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How J.K. Rowling went from struggling single mom to the world's most successful author

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How J.K. Rowling went from struggling single mom to the world's most successful author

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How J.K. Rowling went from struggling single mom to the world's most successful author

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J.K. Rowling's parents never received a college education, she lived for years with government assistance as a single mother, and overcame a dozen rejections from publishers to become, almost overnight, one of the most successful and widely read authors in the history of the world.

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J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and Me (BBC, 2001)

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The Book That Started It All: Celebrating 25 Years of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”

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The Book That Started It All: Celebrating 25 Years of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”

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On June 26, 1997, the world changed with the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. After 25 years of magic, we are celebrating the book's silver anniversary. Later to be titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States, Philosopher's Stone introduced readers to a world of magic, friendship, and love.

Perhaps it wasn't as significant as major world events of the time or other already relevant cultural phenomena, but the first book of the Harry Potter series would in fact change the world. After all, a lot can happen in 25 years. Minerva McGonagall put the words together quite well if you ask us.

He'll be famous - a legend - I wouldn't be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter Day in the future - there will be books written about Harry - every child in our world will know his name!" (SS ch. 1)

In 1997, Bloomsbury Publishing picked up the children's book and printed 500 first-edition copies of Philosopher's Stone in the United Kingdom. 300 of those original first-edition copies went to libraries, and the few that still exist in the private libraries of families may have some value to them. First-edition books will include a misspelling of "Philospher's" on the cover, "1 wand" is printed twice in the Hogwarts students' equipment list on page 53, the author's name is printed as "Joanne Rowling," and the sequence of numbers on the publisher's imprint page is 10 through 1. These books have been popping up in auctions and sold for as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the year of its release, Philosopher's Stone earned three literary awards, including the prestigious British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year. By 1999, over 300,000 copies had been sold, and more were on the way. Philosopher's Stone was picked up by Scholastic, and the publishing company started selling the book in the United States in 1998. After some slight alterations, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone became the American version. Scholastic printed 50,000 copies for an initial print run.

Barry Cunningham, formerly the head of children's publishing at Bloomsbury; Nigel Newton, founder and CEO of Bloomsbury; and Rosamund de la Hey, formerly children's marketing director at Bloomsbury, sat down together and gave an oral history of how the books came to be. The team agrees that the Philosopher's Stone manuscript was love at first read. Newton let his eight-year-old daughter read it first. He said she wrote a note when she gave it back to him that read, "The excitement in this book made me feel warm inside. I think it is possibly one of the best books an eight- or nine-year-old could read." Cunningham remembers his meeting with the author and her literary agent, Christopher Little. Cunningham noted that he tried to have the title changed because he felt it was wordy but that the author wouldn't have it, saying she claimed that "children love unfamiliar words."

The impact of Harry Potter grew bigger and bigger. The remaining six books continued the story and as we're all well aware, paved the way for movies, video games, theme parks, plays, and even quidditch as an official sport in over 30 countries. As of 2018, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has sold more than 120 million copies worldwide.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the book's release, Bloomsbury released two commemorative editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The first one utilizes the iconic, original front cover illustrated by Thomas Taylor. A silver stamp on the front reads "25 Anniversary Edition." The second features front cover artwork by Jonny Duddle and brandishes another silver stamp but with the words "25 Years of Harry Potter Magic." Both are available for purchase in the United Kingdom from the Bloomsbury website. US buyers can find the Thomas Taylor-illustrated edition for sale on Amazon.

How are you celebrating 25 years of Harry Potter? Let us know in the comments below.

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The Book That Started It All: Celebrating 25 Years of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"

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The Book That Started It All: Celebrating 25 Years of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" - News

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Read the Original Harry Potter Pitch That Publishers Rejected From J.K. Rowling

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Read the Original Harry Potter Pitch That Publishers Rejected From J.K. Rowling

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Read the Original Harry Potter Pitch That Publishers Rejected From J.K. Rowling

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“Harry Potter lives with his aunt, uncle and cousin”

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The Harry Potter Lexicon is an unofficial Harry Potter fansite. HARRY POTTER, characters, names, and all related indicia are trademarks of Warner Bros. © 2001 - 2024.

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The Harry Potter Lexicon is an unofficial Harry Potter fansite. HARRY POTTER, characters, names, and all related indicia are trademarks of Warner Bros. © 2001 - 2024.

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Sketch of Hogwarts by J.K. Rowling - Google Arts & Culture

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This annotated sketch by J.K. Rowling shows the layout of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, complete with the giant squid that lives in the lake.…

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First typed manuscript of Philosopher's Stone

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"First typed manuscript of Philosopher's Stone - did it on a manual typewriter and consequently had to re-type the entire chapter every time I changed a paragraph. Then I had to re-type the whole...

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How Harry Potter Was Nearly Very Different

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How Harry Potter Was Nearly Very Different

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"Bloomsbury bought the rights to the original manuscript for the princely sum of £2,500."

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It's the small decisions along the way that shape major successes - and Harry Potter had lots of potential turning points...

This article originally appeared on Den of Geek UK.
Spanning a series of books, films, merchandising prospects, an amusement park, a spin-off film, and West End show, Harry Potter is one of the most iconic franchises in the history of fandom.

But things could have been very, very different...
Spoilers lie ahead for the Harry Potter series.

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1. What if Harry Potter had never been published?

It's been well-documented that JK Rowling struggled to get her first book published.

Almost a dozen houses, including Penguin, TransWorld and Harper Collins, rejected Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone outright.

When a first chapter arrived at Bloomsbury Publishing, it was destined to remain in the slush pile until its curious black binding caught the eye of a lowly assistant. On a whim, Bloomsbury CEO Nigel Newton gave it to his 8 year old daughter, Alice, to read.

"She came down from her room an hour later glowing," said Newton in a rare personal interview with the Independent. "She nagged and nagged me in the following months, wanting to see what came next."

First edition copies of the book now sell for tens of thousands of pounds, but Bloomsbury bought the rights to the original manuscript for the princely sum of £2,500.

And the rest is history.

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2. What if Harry's parents had lived?

Child protagonists are an unfortunate lot.

In a bid to set their proteges on a path to independence, authors will resort to drastic measures to set them free of adult supervision. Packing your protagonists off to boarding school is one way to get them out of the shadow of boring grown-ups.

Double homicide by an evil wizard is another.

JK Rowling's mother was struggling with the later stages of multiple sclerosis while the author was drafting Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone. Anne Rowling died six months later, without ever knowing about the book her daughter was writing.

Rowling told Oprah Winfrey that she knew then that Harry would be an orphan, and that her grief helped shape the story: "If she hadn't died, I don't think it's too strong to say that there wouldn't be Harry Potter. The books are what they are because she died."

Themes of loss echo throughout the series, and it's fair to say the story would have been unrecognizable had Lily and James lived.

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3. What if Ron had died?

In an act of "Potter heresy," J K Rowling recently admitted that she "wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfilment," and that she didn't think the pair's combative relationship would have survived into their adult years.

But the Hermione/Ron relationship might never have made it past puberty had things gone differently, as Rowling considered killing one of them off in book five.

"Midway through, which I think is a reflection of the fact that I wasn't in a very happy place, I started thinking I might polish one of them off, out of sheer spite," she told Daniel Radcliffe in an interview after the film series ended. "I did seriously consider killing Ron."

4. What if Harry had been American?

Daniel Radcliffe almost didn't play Harry Potter. Despite being a favorite of producer David Heyman, after finding out that filming would take place in America, Radcliffe's parents decided that the job would be too distracting for their 11 year old son, and pulled him out of the running.

Steven Spielberg, who had originally expressed an interest in directing the first film, had his sights set on Sixth Sense star Haley Joel Osment. Jonathan Lipnicki and Eric Sullivan had also expressed interest in the part.

The Harry Potter films would have looked very different had Spielberg directed them: he had planned to animate them, with Robin Williams playing Hagrid!

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After Chris Columbus took over directorial duties, American actor Liam Aiken was signed on to play the boy wizard. "I flew to England, and a week later I had the role. Then the next day, I didn't," said Aiken. "But I understood; like James Bond, Harry has to be British."

Aiken went on to play Klaus Baudelaire in A Series Of Unfortunate Events.

It was only when filming was confirmed to take place in Britain - apparently due to J K Rowling's insistence that British actors play the lead roles - that Daniel Radcliffe's parents backed down and allowed him to take the part.

5. What if Sir Ian McKellen had played Dumbledore?

It's long been established that Sir Ian McKellen was offered the part of Dumbledore after O.G. Albus, Richard Harris, died before filming on Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban began.

McKellen turned down the role, having already played one iconic wizard in the Lord Of The Rings films, after Harris dragged him in an interview. "Seeing as one of the last things [Harris] did publicly was say what a dreadful actor he thought I was, it would not have been appropriate for me to take over his part," said McKellen.

Harris's family urged filmmakers to offer the role to his old drinking buddy, Peter O'Toole, but it eventually went to Michael Gambon.

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Other alternate universe casting choices include Hugh Grant, who was originally considered for smarmy lothario Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, but had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts. Helen McCrory, who went on to play Narcissa Malfoy, was originally cast as Bellatrix LeStrange, but had to pull out after becoming pregnant.

JK Rowling herself was originally asked to play Lily Potter in the Mirror of Erised scene in the first film, but turned it down: "I really am not cut out to be an actress, even one who just has to stand there and wave. I would have messed it up somehow."

The Harry Potter films could have looked very different indeed!

6. What if Emma Watson had quit?

When her contract came up during the filming of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Emma Watson seriously considered turning her back on the series to concentrate on her studies.

"I would have been public enemy #1, I think, if I hadn't continued," Watson told MTV News in 2010. "But I did think about that."

Producers moved the Harry Potter filming schedule around to fit with Watson's A Level exams. And it's a good thing, too - the studious star scored a hat-trick of three As, and went on to graduate from Rhode Island's prestigious Brown University.

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7. What if Dean Thomas had been a major character?

On her pre-Pottermore website, JK Rowling said that Chris Columbus, director of the first Harry Potter films, was taken aback by the amount of surplus information the author was able to give him on the peripheral character.

Ostensibly muggle-born, Dean's heritage formed part of an earlier working of Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. "Dean's father, who had never told his wife what he was because he wanted to protect her, got himself killed by Death Eaters when he refused to join them," Rowling wrote in an FAQ about Dean. 'The projected story had Dean discovering all this during his school career.'

An easter egg alluding to this ghost plot" - Rowling's own term for story threads that never quite made it into the books - appears in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. When asked if he was Muggle-born by the Nazi-esque Snatchers, Dean responded he wasn't sure: "My dad left my mum when I was a kid. I've got no proof he was a wizard, though."

Dean's loss was our gain, though, as his story being nixed meant that a fan favourite came to the fore: "I suppose in some ways I sacrificed Dean's voyage of discovery for Neville's, which is more important to the central plot."

An early illustration - which Rowling shared on her website - shows Dean, then named Gary, with Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville, sneaking out of bed to encounter Fluffy in Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone.

8. What if Peter Pettigrew had never betrayed the Potters?

Rowling revealed on her pre-Pottermore website that early drafts of Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone were very different to the one she eventually settled on.

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Betraying Rowling's Gothic sensibilities, the very first draft had the Potters living on a remote island, with Hermione's family - then known as the Puckles, before Rowling changed them to the less whimsical Graingers - living nearby.

It was Hermione's father who discovered Lily and James' murder.

Rowling also revealed that, in early drafts, Peter Pettigrew never existed.

"There were various versions of scenes in which you actually saw Voldemort entering Godric's Hollow and killing the Potters and in early drafts of these, a Muggle betrayed their whereabouts. As the story evolved, however, and Pettigrew became the traitor, this horrible Muggle vanished."

9. What if Michael Jackson had written a Harry Potter musical?

Long before Harry Potter And The Cursed Child - the two part play which makes it's West End debut later this year - JK Rowling was approached by the Prince of Pop.

"Michael Jackson wanted to do a musical," Rowling told Oprah Winfrey in an interview celebrating the end of the series. "I said no to a lot of things."

10. What if Harry Potter was made into a TV series?

Since the last film was released almost five years ago, fans have championed a Harry Potter TV series.

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And, with the likes of Game Of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and riding high in the ratings, book-to-TV adaptations are proving an increasingly popular prospect.

it would seem like a Potterverse serial would be an easy win, but Rowling nixed the idea when questioned about it on Twitter.

Asked "where is our TV show, J K Rowling?", the author responded: "Right after the opera, Potter-on-ice and the interpretative dance version of Beedle The Bard #NotActuallyHappening"

Probably a good thing, too. What are we leaving our children to reboot?

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How Harry Potter Was Nearly Very Different

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It's the small decisions along the way that shape major successes - and Harry Potter had lots of potential turning points...

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Wizard! The magic of Harry Potter at the British Library

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Wizard! The magic of Harry Potter at the British Library

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"The British Library exhibition shows a lot of them: an early draft of The Philosopher’s Stone in which Voldemort is described as a snort-worthy “red-eyed dwarf”"

"A handwritten draft of the Sorting Hat song has barely any changes, Harry’s class list is exact, and her hand-drawn map of the Hogwarts grounds, complete with a wonky giant squid bobbing in the lake, is the school we know."

