.
No, young Harry is waving and nodding to a cheering throng: characters from other children's books who owe at least a bit of their popularity to the boy wizard.
Over here is Artemis Fowl, boy genius, millionaire, criminal mastermind and battler of dangerous fairies, accompanied by his bodyguard, Butler. Nearby, under a black cloud, are the Baudelaire orphans, sufferers of as many unfortunate events as their chronicler, Lemony Snicket, can report. Not far away, and not much luckier, is Eddie Dickens, a Victorian-era youth who lives with Mad Uncle Jack, Mad Aunt Maud and his parents, who have remained at their home, Awful End.
Cowering in a corner is a red-haired kid named Wiglaf, an easily scared student at the Dragon Slayers' Academy, who has been described as "a young hero who could well be Harry Potter's little brother." He's eyeing an army of sword-wielding mice, led by the courageous Martin the Warrior, that have traveled from Redwall Abbey for this get-together. Hovering on the edges are Charlie, a rambunctious boy who talks to lions, and Eragon, a teenager whose special pal is a dragon.
They, and a host of others, look up at Harry Potter, who is scheduled to magically appear in bookstores this Saturday - as early as Friday at midnight in some cases - with his fifth adventure, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," written by J.K. Rowling.
Harry, as most people know, is the undisputed prince of children's literature. More than 190 million of the four previous tomes detailing his exploits have sold worldwide, 80 million of those in the United States. And U.S. publisher Scholastic is printing an unprecedented initial 8.5 million of the 896-page new installment ($29.99).
While even the highest-selling of Harry's bookshelf-pals haven't done as well - the Artemis Fowl trio has more than 3 million copies in print; the Redwall series (16 so far) has 10 million worldwide; and Lemony Snicket's first nine books, plus an autobiography, have sold more than 13 million copies - they're still winners by any publishing standard.
They've all been helped, say publishers, editors, booksellers and authors, by the masses of children and adults drawn into stores by Harry. He has created a hunger for reading, directed new attention to fantasy and to young people's literature in general.
"The success of Harry Potter changed the children's publishing industry," says Susan Rich, an executive editor at HarperCollins Children's Books and editor of the series by Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler).
"One effect it had was to create the possibility of a phenomenon. So when Lemony Snicket started to catch on, one of the hooks Harry Potter gave us was, 'Here's the next Harry Potter.'" That extra attention boosted sales, she says. The other boost was the creation of a separate children's bestseller list by the New York Times, in reaction to too-much- Harry on the adult list, she says. "Now there is a space to showcase bestselling children's books," she says.
When Rich asked Handler (now finishing number 10) to come up with an idea for a middle-grade series in the summer of 1998, she adds, "Harry Potter was not on my radar." Now, of course, he's everywhere. "Harry Potter changed the landscape of the industry. ... He broke a wall between what kids were reading and what adults were reading. Suddenly, adults were embracing Harry Potter and creating an awareness that kids' books are not just for kids." Even such very different books as "The Princess Diaries" series have benefited, Rich adds, as have such predecessors in fantasy as C.S. Lewis' classic Narnia books.
"Sales of children's fiction have picked up enormously in the last five years," since Harry Potter's U.S. debut in late 1998, says Diane Roback, children's book editor of Publishers Weekly, which in 1999 noted the series' "halo effect" on other children's books. "The really exciting part of that equation is that it got boys to read." In general, she says, boys ages 9 to 12 "don't read for pleasure."
Publishers with older fantasy series now often repackage them to take advantage of the Harry Potter audience.
Tor, a giant science-fiction publisher, formed a whole new imprint for young people in January 2002 called Starscape, says Kathleen Doherty, publisher of the division, which already has 28 books. Starscape's best-seller, at 150,000 copies, is Orson Scott Card's 1985 "Ender's Game," about a child military genius. "Harry Potter has been wonderful," Doherty says. "It's brought in readers who thought they didn't like fantasy."
Publishers "wisely" aren't trying to copy Harry Potter but are "just bringing to the forefront those books that have fantasy and magic in them," says Brenda Bowen, executive vice president and publisher for hardcover books at Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. Simon & Schuster has repackaged a couple of older series and is currently pushing the fast-selling "Spiderwick Chronicles" series, rich with "faeries" and goblins, in a compact, low-cost ($9.95 each) format that has become popular for many children's books. It also has just brought a new installment in the paperback Pendragon series (featuring a 14-year-old adventurer) and the hardcover "Hatching Magic."
