Who Made Harry Potter Successful? (Think it was kids? Think again!)

An article in the Washington Post today reminded me about something I’d come to realize about a year ago when the seventh Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was about to be released. In the publishing world, the release of the last four Harry Potter books has been a major event, with each book generating more buzz and hype than the last. Every publisher out there would kill to have even a tenth of Harry Potter’s popularity, and many publishers have released “me too!” products that are meant to do just that.

For example, Scholastic is publishing a series that was originally called Children of the Red King in the UK that’s been repositioned to become the Charlie Bone here in the United States. The covers and logo look very similar to those found on the US Harry Potter books. Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials wasn’t on the radar of many readers until Scholastic Point brought the series over from the UK, renamed the first book The Golden Compass, and positioned the series as “the series that’s even more popular than Harry Potter in Britain right now.” Never mind that His Dark Materials is closer to The Chronicles of Narnia than it is to Harry Potter; The Chronicles of Narnia doesn’t get the headlines that Harry Potter gets.But the question that came to mind for me last summer was this: who made Harry Potter popular in the first place?

Originally, the pitch was that Harry Potter was something that children had discovered and begun devouring, much to the surprise of their parents. I remember reading articles in Time and Newsweek around the time the fourth book was released that talked about how children were suddenly reading again, thanks to Harry Potter. And what’s interesting is that while children certainly were reading Harry Potter, it was because adults were reading it too.

Consider, for example, this excerpt from a 1999 cover story in Time entitled Wild About Harry:

So, in the beginning, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone [or Philosopher's Stone, as it was originally named], written by a previously unknown author named J. (for Joanne) K. Rowling, appeared in Britain in June 1997 as a juvenile-fiction title. Abracadabra! it careered to the top of the adult best-seller lists. The same eerie thing happened when the book was published September 1998 in the U.S.

Notice, the article says that the book first appeared on the adult bestseller lists, both in the US and the UK. And it makes sense, when you consider that children rarely pick up books on their own; they thrive on the recommendations of teachers, librarians and parents. Children rarely have the ability to pick up a novel and say, “this looks cool! I want this!” based purely on the title, cover and the back cover copy. They tend to only do this with products that are familiar, such as licensed books, comic books, long-running series, or books about topics they’re already interested in. Children don’t evaluate products the way adults do; that’s something they learn in their teenage years.

A Newsweek article from 1998 entitled A Literary Sorceress also talked about how adults were reading the book:

In England, where it was published last year, “”Harry” has been a hit, selling a whopping 150,000 copies and winning a British Book Award and a Smarties Prize, sort of a Booker Prize for children’s literature. (Adults as well as kids have taken to the book. Rowling’s British publisher recently issued a second edition with a more grown-up cover, so older readers wouldn’t be embarrassed to carry “”Harry.”) The American rights to the book were purchased by Scholastic Books for more than $100,000, the most ever paid for a first-time author’s children’s book. The U.S. edition arrived in stores in late August and is currently No. 2 on the Publishers Weekly children’s best-seller list, and author Joanne Rowling, 33, has just signed a seven-book contract and a seven-figure deal for movie rights with Warner Brothers.

and later on:

As melancholy as it is fantastic, “”Harry Potter” has been likened to the dark juvenile novels of Roald Dahl and C. S. Lewis. “”I don’t dumb my books down for kids,” Rowling says. And it’s clear that the author is no one-shot wonder: when the sequel to “”Harry Potter,” “”Chamber of Secrets,” debuted in England this summer, it climbed both the children’s and adult best-seller lists, outselling John Grisham and Tom Clancy. “”Happily ever after” never looked so smart.

Again, notice that the book was something that adults were reading. The “children’s bestseller lists” are somewhat of a misnomer, since they reflect purchasers, not readers. (With rare exception, parents are the purchase decision-makers, not their children.)

“So?” you might be asking. “That doesn’t change the fact that the book was successful!”