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When he wrote a poem for his secretary and lover Betty Mackereth in 1976, Philip Larkin sent it with a note: "Flog it to Texas if it seems embarrassing." The joke was self-indulgent: Larkin knew libraries and archives - such as the Harry Ransom Centre, in Texas - would hurl themselves off a proverbial cliff just to get his scraps. Even his shopping list could be lucrative, so long as he signed it.

The British Library in London currently has a veritable goldmine papering its walls. Its Harry Potter exhibition is an eclectic curation of old books, scrolls and ephemera that have some (occasionally tenuous) connection to JK Rowling 's world. And among the Chinese fortune-telling bones (circa 1000 BC) and garden gnomes (circa 1900) are Rowling's drafts for some of the bestselling books of all time.

JK Rowling's original handwritten draft of chapter 17 of The Philosopher's Stone. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/REX/Shutterstock

While some authors would baulk at showing anyone, let alone hundreds of thousands of museum visitors, their "process", Rowling is entirely unafraid of sharing even her ropiest Potter ideas in public. She does so at talks, on Twitter and on a website, Pottermore, where she publishes all her unexplored, unfinished plots for a starry-eyed audience. Dumbledore is gay! Harry's grandfather made hair products! Lupin and Tonks got married in a pub in Scotland! Even for a fan, it is easy to feel suspicious of this seemingly endless post-Potter expansion. There is no hidden significance or justifying quality in Rowling's titbits that explains their publication. No, we now know Harry's transfiguration teacher Professor McGonagall had two brothers and a husband who died because Rowling and her publishers believe our appetite for Potter is insatiable - and on that, they're probably right. What luck then, that Rowling has always written with pen on paper and has produced such a treasure trove, and how lucky too that revealing her failed or abandoned ideas is not an embarrassment to her, even when cushioned by such success.

The British Library exhibition shows a lot of them: an early draft of The Philosopher's Stone in which Voldemort is described as a snort-worthy "red-eyed dwarf"; a deleted part from The Chamber of Secrets, where the Weasleys' flying car is rescued by mer-people after landing in the lake instead of the Whomping Willow; a clumsy scene from a Philosopher's Stone draft, in which Hagrid pays a visit to Cornelius Fudge, the magical minister in the books and only an ordinary MP in the draft ("Mrs Fudge and I were thinking of moving to Portugal. We have a villa ..."), who also has a colleague called Vernone Dursley, whose son is named Didsbury. There are countless tiny glimpses of characters that would never be: it's hard not to wonder what Enid Pettigrew, Oakden Hernshaw and Mylor Silvanus, all named, then abandoned, would have been like.

Rowling's scratched out, scrawled pages show the extensive tweaking she performed on her writing, from The Philosopher's Stone to The Deathly Hallows. There are little annotations scattered everywhere ("[This way]," ends one page, with a backwards arrow, a helpful direction for its author). The short-term brain freezes are visible ("'Hermione, let me down!' Harry yelled", is scrawled out on a page of The Deathly Hallows and replaced with just: "'X' yelled Harry").

Immerse yourself ... Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/REX/Shutterstock

Perhaps the most interesting writing on the pages is not Rowling's but that of her editors. Some of their notes read almost as chastisements of her imagination - such as one on a page from The Half-Blood Prince, where Harry notes that a potion his teacher has just shown him takes six months to make ("So Slughorn has some ready prepared for their first lesson, presumably!"), or the abandoned watery end for the Weasleys' flying car ("I wondered whether the mer-people scene actually works?"). One particularly funny query is found on a draft of The Half-Blood Prince, where an editor circled a "dammit" dropped by 16-year-old Ron: "At this age, swearing would be so much stronger??" (Harry and company are not known for their effing and jeffing).

Cynics will view these manuscripts as the miserable dregs from an over-lauded cup of tea. They are actually hugely impressive - because, for all the notes and editor marks, the most amazing revelation is how sure Rowling seemed about her creation from the start. A handwritten draft of the Sorting Hat song has barely any changes, Harry's class list is exact, and her hand-drawn map of the Hogwarts grounds, complete with a wonky giant squid bobbing in the lake, is the school we know.

But with so many proposed alternatives and unfinished ideas made public, both here and on Pottermore, it's hard not to suspect that Rowling may end up like Nabokov, Kafka or a literary Tupac Shakur: either having her every note pored over posthumously for another book, or cursed into an artistic purgatory with awful output she never intended to release. This is not to suggest Rowling does a Salinger (burn her notebooks, retreat to live on a diet of raw food and I Love Lucy). Perhaps Terry Pratchett had the right idea: take a steamroller to the lot. Still, even his thoroughly squashed computer drive is now on display, in a museum in Salisbury.

Harry Potter, a Journey Through the History of Magic, is at the British Library, London NW1, until 28 February, and the New York Historical Society from October 2018. Harry Potter: A History of Magic is on BBC2, on 28 October.

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Wizard! The magic of Harry Potter at the British Library

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Swearing, scrapped characters, editors' notes - JK Rowling's exhibits are a treasure trove for fans of Hogwarts

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Unedited JK Rowling Interview on the Birth of Harry Potter (1998)

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The man who discovered Harry Potter - BBC News

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

On February 26, 1997, this remarkable complete set of galley sheets was sent to the distinguished children's author and literary critic Fiona Waters. In the cover letter accompanying the galley (included here), Rosamund Walker, Children's Marketing Manager of Bloomsbury Publishing wrote, "Further to our conversation, I have enclosed a manuscript for your interest as promised. Once you've had a chance to have a look, I would really appreciate it if you could let me know your comments for pre-publication quotes." The "manuscript," already rejected by twelve other publishers, was "I have just returned from my great train journey to Scotland so Harry Potter has been read! I just loved the book, it is full of pace and interest and so very funny... There is something about Harry Potter that reminds me of Charlie Buckett in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the put upon nice guy making good... And please may I have a finished copy, I would like to tell lots of people about it." - Fiona Waters, to Bloomsbury Children's Marketing Manager Rosamund Walker, 28 March 1997

EARLIEST KNOWN COPY OF HARRY POTTER; NO OTHER COPIES LOCATED.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Waters read these advance galley sheets during a long train journey to Scotland and was immediately captivated by the tale of a young wizard named Harry Potter. While it was Ms. Waters' usual practice to discard galleys after reading them, she retained this one because she believed Harry Potter was a truly special and distinctive book. She wrote back to Bloomsbury Publishing with effusive praise, making a special point of noting that "There is something about Harry Potter that reminds me of Charlie Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." In replying to Waters' letter, Rosamund Walker wrote that "I'm sure the author will be most flattered with the allusion to Charlie Bucket" - and indeed she was: for the statement was featured prominently on the back cover of the first edition.

Historically significant, this is the only known set of advance galley sheets to have survived. It precedes the early June publication of some 200 bound proof copies as well as the first edition that famously appeared on June 26. Intended as they were for prominent reviewers, only a handful of such galleys were produced. Our copy belonged to a lead reviewer whose endorsement undoubtedly helped make the book the spectacular success it became. As Ms. Waters (who signed this galley on the first page) tells it, in recalling her first meeting with J. K. Rowling:

"It was very shortly after the first book was published and I was invited to a party by Bloomsbury to celebrate it all. And when I was introduced to her [J. K. Rowling], she flung her arms around me and said, Oh, you are the lovely lady who gave me that wonderful review!"

Note: By the late 1990s - well into the digital age of printing - publishers generally did not issue traditional galleys printed from a printing press, but rather printed a set of sheets from a file and copied them for distribution to a limited set of reviewers. This is such a copy; any earlier printed appearance has not been discovered and is almost certainly lost to history.

ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury, February 25, 1997. Galley sheets: 224 numbered pages on 109 sheets [the complete text]. Each sheet with text in landscape format, two pages per sheet (rectos only), time-stamped: 2/25/97 11:59am to 2/25/97 12:16pm. Signed at top in ink by Fiona Waters. WITH: Original signed letter dated 26th February, 1997 from Rosamund Walker introducing the book to Waters; and original signed letter from Walker dated 1 April 1997 thanking Waters for her praise of the book. With Fiona Waters' copy of her letter to Rosamund Walker comparing Harry Potter to Charlie Bucket. Only minor blemishes, generally fine condition. Housed together in a custom box.

The earliest known copy of Harry Potter ever offered for sale.

References:

Fiona Waters quote from conversation by phone with Manhattan Rare Books, March 24, 2023.

Errington, Philip W., J.K. Rowling: A Bibliography, rev. ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. ROWLING on Manhattan Rare Book Company

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"I have just returned from my great train journey to Scotland so Harry Potter has been read! I just loved the book, it is full of pace and interest and so very funny... There is something about Harry Potter that reminds me of Charlie Buckett in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the put upon nice guy making good...

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Rowling's Cite Where she Talks about Book 1

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Rowling's Cite Where she Talks about Book 1

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Site design and technology by Lightmaker.com

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J.K.Rowling Official Site - Harry Potter and more

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Jump aboard the Hogwart Express to come on a fantastic adventure at the official JK Rowling Website. See what's on my desk. Read all about me, JK Rowling, and what inspired and still inspires the Harry Potter series. Read the very latest news. See what the latest rumours are and get all the gossip.

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JK Rowling's Scrap Book! Lots of Stuff here

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JK Rowling's Scrap Book! Lots of Stuff here

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<< Back to Desktop
The scrapbook stores and displays the Potterania extras you've collected from working the tricks around the site. It appears when you click on the brown book at the very top of the desktop.

This information is stored in a folder on your computer so that it "remembers" which ones you've collected. Using a different computer or an alternate address to the site allows you to see the challenges uncollected. This doesn't show up in the Text Only version, because it isn't interactive, allowing you to get the secrets.

There are a total of twelve items to collect. Four were available when the site launched, three more were added on September 16, 2004 and five more were added on March 9, 2006.

Click on the Scrapbook it opens. On the left hand page is a list of the extras you have collected.
Click on the name of the extra then read JKR's explanation on the right-hand page.
Click on the red link to view the extra.

With the March 9, 2006 update came a new feature for viewing the items in the Scrapbook. In the lower left of the screen is a zoom bar. Click on the plus sign (+) to enlarge the image, click on the minus sign (-) to shrink. You can also drag the tab on the slide bar. Click on the image and move it around to view different areas of the image. (With this new feature we will be reworking our transcripts, for sure!)

If you'd like to rediscover the steps needed to find each of these items, visit this page.
The scrapbook extras and the challenge to find them: Original when site launched-
First typed manuscript of Philosopher's Stone
From collecting ingredients for Potion recipe #1 on the Extra Stuff bulletin board. [ Details and transcription]

Page of doodlings (page 2) "Sorting Hat" sketch
From the treasure chest on the bookcase. [ Details and Transcription]

Ancient Drawings (page 4) "the Midnight Duel" drawing
From the coins in the Fan Sites trophy case. [Details]

Very early page of Philosopher's Stone
From the phone, dial MAGIC [Details and transcription]
Added Sept 16, 2004-
Ancient Drawings (page 1) "Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit"
From the large Marble on the desktop. [ Details and transcription]

Ancient Drawings (page 2) drawing of "Peeves the poltergeist"
From the phone, dial PEEVES

Ancient Drawings (page 3) drawing of "Nearly Headless Nick"
From collecting ingredients for Potion recipe #2 from the Rubbish Bin

Note: Ancient Drawings (page 4) was available when the site launched and (pages 1-3) were added in Sept.
Notice that there is a Page of doodlings (page 2). This implies that we should eventually see a (page 1) but it is not available yet.
Added March 9, 2006-
Very early draft of Philosopher's Stone (Page 1): (large and gloomy dungeon...)
From the ring box in the Fan Sites trophy case. Clue: Word scraps puzzle in Rubbish. [ Details and transcription]

Very early draft of Philosopher's Stone (Page 2) : (a fat kind of cactus...)
From the phone, dial 31 07 1965. Clue: Ancient Runes book on the bookcase, tiles in Rubbish. [ Details and transcription]

More idle jottings (Page 1)
From the plant in the "?" secret door and radio program. Clue: Rumours tabloid advert. [ Details and transcription]

Original synopsis of 'Philosopher's Stone'
From the Circle card on the Extra Stuff bulletin board and teacup in Rubbish. [ Details and transcription]

Rowling's description:
"The original synopsis of 'Philosophers Stone' which I sent out to Publishers and which kept winging its way back!
Revision of the plan of 'Order of the Phoenix'
From lightning bolt in the Extra Stuff bulletin board Clue: Peeves on the bookcase. [ Details and transcription]

Rowling's description:
"Part of the umpteenth revision of the plan of 'Order of the Phoenix'
Some of the Chapter Names changed and there are a few ideas that didn't make the final draft."
The Sneakoscope in Rubbish Bin moves aside after hovering over it to reveal a question mark. You then draw the question mark in the same place you drew the scar for the OotP plan.
The prize is a notes for professor names and subject names. (the reverse side of "More idle jottings (Page 1)") [ Details and transcription]
Early Draft Transcript
There is a two-item potion recipe that can be seen by peeling back part of the wallpaper in the secret room.
The prize is a short draft or a paragraph or two about Harry waking up in his dormitory after the feast and meeting Nearly Headless Nick for the first time. (the reverse side of "Page of doodlings (page 2)") [ Details and transcription]
Click here to see the entire Tips and Tricks for collecting the extras, very detailed instructions on gathering all the Potterania.