"There's only one Harry Potter, and we should all be rejoicing," says Bowen. "I don't think many people have tried to rip him off, but many have tried to ride on his coattail or on his broomstick."
Trying to copy probably wouldn't work anyway, says Kate McMullan, author of the Dragon Slayers' Academy series.
"By the time you jump on the wave, it's over," says McMullan, of Manhattan and Sag Harbor. Her first book was published in 1997, a year before Harry Potter's U.S. debut in late '98, with publisher Grosset & Dunlap making her use K.H. McMullan to disguise her gender.
Now, the original eight books featuring the carrot-topped, joke-loving Wiglaf are about to be reissued with brighter covers and a bonus "Yearbook" at the end. She was asked to write new installments (No. 9, "97 Ways to Train a Dragon," is finished and three more are planned) - and she has her first name back. The series, intended for grades two to four, has benefited from a "kind of prequel effect," says McMullan, a former teacher. Her books, she says, are being handed to kids too young for Harry by booksellers and librarians.
Other authors, too, acknowledge Harry's helping hand.
"Artemis Fowl" author Eoin Colfer, speaking by phone from his home in Ireland, says he read the first Harry Potter book only "after a newspaper article said 'Artemis Fowl is the next Harry Potter.'" He found it "wonderful," he adds, though it didn't influence his writing.
"If I was inspired by anybody, it's more likely to be Tolkien," he says. When it comes to his readers, though, he admits, "Most who read them would have read Harry Potter also." His crafty, but ultimately decent, hero is 13 in the latest book, "The Eternity Code," third in a series of a length Colfer won't specify. In this one, Artemis steals fairy technology to build a supercomputer - something Harry, who uses a quill, is unlikely to do.
"It's only natural to be slightly envious" of Rowling's success, Colfer says, but adds he's glad not to have "the endless publicity. I'm happy where I am. She [Rowling] handles it very gracefully. I admire her for that." A Miramax movie (his books are published by Miramax and Hyperion, both Disney subsidiaries) is in the offing, too, helping to make him "very comfortable" financially.
"Of course, we'd all like several yachts and several houses in the Hamptons," says Philip Ardagh, author of the whimsical Eddie Dickens Trilogy, published in the United States by Henry Holt. "If you get a group of authors together, there's always grumbling. ... There are a lot of grumpy horses out there." But he's getting six-figure advances, says Ardagh, speaking by phone from England, and "smiling all the way to my desk."
Even better, he says, he's getting more respect at parties, now that Rowling has boosted the reputations of children's book authors. People ask, "Ooh, how much money do you make?" he says, while others unaccountably ask, "You're not J.K. Rowling, are you?"
An upcoming book that's really getting the next-Harry treatment is "Lionboy," first of a projected trilogy, written by a British single mother (like Rowling) named Louisa Young and her 10-year-old daughter, Isabel Adomakoh Young, who use the pseudonym Zizou Corder.
Their book grew out of bedtime stories they created together, says Louisa Young via e-mail. But nearly every British newspaper feature about them made prominent comparisons to Rowling, even though the journalists hadn't even read "Lionboy." She is asked: Is that annoying?
"More annoying for J.K. Rowling, probably, to have every Tom, Dick and Harry served up as the New Her," Young writes. "If people are writing about success and publishing phenomena, it'll do no harm to have a little stardust brush off; and if they're writing about merit, well at least they'll have had a chance to read the book before spouting forth."
Her U.S. publisher, Dial Books, is already pushing the book, due in January. The Youngs were flown to New York from London recently to meet booksellers and librarians, says Nancy Paulsen, publisher of G.P. Putnam's and Dial Books for Young Readers, "to get the buzz going." Fantasy series, in some cases, are now getting advances of more than a million dollars, she says, "more comparable to adult books, though still a bit under." And they're getting published in hardcover, which is more profitable for publishers and bookstores.
The hardcover market is, in fact, one of the "great gifts" Harry Potter has given the book industry, says Lisa Holton, senior vice president for global books for Disney Publishing Worldwide. "It showed the industry, and our publishing parents, that hardcover fiction was viable. Before, people thought they couldn't be sold in large quantities."