No. But it does shed some light on why the book was successful. The publishers of the book (Bloomsbury in the UK and Scholastic Press in the US) knew a good story when they saw it. Their editors certainly advised J.K. Rowling on how she could make her books successful, encouraging her to keep the rich flavor of the world of wizards while staying tightly focused on the story. (That’s likely one of the reasons the first three books are so much shorter than the last four — there was more editorial guidance.) And the marketing machine behind the book made sure it got great recognition by putting it up for awards and positioning it as a book that children and adults could equally enjoy.

And that’s where Harry Potter ultimately benefited the most. The publisher didn’t insist on dumbing the book down for kids, adjusting the language for a fourth grade reading level and cutting out all the violence. The publisher also didn’t insist on positioning the book towards children and leaving adults in the lurch. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (later Sorcerer’s Stone in the US) was simply positioned as a book that adults and children could enjoy. Simply put, adults could pick up the book and not feel dumb for reading a book that was intended for children.

That brings us to one of the scary truths about the world of publishing.

You see, in the United States, adults don’t really read as much as they should. In fact, the National Endowment for the Arts put out a report in 2007 that revealed that US readers aged 15-24 read, on average, seven minutes per day, while devoting two hours a day towards watching TV. The same report indicated that slightly over half of adults read when not required to do so. (Frequency of reading was not indicated). The report also said that the literacy level of a household can be predicted by how many books that household owns. And, naturally, the sales of books by unit have been declining over the last decade; publishing revenues have been kept steady by price increases, licensing and diversification into non-book markets.

So why did Harry Potter succeed so well? In part because the series was entertaining and competently written, yes. But I would argue that it was popular because it was at an easy enough reading level that many adults didn’t feel intimidated by it. And while the story focused on children and was intended for children, it was mature enough in tone that adults could appreciate it as well. Many adults were reading Harry Potter because it was at their level. And it was those adults, and not their children, who turned the book from a bestselling children’s book into an international media sensation.

Consider this. The last four Harry Potter books all had major launches, including heavily publicized midnight releases. But there’s no way that those midnight releases were intended to make sales to children, because most children would not be permitted to stay up so late for the release of a book. The publishers and retailers knew that. But they weren’t worried, because they knew that adults would be interested enough in the book that the events would pay off. And make no mistake — it wasn’t parents who were standing in line waiting for the cash registers to open so that they could buy the book for their children; it was adults who had every intention of reading the book themselves who made the launches such a big deal.

What can a publisher learn from this? I’d argue that it boils down to three things:

1. Traditional “adult-level” literary books are rapidly becoming too difficult and tedious for many readers. This is a disturbing trend, but it means that those who write and publish literary books had better watch out – they’re on the verge of becoming a niche in a market they should otherwise dominate.
2. Adults are not afraid to buy and read children’s books, provided that the books are not inherently childish. This is one of the reasons that the me-too books such as Charlie Bone have not caught on — they are clearly positioned towards children. And this is one of the reasons that books like Eragon have succeeded with adults — they are positioned towards both. In Eragon’s case, it also helps to have a history behind the book; adults love the idea that a teenager wrote a novel, since they can excuse themselves for reading it by saying, “I just wanted to see what this kid was capable of.”
3. Adults who read children’s books do a great job of recommending these books to children and to other adults. Word-of-mouth advertising is extremely important in the world of children’s publishing, and it definitely boosts sales.

As a children’s publisher myself, I’ve taken this line of thinking to heart as I’ve developed my own line of books – that’s why I’m creating graphic novels (which can be read by everyone) as opposed to more juvenile picture books (which adults will typically not read). After all, I want kids reading my books, but I understand that the first step in the process is to win over their parents. And, since my books are educational, I hope that they do; it’d be great to know that I made a difference not just on the future generations, but the present ones as well.

Incidentally, I’d be lax if I didn’t mention the article that first made me think about Harry Potter’s impact on adults, also from the Washington Post. In this article, the author points out that the last few books are really too dark for many children and that it’s adults who are the primary readers. It’s definitely food for thought.

1 Comment

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  By Benzion Chinn, May 5, 2008 @ 6:26 pm

  You are probably on to something here. I would also point to the huge internet culture that was built around Potter. Your analysis makes a lot of sense for explaining the early rise of Potter, through book three. The question is how did it go from there to the mega media craze of the last four books.
  Do you think that some other book will be able to repeat what Potter has done?

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