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Back to Desktop The scrapbook stores and displays the Potterania extras you've collected from working the tricks around the site. It appears when you click on the brown book at the very top of the desktop. This information is stored in a folder on your computer so that it "remembers" which ones you've collected.

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Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange

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Some years ago JK Rowling uploaded an early draft on her old website with the following caption:

"Very Early page of Philosopher's Stone written around 1991 and showing plot-line that was abandoned. Would have changed everything!"

Here's the image (transcription beneath):

"So this Flamel bloke found the Stone -" said Ron.
"No - he made it," said Harry, "He was an alchemist. Which means -"
"Someone who turns base metals into gold," said Hermione. She had that old proving-I-know-more-than-everyone-else look on her face, the other two noticed. "Of course. I read about this in 'Alchemy, Ancient Art and Science' by Argo Pyrites."
"I missed that one myself," muttered Ron.
"And of course it's some of the most difficult magic you can do. And you end up not just with pure gold but also with a funny stone thing -"
"Which is what I'm on about," said Harry, "The Philosopher's Stone, yes. And it works too. It kept Nicholas Flamel and his wife alive for about five hundred years."
" What?"
"I know," said Harry. "But it's true. He was spotted at the opera in Paris in 1762 and he was born back in 13 something."
Ron whistled.
"But he's dead now?" he asked.
"Of course," said Harry. "Someone stole his Stone so he couldn't make any more Elixir of Life, could he? It takes a while to make another Stone and by that time, I suppose, he was just too old to live without his Elixir until a new Stone was ready. And now I'll tell you something else really weird that I haven't told you up to now - the Stone was found in my parents' safe at Gringotts bank."
But instead of the interested noises Harry had expected, Ron and Hermione simply stared at him.
"What?" said Harry.
Ron cleared his throat, opened his mouth to speak but shut it again.
" What?" Harry said.
"Well, Harry," said Hermione. "I mean..."
"You mean what?"
He stared at them both as they shuffled their feet and tried not to look him in the eye.
"You don't think", he said suddenly and angrily, "That my parents stole the Stone?"
"Um..." said Ron.
"Look," said Harry furiously, "That's like saying they murdered Flamel..."
"Oh Harry, we never thought..."
"Not much, you didn't," said Harry. "I don't know how it got in there, but the Stone wasn't put there by them..."
"Right," said Ron quickly. "I'm sure you're right."
"There must be an obvious explanation," said Hermione.
Harry wasn't at all convinced that they meant it, but at that moment the bell rang which put an end to the conversation.
(Major kudos to Wampus from Reddit for the image and Sherlock+HarryPotter from Imgur for the transcription which I adapted).

The key differences between this draft and the finished book seem to be that, in this version:

Nicolas Flamel is already dead.

The Stone was kept in the Potter vault (not vault 713).

The Stone was stolen from Flamel at one point.

By implication, the Stone was stolen by Lily and James.

I suspect that when JK Rowling says that this page "would have changed everything" she's talking about more than the plot of the first book. The ramifications of this early draft seemingly would have altered the entire series and taken it in a totally different direction.

Yet what are those ramifications? What would it have changed? How would Lily and James owning the Stone have swung the series?

I'd be very interested in whether JK Rowling has clarified this point, or made any further comment on this draft.

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In what ways would this draft of The Philosopher's Stone have "changed everything"?

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Some years ago JK Rowling uploaded an early draft on her old website with the following caption: "Very Early page of Philosopher's Stone written around 1991 and showing plot-line that was abando...

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Original Book 1 Manuscript but Hard to Read

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Original Book 1 Manuscript but Hard to Read

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One of Newton's favorite maxims is "out of uncertainty comes discovery." But the chairman and chief executive of Bloomsbury had no inkling what a gold mine he had discovered when he offered J.K. Rowling a £2,500 advance ($4,700 at the current rate) for her first Harry Potter book. In fact, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and its four successors went on to earn more money within the next decade than just about any book except the Bible. "We hit it lucky," says Newton, whose accent hardly betrays his California upbringing.

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2005 STARS OF EUROPE -- MANAGERS It's not every exec who turns to his 8-year-old daughter for advice. But that's what publisher Nigel Newton did when he received a manuscript from an unknown children's author in 1997. The founder of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC handed Alice a sheaf of papers and asked her to read them. "She came down from her room an hour later glowing, saying: 'Dad, this is so much better than anything else,"' says the 49-year-old Newton. By John Lawless Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our

Nigel Newton
Chief Executive, Bloomsbury Publishing, Britain

One of Newton's favorite maxims is "out of uncertainty comes discovery." But the chairman and chief executive of Bloomsbury had no inkling what a gold mine he had discovered when he offered J.K. Rowling a £2,500 advance ($4,700 at the current rate) for her first Harry Potter book. In fact, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and its four successors went on to earn more money within the next decade than just about any book except the Bible. "We hit it lucky," says Newton, whose accent hardly betrays his California upbringing.

How lucky? On July 16, Bloomsbury will publish the sixth "HP," as the books are known in the industry. How much
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will add to the 260 million Potter books sold worldwide so far is anyone's guess. But one analyst is betting that Bloomsbury's profits will jump 23% this year, to $38 million, on sales of $188 million. Its shares have soared 42% in the past 12 months in anticipation of another best-seller.
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Is there life after HP? That's the question dogging Newton now. Rowling has already said that she will retire Harry after book seven. To prepare for that eventuality, Newton is pumping some of his HP windfall into acquisitions. In 2004 he paid $6.4 million for Walker & Co., a New York publisher with a solid list of children's titles, and the year before that he snapped up Berlin Verlag, the German publisher of prize-winning authors such as Nadine Gordimer and Richard Ford. With a presence in two of the world's top publishing markets, Bloomsbury will no longer need to license the foreign rights to some of its top-selling titles. (Scholastic Inc. ( SCHL ) retains the U.S. rights to the Harry Potter books.) "It increases the return to us by a factor of four," says Newton, who started as an assistant to the sales director at Macmillan Publishers Ltd. in 1979.

The tall, bespectacled Newton will spend July 16 watching first-day sales, hoping to beat the all-time record set by HP5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As always, secrecy will be key. One U.S. bookseller who dared to leak HP5's plot to a newspaper on the eve of publication was condemned to a future of delayed deliveries. "The marketing of Harry Potter has been based on protecting our story in advance so that children can discover it for themselves," says Newton. Even Alice, now 16, will have to wait until publication day to learn of Harry's latest adventures, along with the rest of us Muggles.

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Chief Executive, Bloomsbury Publishing, Britain

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A guide to the Harry Potter novels : Eccleshare, Julia : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J.K. Rowling First Edition Signed

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J.K. Rowling First Edition Signed

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Raptis Rare Books | Fine Rare and Antiquarian First Edition Books for Sale

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ROWLING, J.K.

Item Number: 124950

London: Bloomsbury, 1997.

First edition, first printing of the rarest book in the Harry Potter series, a cornerstone of young adult literature, and one of the best-selling books of all time. First printing with "First published in Great Britain in 1997", the full number line "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1", "Joanne Rowling" for "J.K. Rowling", and "Thomas Taylor1997" (lacking the space) on the copyright page and "1 wand" listed twice (as the first item and last item) on the "Other Equipment" list on page 53. Octavo, original illustrated boards, without a dust jacket as issued. In fine condition. Only 500 copies of the first printing were published, 300 of which were distributed directly to libraries. An exceptional example, easily one of the nicest examples extant.

The first novel in the Harry Potter series and Rowling's debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The book was first published in the United Kingdom on June 26, 1997 by Bloomsbury and in the United States the following year by Scholastic Corporation under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The book reached the top of the New York Times list of best-selling fiction in August 1999 and stayed near the top of that list for much of 1999 and 2000. It has sold in excess of 120 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. The majority of reviews of the popular book were favorable, revering Rowling's imagination, humor, simple, direct style and clever plot construction. Rowling's style has been compared to that of Jane Austen (her favorite author), Roald Dahl (whose works dominated children's stories before the appearance of Harry Potter), and even the Ancient Greek story-teller Homer. The first book in the series was followed by six sequels published on an annual basis between 1997 and 2000. The series has sold more that 500 million copies worldwide and has been ​translated into 80 languages, ​making it the best-selling book series in history and among history's most translated literary works.​ The last four books in the series consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books of all time, where the final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, sold roughly fifteen million copies worldwide within twenty-four hours of its release. With twelve million books printed in the first U.S. run, it also holds the record for the highest initial print run for any book in history. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was adapted into the 2001 fantasy film of the same name directed by Chris Columbus, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, and starring Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger. Warner Bros. bought the film rights to the book in 1999 for a reported £1 million ($1.65 million) and the film was released in November 2001 in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada and Taiwan. It was a critical and commercial success, grossing $974 million at the box office worldwide during its initial run, and over $1 billion with subsequent re-releases. It became the highest-grossing film of 2001 and remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time. It was followed by seven sequels beginning with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002 and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 in 2011, nearly ten years after the first film's release.

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J.K. Rowling First Edition Signed

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Item Number: 124950 London: Bloomsbury, 1997. First edition, first printing of the rarest book in the Harry Potter series, a cornerstone of young adult literature, and one of the best-selling books of all time. First printing with "First published in Great Britain in 1997", the full number line "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1", "Joanne Rowling" for "J.K.

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Bought for 38 Cents, Rare Harry Potter Book Could Sell for Thousands

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Bought for 38 Cents, Rare Harry Potter Book Could Sell for Thousands

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HOW MANY BOOKS WERE IN ORIGINAL PRINT RUN

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Today, Harry Potter is a household name-but the Boy Who Lived wasn't always so famous. When author J.K. Rowling first started shopping the magical series around to book publishers, she faced rejection after rejection.

Eventually, though, one publishing house-Bloomsbury-agreed to print 500 hardback copies in 1997 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which follows the adventures of an 11-year-old boy with a distinctive scar on his forehead. Of those original copies, 300 went to public libraries. (The title became Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when the book was released in the United States in 1998.)

Now, one of those rare first-edition library books is going up for auction-and it could fetch between £3,000 ($3,800) and £5,000 ($6,300), according to Richard Winterton Auctioneers, which is offering up the copy during a sale that begins on July 10.

If the book fetches that much, its owners will make a sizable profit. An unidentified man-a collector who lived in Staffordshire-purchased it for the equivalent of 38 cents from a library in Wolverhampton, England, after it was removed from circulation. Earlier this year, he died unexpectedly at age 55.

This man had started purchasing books and memorabilia when he was still attending school, often scouring church fairs and garage sales for unique finds. Then, he'd either sell the items to second-hand shops or trade them with friends.

His family knew he had a rare Harry Potter book in his collection, but they didn't know where he kept it. After his death, they hired the auction company to help search through hundreds of boxes of his belongings-and eventually, they found it.

"We knew that he had got the book, but if you asked him to pinpoint it he couldn't," says the man's sister in a statement from the auction house. "So for the last four years this book has been 'lost,' and I think we had come to the conclusion that it had disappeared into the ether somewhere."

"Now it's come to light again," she adds, "we, as a family, are quite excited."

The book has seen better days, but it's still considered valuable because of its rarity and Harry Potter's continued popularity. The auction house settled on the relatively low pre-auction price range because of the book's "much-loved condition," but it noted that other specimens have sold for much more at past auctions.

In December 2022, a signed copy of the same book that was never released to the public brought in £8,000 ($10,000). And in March of last year, a first edition that had never been read and was kept out of sunlight for 25 years sold for £69,000 (nearly $90,000).

According to the British broadcaster ITV, the owner of that copy had nearly returned it, believing its dust jacket was missing (he later learned that this edition didn't come with a dust jacket). But he held onto it, and soon after the purchase, his daughter asked if she could read it. "I said no, absolutely not. Instead, I bought her another copy," he told ITV.

The book going to auction this month isn't in such pristine condition, but it still has its library barcode inside, as well as the sale price. It also contains several errors: On the back cover, the letter "o" is missing from the word "philosopher's." And on page 53, in a list of school supplies Harry must bring to Hogwarts, the phrase "1 wand" appears twice.

As auctioneer Richard Winterton says in the auction house's statement, "It has clearly been well-read, which is most befitting of one of the initial run of books which helped fuel the early popularity of Potter-which, of course, rapidly evolved into a global phenomenon."

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Bought for 38 Cents, Rare Harry Potter Book Could Sell for Thousands

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This first-edition copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is one of only 500 hardback copies printed

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Harry Potter books are the best-selling fantasy book series of all time and the best-selling books series overall, having sold over 500 million books worldwide, in front of the Goosebumps and Perry Mason series.

The series has sold an estimated 180 million books in the USA.

There are over 1 million words (1,084,170) in the Harry Potter book series.

How many copies has each book sold?

How many copies of Harry Potter were sold in the first year?