Despite the economy, children's books have been selling well. This trend has allowed Hyperion Books for Children, under her bailiwick, and Miramax Books to publish the "Artemis Fowl" books in hardcover (with paperbacks coming later) and to acquire a forthcoming series, the Bartimaeus Trilogy, by British writer Jonathan Stroud ($17.95 for 464-page Book One). Both series are set to be Miramax movies, she adds, another bit of stardust that Harry Potter, with his successful films, may have helped sprinkle on others.
Broadening the audience is probably what Harry Potter has done for fantasy books that already had their own strong fan base. Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, the first of which was published in the United States by Knopf in 1996, sold well before Harry Potter (and recently outsold Potter in England, according to The Guardian), so "it's hard to tell if Harry Potter made a difference," says Judith Haut, spokeswoman for Random House Children's Books. (Knopf is part of Random House.) But, Haut says, "Harry Potter probably opened a lot of adults' eyes to these books."
On the other hand, Knopf is hoping for a Harry spin with its upcoming "Eragon," written by 19-year-old Christopher Paolini (who self-published the book in Montana before it was brought to Knopf by best-selling author Carl Hiaasen). The 512-page book about a teen, an ancient sword and a fledgling dragon won't come out till August, but tabletop displays with giveaway "Eragon" bookmarks will be at many bookstores on June 21 to attract Harry readers.
Harry has gotten children more interested in series books, says Cindy D. Forsyth, a Houston wholesaler to libraries and schools through Jeremy's Book Service and a former bookstore owner (and geophysicist). "Kids like to see character development. The books become an alternate reality for them," says Forsyth, who approves of the lessons that many of them, including Harry Potter, teach - such as the value of family and friendship and of banding together to fight a bully or to vanquish dark forces. For Potter fans who want more, she often recommends the Redwall books by Brian Jacques about battling woodland creatures.
That series is another that has been around since the '80s in the United States and has never been out of print, according to Jacques' publicist and friend, Tim Moses of Philomel Books, part of Penguin Putnam. No. 17 in the series will come out in September. Because Jacques was popular already, it's difficult to measure any difference after Harry Potter, Moses says. Both Jacques and Rowling are "world-class storytellers who have created very detailed worlds that appeal immensely to the imagination," he says. Rowling's sales success can't be matched, he says, adding, "anybody who can get a kid to pick up a book and read and read, and then pick up a book by Brian Jacques as well, is all right by me."
If there's a downside to the Harry hoopla, it's that "publishers won't take as much of a chance" on books that aren't expected to be blockbusters, says Stephen Mooser, president of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, which he says has 20,000 members, and the author of about 60 books for children. On balance, though, he's "extremely positive" about Harry Potter, he says, because the phenomenon "has brought a lot of kids to reading who haven't read before, and brought kids and parents into bookstores who were never there before."
Publishers generally see no downside: "The effect of Harry Potter is positive all the way," says Allison Devlin, director of publicity for children's books at Little, Brown, which in 2001 started publishing Irish author Darren Shan's Cirque Du Freak series, about a little boy who goes to a strange circus and turns into a vampire. "I think we would have published it anyway, but the fact that it sells so well has a lot to do with Harry Potter."
Because of Rowling, other longtime fantasy writers such as Diana Wynne Jones, Eva Ibbotson and Diane Duane "are finally getting their due," says Beth Puffer, manager of the Bank Street Bookstore in Manhattan and co-chair of the Children's Booksellers and Publishers Committee of the American Booksellers Association.
And, also because of the Potter phenomenon, "there are kids reading who would not be reading if not for those books. Harry Potter gets them reading, and then they move on to other things," says Puffer, whose store caters to children, parents and teachers. Like many other stores, hers often has display tables of other books appealing to Harry Potter fans - who don't outgrow the books, she notes.
The permutations on Harry Potter are endless, but one of the more amusing has to be the Latin translation of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (the British title for Rowling's first book), which is being released in July by Bloomsbury USA, the American branch of Potter's British publisher. "We hope it will be used in schools" and bought by collectors, says marketing director Kate Kubert.
So get ready for "Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis."
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