“The community and passion of the Harry Potter fandom was, for a lot of people, how their experience of the internet began.” —Hank Green
Has there ever been a children’s book series as universally beloved as Harry Potter? As of 2018, the hit fantasy series had sold over 500 million copies worldwide, in more than 80 languages. On balance, that means one in every fifteen people on earth owns a Harry Potter book. The first book of the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, remains the bestselling book in the series. Some estimate it’s the #2 bestselling children’s book ever. The last book of the original set, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, holds the record for fastest selling book of fiction. The hype generated around its release required armored cars and legal documents swearing booksellers to secrecy—and resulted in 11 million copies sold in the first 24 hours in the U.S. and U.K.
Looking Back
Two decades since the New York Times created a separate bestseller list for children’s books “largely in response to the expected demand for the fourth [book] in the Harry Potter series,” it’s easy to take Harry’s cultural status for granted. But its popularity, due to a variety of factors, changed the face of children’s publishing and ushered in a new marketing trajectory across a range of media. Though no children’s series since has come close to the cultural or financial capital of Potter, the boy wizard’s wild success has cleared the way for others. The path to top placement at Barnes & Noble is both more accessible and more crowded for children’s and young adult authors than ever before. Dr. Michelle Smith of Deakin University credits the Potter series for helping publishers “realize children’s publishing was actually a very serious business, that you could make more money from children’s publishing than publishing for adults.”
It’s difficult to untangle exactly what Harry’s influence on the wider world of middle grade-and-up fiction was. The books themselves didn’t do anything new. The story is a classic coming-of-age adventure epic with the classic white, male hero—with the British boarding school trope and a little magic thrown in for flavor. J.K. Rowling didn’t invent wizarding school and she didn’t do it better than anyone else—Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea quartet had more critical acclaim—but she, Rowling,* did blow up the young adult fiction market.
*A nod to one of Rowling’s more irritating syntactical habits.
A Generation of Readers
Perhaps Potter’s biggest impact was its boost to literacy. Kids devoured these long novels that stretched well beyond the 200-page limit that was standard for most children’s publishers. It changed public perception of how children wanted to read. If kids found the story compelling, they would put up with—even relish—a seven part series whose books ran over 700 pages. Children are capable of focused attention if the world is engaging enough. This paradigm shift paved the way for more fantasy stories on an epic scale. Dr. Stephanie Weaver, who teaches a class on J.K. Rowling at the Savannah College of Art and Design, claims the author “changed the way a generation approached fantasy” and says Rowling “normalized the idea of fantasy and young adult themes.”
An Interactive World
A large factor in Harry’s (really Rowling’s) success is that he didn’t stop at books. Potter is a media franchise, with movies, merchandise, video games, online content, a play, and several theme parks on its dossier. Visual Capitalist estimated in 2019 that Harry Potter is the #10 most successful media franchise globally. The global fan engagement is even more extraordinary, resulting in conventions, fan fiction, fan sites, collegiate Quidditch teams, A Very Potter Musical, and a music genre called wizard rock.
It’s only after the first Potter movie debuts in 2001 that book sales really take off and start breaking records. Nielsen reports “during the four weeks following the November 2001 big screen debut of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, sales of the corresponding book more than tripled over the previous four weeks to 956,700 units.”
The National Endowment for the Arts also reports a stunning rise in young adult readership hinging on this period. After reporting a 20% loss of young adult readers from 1982 to 2002, their next report saw a 21% increase in readership from 2002 to 2008. Is that all due to Harry Potter? Certainly not, but it rode, and contributed to, the wave.
The YA Boom
Harry Potter built a voracious appetite for fiction among its fans. In between book releases, there was growing demand for more middle-grade and young adult fantasy to fill the gap. In 1997, Publisher’s Weekly reported a mere 3,000 new titles in the young adult category, compared with over 30,000 in 2009. Publishers had found a formula that appealed to the wide, and previously enigmatic, young adult readership. You see Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games debuting in this period, all of which resulted in movie adaptations. Harry Potter demonstrated the power of the big screen to boost book sales, increase merchandise opportunities, and a make fan club buy-in more accessible (in terms of time and money).
Although some journalists hailed these new writers as the next Rowling, and Meyer’s Eclipse even bumped Deathly Hallows out of the top spot on bestseller lists, no series has had the same sticking power as Potter. This is not unusual for trailblazers in any arena, and the YA genre is now so populated that we’re unlikely to see another series have the success of Potter in our lifetime.
Authorship and Celebrity
If none of the major concepts in the Potter books were original, what made them so special? Captivating world-building is a part of it, as is the books’ increasing complexity as Harry grows up (and the readers grow up with Harry), but that doesn’t explain its longevity, twenty years on. What is particularly new with Harry Potter is the visibility of J.K. Rowling as an author and the tenacity with which she protects her intellectual property. Weaver suggests that Rowling markets herself: her own story about getting divorced, living below the poverty line as a single mom with a young daughter, writing chapters of Philosopher’s Stone on napkins in coffee shops, and getting rejected by twelve publishers before getting that miraculous letter from Bloomsbury.
The real underdog here is not Harry Potter, but a struggling artist named Joanne Rowling. Rowling has made herself inseparable from the brand (good for making millions, not so good for writing anything else—see A Casual Vacancy). The trailers for the Fantastic Beasts films prominently feature “from writer J.K. Rowling” and the logo of publishing and merchandise conglomerate, Wizarding World—a partnership between Warner Bros. and Rowling’s Pottermore.
The emergence of Pottermore as a digital publishing platform and an extension of the Potter universe in 2011 marked Rowling’s departure from traditional publishing. Throughout her career, Rowling maintained exclusive digital rights to her books. From 2011-2015, Pottermore was the only place to buy Harry Potter ebooks. Terje Colbjørnsen of Oslo Metropolitan University writes, “A visitor to Amazon.com will find the Harry Potter ebooks on display, but will have to leave the site to purchase these books, a practice that is unprecedented and does not comply with the practices of the digital front-runners.”
With the 2015 revamp of Pottermore, restrictions seem to have loosened a bit, but Rowling remains the only named individual associated with the Potter brand. Blog entries on the site are penned by an anonymous “Pottermore Correspondent.” J.K. Rowling has transitioned from children’s author to brand ambassador, remaining relevant through regular releases of new, exclusive content that dives deep into wizarding world lore, character backgrounds, and magical items. She has drawn some criticism for attempting to exert ownership over her narratives after they’re published—most notably for claiming Albus Dumbledore was gay after the release of the final book—but you can’t deny that in spite of fan criticism, and in part due to it, J.K. Rowling has managed to keep Harry Potter relevant far past his anticipated expiration date. Does this mean that future YA authors need to take on a more aggressive marketing role? Only Professor Trelawney can tell.