Initially, 500 copies were published in hardcover

200 were sold, and 300 went to libraries

Author, JK Rowling, received a $4,000 advance

Within two years, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone sold more than 300,000 copies in the UK

US rights and initial sales

Scholastic bought the US rights for $105,000

It was the most Scholastic had ever paid an author for a children's book

Scholastic changed "philosopher" to "sorcerer" in the title to make it more child friendly

It was released in October 1998

In December 1998, it hit the New York Times bestseller list for the first time.

It stayed on the list for 82 consecutive weeks.

The Goblet of Fire, the fourth book, was the first time the book was released at the same time in the USA and the UK

Our new Word Finder tool and Word Lists help curious intellectuals to improve their vocabulary and win against friends in games like Scrabble, Words with Friends and even Wordle.
Harry Potter sales records

In 2018, sales went past 500 million worldwide

In the US, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire sold 3 million copies on its first weekend

From then on, each book broke sales records set by the previous book

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours

The Deathly Hallows, the fastest-selling fiction book in history, sold 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours - that's 96 books per second

The first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is the best-selling book in the series, with 120 million copies sold worldwide

The 8 movies have grossed over $9 billion at the box office worldwide

The Harry Potter franchise and everything that goes with it is believed to have made sales of over $25bn

Every book made #1 on the USA Today bestseller list

All the books spent a combined total of 1,739 weeks on the USA Today best-seller list

The series spent 10 consecutive on the New York Times best-seller list.

JK Rowling was the highest-paid author in the world in 2016, she made $95 million

The franchise now includes extended universe movies (Fantastic Beasts,) theme parks, and a Broadway play.

Harry Potter cultural significance

A US survey found:

18% of people have read all of the Harry Potter books

31% have read at least one of the books

Among 18-34 years-olds, 32% have read all the books, and 48% have sold at least one

25% of Americans had seen all of the movies, and 61% had seen at least one

When was each Harry Potter book first published?

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

26 June 1997

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

2 July 1998

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

8 July 1999

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

8 July 2000

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

21 June 2003

Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince

16 July 2005

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

21 July 2007

How long are the Harry Potter books?

What awards did Harry Potter books and JK Rowling win?

How many languages has Harry Potter been translated into?

The books have officially been translated into 80 distinct languages.

What makes up the Harry Potter franchise?

The Harry Potter franchise is made up of 7 core books, 3 supplementary or extended universe books, 1 play, and 10 movies.

7 core Harry Potter books (in order):

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

6. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

3 supplementary books:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Quidditch Through the Ages

The Tales of Beedle The Bard

1 play: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

10 movies (in order):

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

6. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

9. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

10. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

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Harry Potter books are the best-selling fantasy book series of all time and the best-selling books series overall, having sold over 500 million books worldwide, in front of the Goosebumps and Perry Mason series. The series has sold an estimated 180 million books in the USA.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone | Awards & Grants

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HP Award List -- not sure if it's comphrensive

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HP Award List -- not sure if it's comphrensive

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Harry Potter Book Awards - The-Leaky-Cauldron.org

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Awards, Accolades and Applause The following are just some of the awards the Harry Potter books have received¦ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone: NestlÃ© Smarties Book Prize 1997 Gold Medal 9-11 years FCBG Children’s Book Award 1997 Overall winner and Longer Novel Category Birmingham Cable Children’s Book Award 1997 Young Telegraph Paperback of ...read more!

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Here's How J.K. Rowling's First Agent Knew 'Harry Potter' Was A Smash Hit

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Here's How J.K. Rowling's First Agent Knew 'Harry Potter' Was A Smash Hit

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More so than a collection of stories, the "Harry Potter" series can be characterized by its most devoted fans as a hobby, or a lifestyle. The increasingly voluminous installments were hefty enough to get lost in, and they managed to create not only a convincing world, but lovable characters, too.

It's hard to imagine a world in which the books (and films, and video games, and personality quizzes) might not have been published. But, according to J.K. Rowling's first agent Christopher Little, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was not an easy sell.

Little told HuffPost over email that Rowling selected him as her agent in part due to his name, which she liked. He was, in turn, enamored of her story, believing after reading it that it was ready to be sent out to publishers, requiring few big changes. (The rules of Quidditch, however, were altered.)

Below, Little describes the experience of trying to sell a book he believed in ― in spite of publishers' protestations that it was too long or too "exclusive."

When Rowling first found an agent, he compared her world-building talent to Tolkien's.

"When I received the submission from Joanne (as she was known at the time) Rowling, it just came in as an unsolicited submission (of the first three chapters) and was picked up by our then office manager who was looking through the slush pile," he said. "She liked it and bought it to my attention. Once I read it, I had no reservations whatsoever and in fact felt very excited about it.

"It was clearly presented as a fully realized world [...] I don't think I recall reading anything so immersive since The Lord of the Rings many years earlier. We quickly wrote back to Jo asking to see the rest of the manuscript as soon as I had finished those initial chapters."

Rowling chose to write under the name "J.K." in order to appeal to young boy readers.

"The suggestion to use initials instead of J.K. Rowling's given name, Joanne, came from discussion with Bloomsbury. It's notoriously harder to get boys to read in comparison with girls, as many parents will know, and an author being obviously female was more likely to be off-putting to boys. Joanne selected the 'K' after her paternal grandmother."

Rowling only made a few changes before sending it out to publishers.

"There were very minor differences in the full manuscript that was received and that which was sent to the publishers - I do recall that the Quidditch rules were tweaked a bit!"

The book was rejected over and over again before it found a home.

"Over a period of nigh on a year, the book was turned down by more or less every major publishing house in the U.K. Various reasons were given including the story being too long, the fact that a story set in a children's boarding school might feel too 'exclusive' to many readers, etc.

"When I first spoke to Barry Cunningham, who had at that time recently been hired to run the new children's department at Bloomsbury Publishing, the book was accepted and an offer was made. He saw the same potential as I did ― perhaps as we both came from a background other than publishing originally, so arguably thought slightly less conventionally and considered this well-characterized, unique story as one that clearly should be published despite such considerations."

From June 1 to 30, HuffPost is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the very first "Harry Potter" book by reminiscing about all things Hogwarts. Accio childhood memories.

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Here's How J.K. Rowling's First Agent Knew 'Harry Potter' Was A Smash Hit

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You're going to love this, "Harry Potter" fans.

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Michael Winerip reviews children’s book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J K Rowling; drawing (M)

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KIRKUS REVIEW

In a rousing first novel, already an award-winner in England, Harry is just a baby when his magical parents are done in by Voldemort, a wizard so dastardly other wizards are scared to mention his name.

So Harry is brought up by his mean Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia Dursley, and picked on by his horrid cousin Dudley. He knows nothing about his magical birthright until ten years later, when he learns he's to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hogwarts is a lot like English boarding school, except that instead of classes in math and grammar, the curriculum features courses in Transfiguration, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Harry becomes the star player of Quidditch, a sort of mid-air ball game. With the help of his new friends Ron and Hermione, Harry solves a mystery involving a sorcerer's stone that ultimately takes him to the evil Voldemort. This hugely enjoyable fantasy is filled with imaginative details, from oddly flavored jelly beans to dragons' eggs hatched on the hearth.

It's slanted toward action-oriented readers, who will find that Briticisms meld with all the other wonders of magic school. (Fiction. 10-14)

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HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE by J.K. Rowling | Kirkus Reviews

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In a rousing first novel, already an award-winner in England, Harry is just a baby when his magical parents are done in by Voldemort, a wizard so dastardly other wizards are scared to mention his name. So Harry is brought up by his mean Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia Dursley, and picked on by his horrid cousin Dudley.

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Readers are in for a delightful romp with this award-winning debut from a British author who dances in the footsteps of P.L. Travers and Roald Dahl. As the story opens, mysterious goings-on ruffle the self-satisfied suburban world of the Dursleys, culminating in a trio of strangers depositing the Dursleys' infant nephew Harry in a basket on their doorstep. After 11 years of disregard and neglect at the hands of his aunt, uncle and their swinish son Dudley, Harry suddenly receives a visit from a giant named Hagrid, who informs Harry that his mother and father were a witch and a wizard, and that he is to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry himself. Most surprising of all, Harry is a legend in the witch world for having survived an attack by the evil sorcerer Voldemort, who killed his parents and left Harry with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. And so the fun begins, with Harry going off to boarding school like a typical English kid--only his supplies include a message-carrying owl and a magic wand. There is enchantment, suspense and danger galore (as well as enough creepy creatures to satisfy the most bogeymen-loving readers, and even a magical game of soccerlike Quidditch to entertain sports fans) as Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione plumb the secrets of the forbidden third floor at Hogwarts to battle evil and unravel the mystery behind Harry's scar. Rowling leaves the door wide open for a sequel; bedazzled readers will surely clamor for one. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling

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Readers are in for a delightful romp with this award-winning debut from a British author who dances in the footsteps of P.L. Tra...

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Why Harry Potter doesn't cast a spell over me- 2000 NEGATIVE REVIEW

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Why Harry Potter doesn't cast a spell over me- 2000 NEGATIVE REVIEW

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Stay home on Saturday week. The nation's high streets will be mobbed by parents and children stampeding to obtain not the latest faddish toy or computer game or movie spin-off merchandise, but a book. You know, one of those old-fashioned things, pre-audiobooks and e-novels, with lots of words printed on crisp white pages snugly bound between hard covers.

In any other circumstances, this would be cause for stunned rejoicing. The book is not dead, long live the book, etc. But, frankly, it depends on the book. If people were fighting to buy Seamus Heaney's sizzling translation of Beowulf, or David Cairns's riproaring biography of Berlioz, or even my own action-packed life of Shakespeare, I would naturally be uncorking champagne and running jaunty standards up the nation's literary flagpoles.

But it's not. Harry Potter and the Doom Spell Tournament is less a book than a phenomenon. A marketing phenomenon. Haven't Bloomsbury sold enough copies of J.K. Rowlings's three volumes so far without resorting to advance hype worthy of a Wonderbra? Have they no faith in their product's ability to sell on its merits?

Anticipation has been carefully heightened by shrouding the plot in secrecy, beyond the tantalising titbit that one of the characters dies. No review copies have been sent out. The author has given no interviews. After publication a private train will carry her around the country (a privilege once accorded that other noted author, Edward Heath) to sign copies. Come on, guys, why not just sell it as a book rather than hype it like a Spice Girls CD?

Maybe, in truth, because it isn't a very good one. I brave the wrath of millions by daring to say so, but it really doesn't take a high-minded killjoy to worry what these books are doing to the literary taste of millions of potential young readers. Bloomsbury's stock value has trebled since Potter joined its list. As its marketing men think up catchy new sales ploys for the remaining three volumes, they hide behind such worthy, apparently unassailable slogans as 'Anything that gets children reading has to be A Good Thing'.

Call me a super-Muggle, but I beg to differ. As a workout for the brain, reading (or being read) Harry Potter is an activity marginally less testing than watching Neighbour s. And that, at least, is vaguely about real life. These are one-dimensional children's books, Disney cartoons written in words, no more.

It is an interesting paradox that the more popular (or bestselling) an adult book, viz a Barbara Cartland or Jeffrey Archer, the less likely it is to be considered literature, while the popularity of a children's book sees big literary claims being made on its behalf. In the case of Harry Potter the mere suggestion is plain embarrassing.

I would be highly unlikely to have read any of J.K. Rowling's series for children had I not been required (and paid) to read the third instalment, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , as a judge of this year's Whitbread book awards. I duly found myself amazed.

Eager to see what all the fuss was about, I had looked forward to enjoying a magical ride through some thrillingly original fantasy world, on a par with such children's classics as Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island or Peter Pan, which gently question the values of the adult world from a child's point of view. Instead I found myself struggling to finish a tedious, clunkily written version of Billy Bunter on broomsticks.

Several of the Whitbread judges agreed with me. Compared with Jacqueline Wilson's The Illustrated Mum , a slice of real contemporary life which credits its young readers with some interest in the complex world around them, the Potter saga was essentially patronising, very conservative, highly derivative, dispiritingly nostalgic for a bygone Britain which only ever existed at Greyfriars and St Trinian's. And we were, after all, judging an award for writing, not for marketing.

As others leaked my own remarks in the supposed secrecy of the Whitbread judging room, I have few qualms in revealing that Wilson deservedly looked like beating Rowling to the children's book award - thus becoming eligible for Book of the Year - until the majority voting system was suddenly changed in mid-meeting. As most judges' second choice, Potter squeaked home, thus entering the final round for the £20,000 overall prize

Whitbread's global rules had also been altered in advance this year, to make the victorious children's book eligible for Book of the Year alongside the winning works of fiction, biography and poetry. All our antennae were thus alerted to another potential marketing coup for Harry Potter. But it wasn't that which moved me to a protest that made unlikely headlines the next day. It was astonishment that anyone could even begin to hold Rowling's work in the same regard as Heaney's or Cairns's. I was not prepared to lend my name to such faux-naif folly, and said so. All populist hell broke loose.

At my most embattled (but before I was called a 'pompous prat' on television), I was alarmed to hear two of the celebrity judges, Jerry Hall and Imogen Stubbs, testifying how much their chil dren enjoyed being read Potter. Were their children, I snorted, to be allowed to choose the Book of the Year? 'You should be reading them Beowulf,' I snapped testily. 'It's much the same sort of stuff, heroes taking on dragons and all that, but the language is far more exciting.' To their credit, Hall and Stubbs politely agreed with me, promised to read their children Heaney, and wound up helping him carry the day. Just.

