At 12:01 AM this morning, the sixth installment of the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” went on sale. Scholastic, the book’s American publisher, (Bloomsbury is the UK publisher) printed a record 10.8 million copies of the book, dwarfing the previous record of 8.5 million copies of 2003’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” The tome has sat in the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com’s best seller list since it’s release was announced last year, and as of yesterday it boasted worldwide pre-orders of more than 2 million copies, 1.4 million from Amazon alone.
Though half of those sales are in the United States, (so many that the United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service have teamed up to deliver them all) the book simultaneously went on sale all over the world, including a midnight celebration at Edinburgh Castle (where over 2000 school children and their families were greeted by the author J.K. Rowling). Despite the tight security in the UK, Londoners were anxious to celebrate the book’s release. The Waterstone chain reported 300,000 people attended midnight openings at more than 100 stores across Britain. CNN reported an enthusiastic and festive response as well: “In New York, the Barnes & Noble Union Square location used a person dressed as an owl — the preferred messenger in Rowling’s books — to hand over the first box of books to cashiers. In Beaverton, Oregon, a Powell’s bookstore offered fire walkers. Books ‘N’ More in Wilmington, Ohio, featured horses dressed up as unicorns parading down the main street, and everywhere bookstore workers (and customers) came as Harry, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, instructor Severus Snape, groundskeeper Hagrid and other Potter characters.”
What is truly remarkable about the Harry Potter phenomena is that kids are actually reading again. However, the book’s popularity is not limited to kids only; the appeal has transcended all age ranges, gender, sexual orientation, religious orientation and class. My 17-year-old student mentee, Alex, planned on waiting up last night (the night of her birthday, even!) to purchase the book, and she planned on reading it straight through the night until she completed the entire thing. She anticipates that she will finish the book by 1:00 AM Sunday morning. My 45-year-old colleague Gregory wore his funky Sirius Black shirt to work yesterday and went out at lunch to buy black hightop sneakers, as he felt they would look better with his orange shoelaces. I almost thought that my 14-year-old goddaughter Kayla would cancel our dinner plans tonight so she could read through the evening, but fortunately for me, she agreed to meet anyway.
I read the first three Harry Potter books and I loved them. J.K. Rowling and illustrator Mary GrandPré have managed to make readers capable of seeing—and believing in—what is magical about our lives, and in each other. A sort of “everyday magic.” Rowling and GrandPré possess a wonderful way of taking a diverse range of references and allegories—from Shakespeare, Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Dickens, fairy tales, Greek myths and more recent works like “Star Wars,” and they make them uniquely their own.
According to Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times, “The achievement of the Potter books is the same as that of the great classics of children’s literature, from the Oz novels to “The Lord of the Rings”: the creation of a richly imagined and utterly singular world, as detailed, as improbable and as mortal as our own.”
So today it seems as if the world has joined together to read a book. In a day and age filled with utter sensory overload, it seems inconceivable that a book can unite us. As for me, I am reading too, but not Harry Potter. When I went to go buy the book, the look of “Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk, with its marvelous cover by Rodrigo Corral, seduced me. Guess other ghosts’ll scare me today.
The Harry Potter phenomena is a mix of modern marketing, combined with a pretty darned good series of books. While not literary masterpieces by any means, they are well written. However, the books do contain the one key theme of a successful fairytale: the child's (good) victory over evil (adults). Bettelheim's book on fairytales is a wonderful read and should be a must read for anyone who plans advertising strategy. Additionally, what's enabled the succcess of the books, or the phenomena, is excellent use of all touchpoints of the the Harry Potter brand, as it were:
books, movie releases and their timing, ephemera, related products and so much more. A well executed plan based on the tremendous success of book one, which came as a surprise to the publisher.
Personally, I like the books and so do my kids. I didn't go out at midnight to get a copy, nor did I wait in line today. Rather, my neighborhood Target had plenty of copies, no lines and same price as Amazon (no shippin though!), as did QFC, the west coast supermarket chain owned by Kroger's. I read a couple chapters this evening and have enjoyed doing so.
Harry Potter has kids reading again Debbie, but there is a sunstantial amount of literature for the pre-teen and teenage group that has met with great success. The A Series of Unfortunate Events series is but one more example.
If you're interseted in a fairy tale that is a trilology of thin books
(150 pages each roughly) written for adults, French writer Marie Redonnet is my recommendation.
In the states she was published by the University of Nebraska (European Women Writers Series) and should still be in print:
Hotel Splendid
Rose Mellie Rose
Forever Valley
enjoy
On Jul.16.2005 at 11:54 PM