![]() ![]() However much as a publisher or as a writer you love it when books win prizes or sell well, in the long run the value of books is really in the experience of reading them. The thing is, books aren't really a competition. ![]() ![]() What are the challenges when a series of books become such a success? Can other books compete? There was genuine love and excitement for the story and while it’s true that Bloomsbury didn’t pay an awful lot for it, nobody did for children’s books back then! And I guess what people thought of as a successful first children's book then, was nothing like what actually happened. Nigel took the three chapters he was given home and gave them to his 8-year-old daughter who wrote him a note saying she wanted to read the rest straightaway. But before they acquired it, the book had to get past a meeting which was chaired by our founder and chief executive, Nigel Newton. I wasn't there at the time, but I do know that there was a palpable excitement about the book. But it's not true to say that Bloomsbury weren’t ambitious for it. There are many legends about Harry Potter's origins, like it being turned down by 12 publishers and then arriving at Bloomsbury. In 1997, when the first book was published, most big publishers liked having a children's division but no one had significant commercial expectations of it. The books weren't expected to be a hit at the time, why was that? What was the publishing landscape like at the time? Suddenly the publication of a book was made into an event.Ĭhildren's books as a field is now so full of talent, and there's a new generation of writers coming through, who were the original Potter fans, whose love of books and reading is shaped by that extraordinary experience. No one knew what was going to happen in those books and they were waiting for the next one. For that first generation of readers who grew up with it, they were experiencing it completely new. The other important and wonderful effect is the magic of reading the books themselves and the effect they have on their readers. Obviously it's not the only thing that's responsible for that, but I do think Harry Potter created a paradigm shift that made it possible. In 1998 there were around 34 million children's books sold, by 2016 that was 64 million, so that's a very palpable Harry Potter effect. One of those is the numbers from UK Bookscan. It's hard to pin down exactly, but there are some really concrete effects. It's probably more accurate to talk about the effects plural. What do people mean when they talk about "The Harry Potter Effect"? ![]()
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