By that weekend the nation seemed to be suffering a collective nervous breakdown, as the Sunday papers debated whether we are a Beowulf Britain or a Harry Potter Britain. We are, of course, neither. We are a country with dramatically declining standards of literacy, increasingly dragged down to the lowest common denominator by the purveyors of all forms of mindless mass entertainment. The success of the Potter books is just another dispiriting proof of the Murdoch-led dumbing down of all our lives, or what Hensher called 'the infantilisation of adult culture'.

Having gritted my teeth and struggled through the first two before passing sentence, I remain dumbstruck at their huge popularity. The first three books have sold 21 million copies in the US and a further seven million in Britain and the English speaking-world.

Good luck, say I, to Joanne Rowling, who with the help of the marketing men has made a fortune already estimated at £15 million, expected to double once Steven Spielberg makes the movies. I warm to the modest way in which she appears to have handled her huge success, sensibly keeping as low a public profile as possible.

She has also, apparently, been persuaded to endure the indignity of hiding behind her initials to spare young male readers the embarrassment of enjoying a book by a woman. And it is not, I suspect, her fault that the Potter mythology misrepresents a middle-class, university-educated writer who chose to leave her Portuguese husband as an abandoned working-class mother toiling away in a Scottish garret.

What I do object to is a pedestrian, ungrammatical prose style which has left me with a headache and a sense of a wasted opportunity. If Rowling is blessed with this magic gift of tapping into young minds, I can only wish she had made better use of it. Her characters, unlike life's, are all black-and-white . Her story-lines are predictable, the suspense minimal, the sentimentality cloying every page. (Did Harry, like so many child-heroes before him, HAVE to be yet another poignant orphan?)

Even more depressing is the feeble cop-out of this resourceful single parent mum, on welfare while writing the first book, in sending her oh so generic, Molesworthian hero to a good old private English boarding school. Why on earth couldn't Hogwarts (the name is indicative of the reach of her imagination) have been a comprehensive, or an embattled secondary modern or a solid old-fashioned grammar - a school of the kind with which most of those millions of young readers can identify?

Why, in the weariest tradition of English children's literature from Tom Brown's Schooldays on, did she have to send Harry to a neo-Dotheboys Hall, complete with such arcane rituals as weirdly named hierarchies and home grown sports with incomprehensible rules? Much of the Potter saga could have been written in the Fifties, as Suzanne Moore has pointed out: 'What child do you know these days who eats rock cakes and talks about galoshes? No wonder they love it in the States.' Ye olde fairy-tale England, with real Tudor beams and a Queen who rides around in a horse-drawn golden coach: that is not just how the rest of the world still sees us, it is how Potterites would have us see ourselves.

These are some of the reasons why I said, during and after the Whitbread judging, that a victory for Harry Potter 'would have sent out a signal to the world, like the monarchy and the Dome, that Britain is a country that refuses to grow up and take itself seriously'. I did not, as reported, further argue that children's books cannot be great literature. Of course they can, if they are well-written, stretch the reader's imagination and open virgin minds to the magical powers of words.

For all the long shadows of its various villains, the world of Harry Potter is essentially a familiar and thus safe one for young readers to roam in. Their thrill at the smell of danger is carefully controlled by the certainty that virtue will prevail - no Roald Dahl-type risks for Rowling - and their minds unstretched by any reflective pauses in the breathless narrative, any encouragement to assess the rights and wrongs of what is going on.

Not that Potter's world offers much scope to moral philosophers. Harry's dead parents were uncomplicatedly good. His wicked uncle and aunt are unequivocally bad, like the super-villain Lord Voldemort. Given their unadorned prose style, these books wind up reading themselves. They are not teaching children the joys of literature any more than they are challenging them to question the supposed certainties of their daily lives.

Children's literature is what it is: the invention of a captivating alternative world in which, at its best, home truths about adult behaviour are glimpsed through the eyes of innocence. Harry Potter offers no such transcendent adventure. He is a children's hero for our culturally impoverished times, rating escapism above enlightenment.

I wish I could hope that Rowling's new volume will prove me wrong, that she has taken her audience captive only to lift them, at the midpoint of her saga, from the banal realms in which they are rooted to a wonderworld where their souls can soar. On the evidence so far, that seems highly unlikely. As Harry approaches puberty - the series is scheduled to cover seven teenage years - he will no doubt turn into a spotty little wizard who eventually gets the girl.

As for the 150,000 adults who paid extra to buy the same books in grown-up dustjackets, to avoid embarrassment when reading them in public (or perhaps even at home), well, get a life. I commend unto you the words of George Walden: 'The Harry Potter books are what they are: tales for children. Unlike Alice in Wonderland , or Just William , or The Simpsons , which can be enjoyed by all ages because they are so finely written and work on so many levels, the Harry Potter books work on just one.'

Volume One begins with the sentence: 'Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.' Any adult who is not stopped in their tracks by that cutesy 'thank you very much', is presumably a Beano subscriber clutching a comfort blanket. Getting in touch with your inner child is all very well, but reluctance to put away childish things is, as another bestseller long ago suggested, rather more worrisome. One can only pray that, having grown up with Harry Potter, his millions of young fans don't spend the rest of their lives stuck in a scary timewarp. There is, as a grown-up writer once put it, a world elsewhere.

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Why Harry Potter doesn't cast a spell over me

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J.K. Rowling's new blockbuster will be a monster hit worldwide. But just how good is the Harry Potter series?

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NEW YORK -- There are a lot of great things about being the Man Who Brought Harry Potter to America: You don't have to care about the latest Potter movie (which opened last night at midnight), for example, or the bazillion-copy print run for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (on sale July 21) or the Harry Potter theme park scheduled to go into competition with Disney World as early as 2009.

"The fact that there's a theme park has no effect on my life," Arthur Levine says.

Don't get him wrong: The veteran children's book editor -- who has his own imprint at Scholastic and who, in 1997, famously took a flyer on the first book by a British unknown named Joanne Rowling -- is far from ungrateful for the ridiculously pervasive cultural phenomenon Harry Potter has become. "That's what you want for every great book," he says. "To have an audience and have people talking about it."

Still, when Pottermania threatened to overwhelm the work that sparked it, Levine did what he had to do.

As an editor, he defines his job as finding writers whose work he loves, helping them write the best books they can and publishing them well.

"At some point I needed to pay a little bit less attention to the phenomenon," he says. "I'm not responsible for the phenomenon.

"I'm responsible for the books."

* * *

Walk into Scholastic's Soho offices and you get a dose of Harry the Phenomenon right away. Above the first-floor security desk, a video loop trumpets the seventh and last Potter book with a series of heavy-breathing questions:

"WILL HOGWARTS REOPEN?"

"IS SNAPE GOOD OR EVIL?"

"WHO WILL LIVE, WHO WILL DIE?"

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The Wizardly Editor Who Caught the Golden Snitch

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Get style news headlines from The Washington Post, including entertainment news, comics, horoscopes, crossword, TV, Dear Abby. arts/theater, Sunday Source and weekend section. Washington Post columnists, movie/book reviews, Carolyn Hax, Tom Shales.

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THESE ARE FROM 2000s MOSTLY

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On June 26, 1997, British publishing company Bloomsbury took a risk and released a book titled "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." The author, an unknown writer named Joanne Rowling, had sent the manuscript to 12 different publishers before Bloomsbury picked it up. They said boys wouldn't want to read a book written by a woman, so they encouraged her to go by her initials. Joanne Rowling adopted Katherine, her grandmother's name, as her middle name, and published her first novel as J.K. Rowling. Her agent warned her she would "never make a fortune out of writing children's books."

The original print run was for only 500 copies, 300 of which were sent directly to libraries. In 2007, one of those original copies sold for $18,000 at auction. In 2013, another first edition-this one with handwritten commentary and 22 original illustrations from J.K. Rowling-went for just shy of a quarter of a million dollars in a charity auction. More than 400 million copies of the "Harry Potter" books have been sold worldwide.

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was wildly successful in the U.K. and quickly started accruing awards. Scholastic Publishing optioned the book for release in the United States, and in September 2008, they released "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." (The name was changed after Scholastic raised concerns that kids wouldn't want to read a book about a philosopher.)

Since then, of course, Harry Potter has become a worldwide phenomenon. Rowling's book-written in her spare time while she was a single mother living on welfare-has inspired eight movies and its own (with another in the works). It's also inspired , a trove of fan fiction, inspirational speeches, and more than a few themed weddings.

Oh, and it's made Rowling richer than the Queen of England.

Obviously the book did well with customers and book reviewers. Publishers Weekly called it "a delightful romp" and loved the "magical game of soccer-like Quidditch." The New York Times said it was "full of wonderful, sly humor" and had "impressively three-dimensional" characters who "move seamlessly through the narrative."

But not everyone was convinced. Like anything that achieves major cultural status, Harry Potter had his share of haters. (He also had a big fan in the libertarian community-scroll to the bottom to see a fan letter to the "golden galleon standard.") To wish Harry Potter a happy 17th anniversary of his initial publication, we're taking a look back at some of the most bizarre reviews he received.
The Guardian, "Why Harry Potter doesn't cast a spell over me," June 2000
Surprise! An old white British man thought Harry Potter books sucked and that they were actively contributing to the downfall of society.
"As a workout for the brain, reading (or being read) Harry Potter is an activity marginally less testing than watching Neighbours. And that, at least, is vaguely about real life. These are one-dimensional children's books, Disney cartoons written in words, no more. Christianity Today, "The Perils of Harry Potter," October 2000
The secondary headline for this story is "Literary device or not, witchcraft is real - and dangerous." The author goes on to compare writing a book about magic to teaching kids to drink rat poison. No, .
"Though the parallels (between drinking rat poison and Rowling's books) are hardly exact, this is what we're talking about regarding the Harry Potter series. We're taking something deadly from our world and turning it into what some are calling 'merely a literary device.' Regardless of how magic is portrayed in the series, we need to remember that witchcraft in real life can and does lead to death-the forever and ever kind.
Incidentally, AskJeeves.com still exists, and the first result hasn't changed since 2000. Which is probably why no one has used AskJeeves since then.
Catholic Education Resource Center, "Not Quite Narnia: The Harry Potter books in review," December 1999
In a surprising move for the Catholics, this website for parents and educators took a more measured approach to the accusations of real witchcraft in the wizarding world. But they didn't like it anyways.
"Despite the potential minefield of occultism, one has to breathe very deeply to get a whiff of real paganism here. The witchcraft in Potter's world is the 'trick-or-treat' sort. Wizardry is an occupation, not a religion. But if you aren't keen on today's commercialized version of Halloween, you won't enjoy the Harry Potter stories either. "In fact, the failure of author J.K. Rowling's world is that it is pure cotton candy. Her books are entertaining but the lessons are shallow. Rare lines such as, 'It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities,' - are shoehorned painfully into the dialogue. Besides, the chief motivation for most characters in the books, including Harry, appears to be revenge, whether it's getting back at Lord Voldemort or the school bully. The Wall Street Journal, "Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.", July 2000
Harold Bloom's scorching criticism of the Potter books is a literary legend in and of itself. Much like the old white guy who wrote the review for The Guardian, Bloom says that in HIS DAY, books were real books, not fun things children might like to read. His favorite part was when Harry almost died.
"Though the book is not well written, that is not in itself a crucial liability. It is much better to see the movie, 'The Wizard of Oz,' than to read the book upon which it was based, but even the book possessed an authentic imaginative vision. 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' does not, so that one needs to look elsewhere for the book's (and its sequels') remarkable success. "How to read 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'? Why, very quickly, to begin with, perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do." BONUS REVIEW: The Foundation for Economic Freedom, "Why Classical Liberals Should Love Harry Potter," December 2000
The Foundation for Economic Freedom is a libertarian organization. ("Classical liberal" is code for libertarian, more or less.) This is actually a very positive review of the book-though, ideologically, a bit of a stretch.
"The Potter books are, despite Bloom's criticism, great fun to read. Rowling is also the best known 'welfare to work' story I've heard in quite some time. The first book was written (supposedly on napkins) in coffee shops in Britain while the single mother was on welfare-she's now obviously become quite wealthy. But those aren't the reasons classical liberals should love these books. "Classical liberals should love Harry Potter because there are three strikingly classical liberal features of the wizarding world. The first is its banking and monetary system. Really. Wizards do not use ordinary English fiat currency, instead their money supply is based on precious metals. Gold Galleons, Silver Sickles, and Copper Knuts are the basis of wizarding commercial transactions. And there are lots of those transactions-despite their powers, wizards must buy most of the things they need from the private sector. Wizards keep their money in Gringotts, a private bank run by goblins who are quite ruthless in protecting the money entrusted to their care. "The second classical liberal feature is the extent to which commerce is presented favorably. True, Uncle Vernon's business career, like everything else about Uncle Vernon, is not exactly gripping stuff. But the most exciting places in the wizarding world are Diagon Alley, the wizard shopping zone in London, and Hogsmeade, the only all-wizard village in England, which is crammed to the gills with fascinating shops. Harry's friends, George and Fred Weasley, aspire to open a shop themselves, selling wizarding jokes, rather than follow their brother and father into government. Sporting broomsticks are manufactured competitively, and new models are brought out as regularly as new cars are in the Muggle world. "Most important, however, is the role of the government. Wizards don't have much to do with Muggles, and so most of the British government has little relevance to the lives of wizards-truly a fantasy situation. Nonetheless, there is a Ministry of Magic, headed by a wizard minister. What is amazing-remember these are books by a former welfare mother-is that the ministry does almost nothing. Its primary focus is preventing Muggles from figuring out that there are wizards living among them-allowing the wizards to live in peace. No anti-discrimination laws, no quotas for magical folks-just memory charms to make Muggles who stumble on the wizards forget they are there.
So, to conclude, early readers thought Harry Potter was poorly written, destined to be forgotten, full of deadly witchcraft, and possibly some sort of Ron Paul propaganda. It hasn't quite lived up to those things, but it does occupy a very special place in millions of readers' hearts. Happy anniversary, Harry!

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The 4 Worst Initial Reviews of 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'

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On June 26, 1997, British publishing company Bloomsbury took a risk and released a book titled "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." The author, an unknown writer named Joanne Rowling, had sent the manuscript to 12 different publishers before Bloomsbury picked it up.

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Loer, Stephanie. "All about Harry Potter from quidditch to the future of the Sorting Hat," The Boston Globe, October 18, 1999

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Loer, Stephanie. "All about Harry Potter from quidditch to the future of the Sorting Hat," The Boston Globe, October 18, 1999

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Harry Potter and the Triumph of Scholastic 

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Harry Potter and the Triumph of Scholastic 

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Not since ''Gone With the Wind'' has a best-selling book swept the nation the way Harry Potter has, the booksellers say. The first three titles dominated best-seller lists last year and have already racked up sales of more than 18 million copies in the United States alone. With the publication of the fourth, Harry Potter has become a phenomenon in both book publishing and children's culture. For the moment, the hottest trend at elementary schools and summer camps is not a video game or a movie -- it is an old-fashioned, ink-and-paper book.

''There has never been anything like this is the history of book selling,'' said Steve Riggio, vice chairman of Barnes & Noble. ''I think this could be the most profitable book we ever sold; if we can get kids hooked on a seven-book series, hopefully we could get them hooked on reading for life.'

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Harry Potter Magic Halts Bedtime for Youngsters (Published 2000)

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Parents and children make trek to bookstores nationwide in night of bedtime amnesty to capitalize on enormous pent-up demand for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, fourth volume in popular Harry Potter book series by J K Rowling that goes on sale immediately after midnight; photo (M)

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SCHOLASTIC MARKS 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE PUBLICATION OF J.K. ROWLING’S HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE

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SCHOLASTIC MARKS 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE PUBLICATION OF J.K. ROWLING’S HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling was published in the U.S. in September 1998 with a 50,000 copy first printing.

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(New York, NY - February 6, 2023) September 2023 will mark twenty-five years since American readers were first introduced to the "boy who lived." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling was published in the U.S. in September 1998 with a 50,000 copy first printing. Seven books later, the Harry Potter series has sold 230 million copies in the U.S., 600 million worldwide, making it the bestselling book series of all time.

To kick off the 25-year milestone anniversary this year, and in time for summer reading, Scholastic will release the classic paperback editions of the first seven Harry Potter books with refreshed covers in May, followed by a new boxed set in September. Emblazoned with the iconic Harry Potter logo hand-drawn by original U.S. illustrator Mary GrandPré, sharp-eyed readers and fans will spot intricate details and "Easter eggs" in the gold foiled borders on the covers.

"The Harry Potter series has been responsible for inspiring and engaging young readers here and around the world for twenty-five years. From midnight parties to Muggle Walls, we've seen firsthand the excitement and the power of J.K. Rowling's brilliant storytelling, with themes of friendship and family, all still relevant today. Here's to the next twenty-five years of reading magic!" said Ellie Berger, President, Scholastic Trade.

In celebration of reading and to introduce the books to a new generation of readers, Scholastic is creating thousands of Harry Potter celebratory kits to be distributed in bookstores, schools, libraries, and at major festivals and conventions around the country to encourage kids to start their own reading adventure. More exciting plans for the anniversary moment will be announced later this year.

In addition to the paperback anniversary editions releasing in May, highlights of upcoming publishing include:

The Official Harry Potter Cookbook (September 5, 2023): Create delicious recipes inspired by the Wizarding World in this companion to the #1 New York Times bestseller The Official Harry Potter Baking Book. Packed with full-color photography and over 40 recipes -- both savory and sweet -- including snacks, desserts, drinks, and meals fit for a Hogwarts feast. Featuring cooking tips and advice for the youngest aspiring chefs, including recipes with step-by-step instructions that are easy for kids to follow, this is the perfect book for any beginning cook and Harry Potter fan.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (MinaLima Edition) (October 3, 2023): The third book in the Harry Potter series, featuring over 175 full-color illustrations and eight exclusive interactive elements: Readers will explore the Knight Bus, reveal the Grim in a teacup, spin the Time-Turner, and more. Designed and illustrated by MinaLima, the award-winning studio behind the graphic style of the Harry Potter films, this keepsake edition is the perfect gift for Harry Potter fans of all ages and an enchanting way to share this beloved series with a new generation of readers.

The Harry Potter series has sold over 600 million copies worldwide in 85 languages, been listened to as audiobooks for over one billion hours, and been made into eight blockbuster films. The seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, sold 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours in the U.S. breaking all publishing records (set by previously published Harry Potter titles). For more information about the Harry Potter book series, visit Mediaroom.scholastic.com/harrypotter.

J.K. Rowling is the author of the enduringly popular Harry Potter series. After the idea came to her on a delayed train journey in 1990, she plotted out the adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermione as a series of seven books. The series took another ten years to complete, concluding in 2007 with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She has also written three short companion volumes for charity, including Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and collaborated on the writing of a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which was also published as a screenplay. Her other books for children include the fairy tale The Ickabog and The Christmas Pig, which were published in 2020 and 2021 respectively and have also been bestsellers. J.K. Rowling has received many awards and honours for her writing. She also supports a number of causes through her charitable trust Volant and is the founder of the children's charity Lumos.

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Scholastic Marks 25 Year Anniversary of The Publication Of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

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(New York, NY - February 6, 2023) September 2023 will mark twenty-five years since American readers were first introduced to the "boy who lived." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling was published in the U.S. in September 1998 with a 50,000 copy first printing.

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Opinion | Harry Potter’s Appeal (Published 2001)

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In Love With Harry, Over and Over Again (Published 2005)

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Article, now that sixth novel in J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series is about to be published, on children’s obsession with re-reading Harry Potter and other favorite books; drawings (M)

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There was practically a riot at King's Cross': an oral history of Harry Potter at 25

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There was practically a riot at King's Cross': an oral history of Harry Potter at 25

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e'll be famous - a legend - every child in our world will know his name." So predicts Professor McGonagall in the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Breaking sales records from the beginning, Harry Potter is the biggest success in children's publishing history, making its author, JK Rowling, one of the most famous writers in the world. But on 26 June 1997, when the first novel in the series was published - after notoriously being turned down by 12 publishers - no one had heard of her boy wizard. Behind this magical story was a team of children's book devotees who helped Harry Potter take flight.

Barry Cunningham, head of children's publishing, Bloomsbury (now publisher, Chicken House): One day the literary agent Christopher Little rang me and said: "I've got this great book, would you read it?"Although he didn't tell me that everybody else had turned it down, I could tell from the manuscript that I wasn't the first to see it. I took it home that night and read it. The most common question everybody wants to know is "Did I see it immediately?" I can't pretend that I did, but I knew children would love it.

Nigel Newton, founder and CEO, Bloomsbury: I took the manuscript home but didn't read it myself. I handed it to my daughter Alice, who was eight. She appeared an hour later in a kind of trance. She wrote a little note that said: "The excitement in this book made me feel warm inside. I think it is possibly one of the best books an eight- or nine-year-old could read."

Hedwig delivers the post in an illustration by Jim Kay for a 2015 edition.

Rosamund de la Hey, children's marketing director, Bloomsbury (now founder of The Mainstreet Trading Company, St Boswells): I was 25 and new to the job, and the very first manuscript I was given was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Barry handed it over with the words: "Read this. I think it's a bit special." I read it overnight and was completely blown away. I came back into the office slightly possessed. Before the editorial meeting I rolled the first three chapters into a scroll, shoved in a load of Smartiesand tied it with a purple ribbon. The scroll was inspired by the Hogwarts school setting and the Smarties were to say, I think it will win the Smarties prize [for children's books]. The children's list had only been going two years, and it hadn't been an outstanding success. We knew we were up against it.

Newton: The next day I chaired the editorial meeting and everyone was humming with excitement. We only had a tiny children's team. Four people. They all sat on beanbags in one room on the fifth floor. Barry asked for authorisation to buy the rights and I said something like: "Alice absolutely loved it - approved!" Everybody else felt the same way. So he offered for UK and Commonwealth rights. He didn't offer for US rights because in those days we didn't have a US company. I learned that lesson - one year later, I started Bloomsbury USA.

Cunningham: I rang Christopher the next day and we had all of 10 minutes' negotiation. I think it went from £2,000 to £2,500, probably the best money Bloomsbury ever spent. Unfortunately, I could only buy UK and Commonwealth rights; I didn't have the money to buy America.

De la Hey: Barry got back really quickly because we all fell in love with it. I know several publishers had hung on to it for a long time. HarperCollins must have got wind of it because they came swooping back with an offer. Jo [JK Rowling, who is not taking part in publicity around the anniversary] very loyally said something like: "Get stuffed, I'll go with the one who came back so quickly and has the enthusiasm."

Cunningham: Jo came down to London and we had lunch with Christopher Little in a small restaurant in Soho. She said: "How do you feel about sequels?" I said: "Well, let's just get on with this first one." Then she told me the story - she had worked out everything that happens in all of the following books.

I wanted to change the title because I thought it was a bit of a mouthful. But Jo said children love unfamiliar words, so, like all good publishers, I gave way to my author. I did cut a couple of chapters.

All the stories you've heard are true: she had no money, and was living in Edinburgh and writing in cafes. I said to her - and she teases me about this to this day - you need to get a day job, because you'll never make any money out of children's books. In those days a good seller was a few thousand.

Harry and Hagrid in an illustration from a 2015 edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by Jim Kay.

Janet Hoggarth, editorial assistant, Bloomsbury Children's Books: I left Bloomsbury just before The Philosopher's Stone was published, accepting a job as editor at Scholastic Children's Books. An editor from Scholastic America rang through from an auction house in New York asking my boss if anyone knew what the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was about. He had been given the manuscript but hadn't had time to read it. Bidding was going crazy and he didn't understand why. I was asked to write a brief synopsis and fax it to the auction house. I told him it was going to be bigger than Roald Dahl and told him to bid the absolute top end of his budget. Splashed all over the next day's papers was the news that Scholastic had paid out a whopping $105,000 for a children's book, an amount unheard of in children's publishing.

De la Hey: Just before the UK publication, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone sold to Scholastic in the US for $105,000, an astonishing amount of money at the time. Suddenly, rather than begging for the infinitesimal amount of review space that children's books ever get, the story went on page three of the Telegraph. That was a game-changer.

Thomas Taylor's original 1997 cover, and, below, some of the many editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Thomas Taylor, illustrator of the first book jacket for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: I got a phone call from Barry Cunningham while I was in the children's bookshop in Norwich where I worked after finishing art school. He said he liked my drawings, would I like to do a book cover. I was 22 or 23. I went into London to the office of Bloomsbury, where I met Barry and he showed me this book called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by an author I'd never heard of. He gave me the book, a stack of paper which had notes in the margins and chapters missing because the author was still working on it. I read it on the train home and quite enjoyed it.

Barry was very specific about what he wanted. Looking back, I don't think there's enough magic in there, but at the time I was just following instructions. I drew some rough sketches. Once he approved the composition I spent two days with a piece of very nice cold-pressed watercolour paper and I had my crayons and my concentrated watercolours and I created this image. I took it into London to hand it in.

Emma Matthewson, children's books editor, Bloomsbury (now publishing director, Hot Key): I was very lucky to arrive at Bloomsbury in 1997. Barry had just left. He had acquired Harry Potter and then he left before publication to set up his own company. I remember his replacement saying to me: "Look, Emma, it's our list now, if there are any books that aren't published yet that we think we should cancel we should do that now." And Harry Potter was on the list. I started reading it and it was really charming, really funny and full of magical adventures, and I said: "No, we should keep this one. Definitely." That was the moment that yet another publisher might have failed to take on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

From the outset, Jo had written the last paragraph of the last book, which was to become Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007. In her mind, it was always going to be seven books, and that was where she was going. A lot of our conversation at the beginning was about how the story was going to unfold. I wanted to get rid of the giants at one point, but she wanted to keep them because they would be important in book seven.

Lindsey Fraser, executive director of Scottish Book Trust and children's books reviewer: There were loads of good books around at the time, but things were a bit gritty and grisly. When I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, I remember thinking: "Ah, this is a breath of fresh air." I wrote the first review as part of a roundup for the Scotsman, only about 80 words. We were lucky to get space for children's book reviews at all at that time. Fortunately I liked it. It said something like: "This has all the signs of a classic of the future." Thank goodness.

De la Hey: The reviews were stunning. After the Smarties prize shortlist in October I made a bet with Nigel that we'd sell 20,000 copies by Christmas and he laughed me out of town. He still owes me a case of champagne.

Taylor: We had 10 of the first hardback editions stacked up on a table at the front of the shop. I kept thinking I should buy one, but thought I'd wait for the signed copy they were going to send me.About six months after publication, I began to realise this book was becoming really quite popular. My colleagues kept saying to customers: "Do you know who this is? He illustrated the cover art." People didn't believe it because why would I be standing behind the till? It was very awkward and embarrassing. Of course, those 10 books all went and I didn't buy one, so I never had a first edition.

Julia Eccleshare, children's books editor of the Guardian (now director of Hay Children's festival and author of A Guide to the Harry Potter Novels): I was the chair of the Smarties book prize the first year JK Rowling won in 1997. The judges chose three books and submitted them to a huge panel of children from across the country. The author judge that year was Malorie Blackman, who immediately said that she thought Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was the best book. As soon as we got the votes back from the children we were overwhelmed by their support for this novel.

De la Hey: I got back from the party and threw Smarties around the entire office. The win led to an interview with Konnie Huq on Blue Peter, which, because it was on TV, revealed that Rowling was a woman. Until then all the fan mail was addressed to "Dear Sir". All of it. The first book cover proof has "Joanne Rowling" on it. Before publication, I remember saying: "This book is completely unisex, we don't want to put off boys." I was also aware that the children's writer Jacqueline Wilson, hugely popular at the time, was another long female name. Emma rang Jo and asked how she'd feel about using initials. Jo said: "OK, fine, you know best." And Emma said: "So what's your initial?" Jo replied "K" very quickly - she doesn't have a middle name, she just took her grandmother's name, Kathleen.

Hoggarth: It was my job to check the final proofs before they were sent off to the printer, and as usual this was always done against the clock in a blind panic. I had inadvertently left a typo on the back cover and on page 53 as part of the Hogwarts kit list - wand was listed twice - but it was too late. Those first edition copies are now worth thousands because of my mistake!

Newton: We printed 5,150 paperbacks and 500 hardbacks. That may sound small but it isn't. I've never had a first edition. I read the typescript of the next book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, en route to a family holiday in France and as I read each chapter, I'd throw it in the bin on the ferry.

Matthewson: The first time I met Jo in person was when I went up to Edinburgh for one of her first events. It was in the back room of a pub that you reached up a shadowy staircase. She turned to me and said: "I am so nervous. I am so nervous."

De la Hey: The launch of the paperback of Chamber of Secrets, book two, in 1998, was the first to be held at King's Cross station, London. I had contacted a bunch of potential Dumbledores through an acting agency. The guy who did it was called Jeffery Dench, who turned out to be Judi Dench's brother.

Newton: For the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 1999, I borrowed the idea of a timed release from movie companies. We chose 3.45pm to stop children playing truant from school. There was a photograph on the front page of the Daily Telegraph of a queue of children outside The Lion & Unicorn Bookshop in Richmond. For the later books I changed it to midnight because we were having to be global.

Tony West, assistant manager of The Lion & Unicorn bookshop (now manager of The Alligator's Mouth bookshop, Richmond): Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban must have been the first children's book to be embargoed. We had all dressed up for the launch and I was wearing stripy trousers trying to look Dumbledoreish. With only one till in the shop, it was all hands on deck. We took out bowls of snacks to keep the crowds happy while they waited. With book four came the midnight launches, and the queue stretched right down the alley towards the green. It was a special event for all the family, children and teenagers, everyone in the crowd had dressed up as witches and wizards. I've been in bookselling nearly 30 years and I haven't seen anything like it before or since.

Newton: For the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2000 we hired the dining carriage in which the Armistice treaty had been signed, and put together a whole Edwardian train which left from King's Cross.

De la Hey: We had to get special permission to paint the train scarlet and do the signs. There was practically a riot on the platform at King's Cross. There were parents behaving very badly trying to get closer and someone stowed away in the cold storage. It was quite an epic tour of four or five days with two events a day and 500 kids at each stop. What we didn't realise is that there's a very big train-spotting community on the internet, so the further up the country we got we were followed along sidings. At one point between Newcastle and Edinburgh, we stopped suddenly because we had run out of coal, and a crowd began to amass.

Newton: I remember getting a phone call from Christopher Little saying: "Nigel, drink, The Pelican, six o' clock!" And I thought: "Oh, The Pelican, that means there's a book." [Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003.] So I drove to this pub near Stamford Bridge football ground, not too far from Christopher's office, and he was sitting at the bar with a pint and a Sainsbury's bag at his feet. We never mentioned Harry Potter. We just had a drink, and when I left I was carrying the Sainsbury's bag. It was a classic dead-letter drop. I drove the manuscript home in a state of excitement and fear and put it by my bed and stuck the title page of David Guterson's forthcoming novelon the top as we had a houseful of Harry Potter fans by then. I read the book through the night in bed. I even put it in the safe for a couple of hours. The next day I drove it to Emma's house, and was so relieved to hand it over.

Matthewson: I had the call from Nigel, saying "Can I come round to your house?" Which is a little unusual for the CEO of the company. He turned up and said: "I have something for you," and presented me with this bag. And I said: "Is it what I think it is?" And he said: "Yes, it is. Right, we must celebrate."

Newton: One tabloid allegedly sent a guy with a briefcase with five grand in it to the printers and was stopping people as they came off shift saying: "Will you go and get me Harry Potter?" The landlady of the pub where he was staying heard this and alerted us, and we got the police there. It was one of many Harry Potter theft stories. The worst one was with book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. One of the guards at the printers conducted an auction between the Sun and the Mirror. The reporter from the Sun decided to rescue the book. The guard ran after him and shot him, deliberately wide. Meanwhile, the reporter from the Mirror rang the police and it took seven of them to restrain the guard, who was a body builder. The book was saved. The next day the Sun's front page was:"I looked down the barrel of a gun - and thought I was about to die for the sake of Harry Potter."

Matthewson: I was given a laptop that had never been connected to the internet, so I had to back everything up on floppy disks. I would keep the manuscript and the disks under my bed. When I had friends round, if someone went up to the bathroom, I would find myself quietly following them, just in case. At that point in time reporters were going through Jo's dustbins.

In the early days, after I finished working on it, I would take the script to a safety deposit box at Coutts bank. Eventually, Bloomsbury bought me the biggest safe that Banham could supply. It was so heavy we needed extra floor support upstairs, but at least I could go out.

De la Hey: If you could have stopped the madness at the level of book three, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that would have been perfect. I feel nostalgic for that time of innocence when it was us against the world, just wanting to tell as many people as possible about this incredible book. By book four it was sanctioned that only four people were allowed to read it, and by book seven nobody apart from Emma could read the manuscript, not even me.

Matthewson: Our emails were encrypted, and we would discuss small edits, but always just bits, so that it would be difficult to work out what it was. Jo and I were both pregnant at the same time, first while we were working on Order of the Phoenix in 2003 and then again while we were working on the Half-Blood Prince in 2005. By this point, there was no way that Jo was coming to London, because it was all so secret, so I would take the train up to Jo's house in Edinburgh. I had this dog-eared manuscript in my bag, and when I went to the loo I would take it with me. Then we would work on the edits at Jo's kitchen table, which neither of us could quite get close to. It was very intense and we both had this other very important deadline.

Newton: If you are publisher that is what you live for - to change the world by getting people to read your books. And the Harry Potter books are more popular than ever.

Eccleshare: Children who love to read used to be thought of as bookworms, a bit isolated, but that all changed. Everybody was reading the same book, talking about it became a big thing, and parents were talking to their children about it because they had read it too. Coinciding with the publication of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, the success of Harry Potter gave children's books both intellectual respectability and incredible earning power.

Taylor: I didn't want to talk about it for a long time, because this Harry Potter shadow seemed to be constantly pursuing me. My very first piece of art has followed me around for my whole career. I am proud to have done the cover and to have had that magical start to my career, but I'm pleased to have arrived at a point where it's OK to talk about it without it distorting everything else. I always wanted to write successful books on my own terms. I don't do the illustrations for my own books, the Malamander series. I get asked all the time: "Why did you do the cover for Harry Potter, but you don't do the covers for your books?"

De la Hey: I left Bloomsbury after book seven. After Jo's all-night signing for Deathly Hallows, I went to stay with friends for the weekend. As I hadn't been allowed to read the manuscript, I obsessively read the book the whole time - I didn't talk to anyone. Harry Potter completely dominated my life for 10 years.

Matthewson: On the publication of the final book in 2007, I was sitting on a train and I looked up and there were three different passengers all sitting there reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I said: "I edited that!" I couldn't resist it. They just looked at me. All they wanted to do was to get back to reading. It's only now, after 25 years, that I feel able to speak openly about it.

Cunningham: Leaving Bloomsbury was a bit like leaving the Beatles, but I'm glad I did it, because otherwise I'd be talking about Harry Potter for the rest of my life. I am still humbled by my part in this phenomenon that has meant so much to children around the world. In Britain these books are seen as magical, entertaining and warm, but in some countries they are also about standing up to authority, being yourself and not being scared. Harry and his friends have to stick by what they believe in. Every child should believe they have something special inside them, whether it's called magic or not. Harry Potter's legacy is vast, and continues.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - the 25th Anniversary Edition, is published by Bloomsbury Children's Books.

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'There was practically a riot at King's Cross': an oral history of Harry Potter at 25

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e'll be famous - a legend - every child in our world will know his name." So predicts Professor McGonagall in the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Breaking sales records from the beginning, Harry Potter is the biggest success in children's publishing history, making its author, JK Rowling, one of the most famous writers in the world.

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JK Rowling is more than a lightning rod for controversy. She's an author whose books belong in the canon of English literature

During the first blossoming of Harry Potter mania in the late 1990s and early 2000s, some literary critics were distraught. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in July 2000, the month that the fourth book was published, Harold Bloom lamented that JK Rowling's writing "makes no demands upon her readers... Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better".

In the Independent, in the same year, Philip Hensher derided the Harry Potter books as "written in a way which is designed to be seductively readable", as if proper books should instead attempt to fend off the reader with a big stick. "The world of these books is thin and unsatisfactory," he pronounced. "It does them no favours at all to talk about them in terms of literary classics."

Weeks earlier, writing in The Observer, Anthony Holden had fretted that children were reading Harry Potter instead of Seamus Heaney's "far more exciting" new translation of Beowulf. He worried about the impact of Rowling's books on "the literary taste of millions of potential young readers".

(The Telegraph, incidentally, saw it differently: in 1997, critic Dinah Hall called the first volume, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, "a terrific book... With its perfect blend of fantasy and down-to-earth characters, this is the ideal antidote to a glut of grim social-realist fiction.")

Despite his detractors, Harry Potter has not gone away. Twenty-six years after the first book was published, Warner Bros, the studio behind the box-office-conquering Harry Potter films, has announced that it is developing a major new television series for Max (formerly HBO Max) that will be "a faithful adaptation of the iconic books". JK Rowling is attached to the series as executive producer - a striking statement of support from the studio, given that the author has been subjected to repeated attempts to halt her career from those determined to paint her as the world's most notorious transphobe.

The series is just the latest of many projects to spring from Rowling's original story and characters: the spin-off Fantastic Beasts film series may have had mixed success, but Hogwarts Legacy, a role-playing videogame released this year from Warner Bros and based on what the company calls Rowling's "extraordinary body of writing", sold more than 12 million units in its first two weeks alone, representing sales in excess of $850 million, more than double what the company anticipated.

There is, it's clear, still an enormous amount of money sloshing around the Potterverse. But the lucrative spin-offs and adaptations can only succeed because of the power of Rowling's original texts. Those books have accumulated sales of more than 600 million copies worldwide in 85 languages. Humanity has clocked up more than one billion hours listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks; the first book in the series was still Audible's most downloaded title in 2022. Perhaps most tellingly, last year, the four most borrowed children's books from British libraries were all Harry Potters; the remaining three in Rowling's series also featured in the top 25.

I was eight years old when the first book was published, stayed up all night to finish it, and have grown up with the series. In a fact that may blow the minds of Bloom (RIP), Holden and Hensher, I have also read one or two other books over the years (even Heaney's translation of Beowulf, though admittedly not until after I'd fallen in love with the original text during my English degree at Cambridge).

Why read Harry Potter, the traditional critical argument goes, when you could read The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dark Is Rising or A Wizard of Earthsea? Well, I've read those, too, and they're all wonderful. But Harry Potter is better. It's the funniest, the saddest, the most alive. Rowling's writing is full of people that seem real, even as they're turning a teacup into a gerbil. She has Dickens's knack for character, Stephen King's feel for spookiness, P G Wodehouse's sense of the absurd, and Shakespeare's magpie eye for sparkling treasures gathered from elsewhere.

Is it ridiculous to compare Harry Potter with the best literature ever written in English? Not at all, because Rowling's stories have become part of a global cultural consciousness. Their influence isn't just a brief 1990s craze doomed to be forgotten - like my primary school's weird fortnight-long obsession with stickers depicting the Spice Girls. In the years since the books first appeared, countless other works of fiction have been trumpeted as "the next Harry Potter" before sinking into oblivion. Only the original boy wizard still casts a spell.

So, yes, the time has come to talk about the Harry Potter books as literary classics.

Academics have, over the past 10 years, begun to pay closer attention. Dr Beatrice Groves of the University of Oxford, among others, has provided a foundation of scholarship on Rowling's literary heritage and merit.

In her 2017 book, Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, Groves writes that the series "trains its readers in an attentive, literary mode of reading that is nourishing in and of itself, but it also leads Harry Potter's readers out into some of the greatest works of the Western canon". She points out that Rowling is fond of leaving a trail of subtle references to other novels, with character names lifted from The Mayor of Casterbridge (Dumbledore and Hagrid), Treasure Island (Professor Trelawney), and Mansfield Park (Filch's malevolent cat, Mrs Norris).

Other references are smuggled in as jokes. Hagrid's aggressive three-headed dog, bearing a close resemblance to Cerberus but renamed Fluffy, was acquired when Hagrid "bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub". One of the Weasley twins' practical-joke products is Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, presumably imported from the same region as a certain P Bear.

One of the most profound sequences in the books is the backstory for Harry's nemesis, Lord Voldemort. In her youth, Voldemort's mother, an impoverished witch, falls in love with a handsome, arrogant, non-magical aristocrat. She tricks him with a love potion and then, pregnant with his child, and perhaps believing that his love is now sincere, withdraws the potion. His eyes opened, he is disgusted, and rejects her. Heartbroken, she gives birth, then, seeking neither magical nor medical help, dies. There are traces here of Adam Bede, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Far from the Madding Crowd.

Rowling has said that her favourite novel is Jane Austen's Emma, a book she has read "at least 20 times". When I read Emma as a teenager (only the once, so far), I was tickled to have spotted a stylistic antecedent for Rowling's blend of quick humour and nifty plotting, not to mention a thoroughly annoying, know-it-all yet loveable central female character. Emma Woodhouse and Hermione Granger must, surely, be long-lost cousins.

Ultimately, Rowling's magical world is a complex metaphor for real human abilities, particularly the power of words and stories, to change the world around us. She develops this thesis through a uniquely playful and distinctive British setting that, as in Shakespeare, weaves together allusion and influence so naturally that it feels as though it's grown organically out of the literature of these islands. Rowling takes what has come before her, and makes something new.

In her books, words are magic spells. The metaphor for reading is obvious, but Rowling adds her own shading and definition. Most of the spoken spells derive from Latin (Accio, Nox, Expecto Patronum), but the healing spells (Episkey, Anapneo) come from Greek, like so much of the Western medical tradition.

From the start, the books address difficult themes. Introduced in the first volume, the Mirror of Erised (read it backwards) is a magical object that reflects the viewer not as he really is, but instead shows "the deepest, most desperate desire" of his heart. Faced with the image of what he wants more than anything, the viewer is in danger of becoming transfixed, unable to turn away from the mirror and face reality.

Rowling's writing develops and deepens through the series of seven books, published over 10 years, from the short and lively early volumes written in obscurity to the later, meatier tomes released at midnight to queues of breathless fans. As the child characters get older, the books become longer, the language and ideas growing more nuanced, death seeping ever more inevitably into everything. To read the series in order is to read a writer growing in confidence and power as she expands the borders of the fantasy world she has constructed.

And what a world it is. Where Tolkien was a master of invented languages, Rowling is a master of invented systems. She has devised a whole team sport and league structure in Quidditch. There is an education system complete with exams; a political system and wizarding governing body; an economic system with its own shops and banks, and a fully operational currency of knuts, sickles and galleons. And then there's the system of magic itself, which has a coherent internal logic where magical problems can have magical solutions, but the ultimate human problems - love and death - can't ever be solved by magic alone.

The greatest of Rowling's achievements, however, is to follow her central group of characters right the way through from childhood to adulthood in a bildungsroman that engages closely with, at first, how it feels to be a child, and then, gradually, painfully, how to bear adult responsibilities. This is where she parts ways with her closest peers in children's fantasy literature, J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis. Just as Rowling builds a literary bridge between youth and adulthood, Harry Potter marks a significant shift onwards from the children's literature of the previous century.

This isn't to say that the Harry Potter books are flawless. Even Rowling's staunchest defenders acknowledge that she can be guilty of carelessness, particularly in her intention to cast a diverse world.

For example, so cringingly inappropriate is the name of Harry's first girlfriend, Cho Chang - a mixture of Korean and Chinese surnames - that, in Chinese editions of the books, it is deftly altered to Zhang Qiu, an actual name that would be rendered in English as Autumn Chang. More accusations of clumsiness were levelled at Rowling when the actress Noma Dumezweni, who is black, was cast in the stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as Hermione, a character who had previously only ever been shown as white. This attempt to retrofit diversity into the story only drew more attention to the original lack of it. How differently might a young black Hermione experience this world? The books don't tell us, and it remains to be seen how the new television series will deal with the question.

Beyond the legitimate literary criticism, Rowling has weathered several waves of unjustified attack, first from the harrumphing reviewers who somehow managed to read her books without reading them at all, and then a further wave of rage from those who disagree with her beyond the books, taking issue with her politics (she is pro-Labour but anti-Corbyn, and is a critic of Nicola Sturgeon) or her stance on women's rights and the much-alleged transphobia.

But if you go looking for anything transphobic that Rowling has said, you're going to return empty-handed. In November last year, the journalist E J Rosetta was asked by an editor to write an article called "20 Transphobic JK Rowling Quotes We're Done With". After 12 weeks of research, she gave up, saying: "I've not found a single truly transphobic message."

Rowling herself has said that, by the time she started writing about gender, she was already on her "fourth or fifth" cancellation, experiences documented in The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, the recent interview podcast series from Megan Phelps-Roper. Could there be a knee-jerk suspicion of Rowling's success, and a desire to see this glamorous, clever, super-rich, self-made cultural titan put back where she came from, back to the life of a single mother on benefits having fled an abusive marriage to find refuge in a freezing Edinburgh tenement? Is there an underlying indignation that a woman in such a position could have produced something that might actually have significant cultural worth? Can't we keep the work, but dump the woman behind it?

Of course not. In truth, the books could only have been written by Rowling, an author who really understands, and deeply cares about, young people and the difficulty of growing up. I've always thought it crucial in the books that (spoiler alert) after Professor Dumbledore dies, he leaves behind in his will not a series of clear instructions to be carried out, but a book of stories, one of them a reworking of Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale as a parable about how to face death. Reading that book is what enables Harry, Ron and Hermione to determine how to continue their own story. This, in the end, is what Rowling offers her readers, too: a story about how to make our own difficult decisions. Or, to borrow Dumbledore's words, how to choose "between what is right and what is easy".

Harry Potter may now be the face of a bankable franchise - but nobody ever loved a franchise. The story that started it all is what matters. The world of Harry Potter isn't just a commodity that sells, but a story that is loved because - admit it! - it is really good. And you can't cancel a good story. Merlin's beard, it'll outlive us all.

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Why Harry Potter is a literary masterpiece

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JK Rowling is more than a lightning rod for controversy. She's an author whose books belong in the canon of English literature

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The chair that author J.K. Rowling used to write Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the first two books in the beloved series, sold for a hefty $394,000 at Heritage Auctions New York on April 6.

While the chair is undoubtedly a unique piece of Harry Potter memorabilia, the price tag is all the more impressive given its past auction history. It was originally sold for $21,000 in 2002 to benefit at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children at Christie's "Chair-ish a Child" charity auction, and went for $29,000 on eBay in 2009.

The 1930s-era oak chair, Rowling explained in a letter written for the 2002 auction, was the most comfortable of a mismatched set of four she was given back in 1995, when she was a struggling single mother living in subsidized housing.

"My nostalgic side is quite sad to see it go, but my back isn't," wrote Rowling.

On the occasion of the 2002 sale, she painted the chair with a number of phrases such as "O you may not find me pretty, but don't judge on what you see," an iconic line from the first book sung by the shabby-looking Sorting Hat, and the explanatory "I wrote Harry Potter while sitting on this chair."

In a statement, the auction house called the chair "a small piece of history connected to the mythology of the Wizarding World and one of the most beloved characters in children's literature."

Though the buyer has not been revealed, the seller, Gerald Gray of the UK, told the BBC that "I plan to donate 10 percent to J.K. Rowling's charity, Lumos, because that's what she did in the first place."

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Harry Potter Chair Fetches Nearly $400,000 - artnet News

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A piece of literary history was a hit at auction, as the hand-painted chair J.K. Rowling sat in to write Harry Potter sold for nearly $400,000

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There was practically a riot at King's Cross': an oral history of Harry Potter at 25

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There was practically a riot at King's Cross': an oral history of Harry Potter at 25

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e'll be famous - a legend - every child in our world will know his name." So predicts Professor McGonagall in the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Breaking sales records from the beginning, Harry Potter is the biggest success in children's publishing history, making its author, JK Rowling, one of the most famous writers in the world. But on 26 June 1997, when the first novel in the series was published - after notoriously being turned down by 12 publishers - no one had heard of her boy wizard. Behind this magical story was a team of children's book devotees who helped Harry Potter take flight.

Barry Cunningham, head of children's publishing, Bloomsbury (now publisher, Chicken House): One day the literary agent Christopher Little rang me and said: "I've got this great book, would you read it?"Although he didn't tell me that everybody else had turned it down, I could tell from the manuscript that I wasn't the first to see it. I took it home that night and read it. The most common question everybody wants to know is "Did I see it immediately?" I can't pretend that I did, but I knew children would love it.

Nigel Newton, founder and CEO, Bloomsbury: I took the manuscript home but didn't read it myself. I handed it to my daughter Alice, who was eight. She appeared an hour later in a kind of trance. She wrote a little note that said: "The excitement in this book made me feel warm inside. I think it is possibly one of the best books an eight- or nine-year-old could read."

Hedwig delivers the post in an illustration by Jim Kay for a 2015 edition.

Rosamund de la Hey, children's marketing director, Bloomsbury (now founder of The Mainstreet Trading Company, St Boswells): I was 25 and new to the job, and the very first manuscript I was given was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Barry handed it over with the words: "Read this. I think it's a bit special." I read it overnight and was completely blown away. I came back into the office slightly possessed. Before the editorial meeting I rolled the first three chapters into a scroll, shoved in a load of Smartiesand tied it with a purple ribbon. The scroll was inspired by the Hogwarts school setting and the Smarties were to say, I think it will win the Smarties prize [for children's books]. The children's list had only been going two years, and it hadn't been an outstanding success. We knew we were up against it.

Newton: The next day I chaired the editorial meeting and everyone was humming with excitement. We only had a tiny children's team. Four people. They all sat on beanbags in one room on the fifth floor. Barry asked for authorisation to buy the rights and I said something like: "Alice absolutely loved it - approved!" Everybody else felt the same way. So he offered for UK and Commonwealth rights. He didn't offer for US rights because in those days we didn't have a US company. I learned that lesson - one year later, I started Bloomsbury USA.

Cunningham: I rang Christopher the next day and we had all of 10 minutes' negotiation. I think it went from £2,000 to £2,500, probably the best money Bloomsbury ever spent. Unfortunately, I could only buy UK and Commonwealth rights; I didn't have the money to buy America.

De la Hey: Barry got back really quickly because we all fell in love with it. I know several publishers had hung on to it for a long time. HarperCollins must have got wind of it because they came swooping back with an offer. Jo [JK Rowling, who is not taking part in publicity around the anniversary] very loyally said something like: "Get stuffed, I'll go with the one who came back so quickly and has the enthusiasm."

Cunningham: Jo came down to London and we had lunch with Christopher Little in a small restaurant in Soho. She said: "How do you feel about sequels?" I said: "Well, let's just get on with this first one." Then she told me the story - she had worked out everything that happens in all of the following books.

I wanted to change the title because I thought it was a bit of a mouthful. But Jo said children love unfamiliar words, so, like all good publishers, I gave way to my author. I did cut a couple of chapters.

All the stories you've heard are true: she had no money, and was living in Edinburgh and writing in cafes. I said to her - and she teases me about this to this day - you need to get a day job, because you'll never make any money out of children's books. In those days a good seller was a few thousand.

Harry and Hagrid in an illustration from a 2015 edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by Jim Kay.

Janet Hoggarth, editorial assistant, Bloomsbury Children's Books: I left Bloomsbury just before The Philosopher's Stone was published, accepting a job as editor at Scholastic Children's Books. An editor from Scholastic America rang through from an auction house in New York asking my boss if anyone knew what the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was about. He had been given the manuscript but hadn't had time to read it. Bidding was going crazy and he didn't understand why. I was asked to write a brief synopsis and fax it to the auction house. I told him it was going to be bigger than Roald Dahl and told him to bid the absolute top end of his budget. Splashed all over the next day's papers was the news that Scholastic had paid out a whopping $105,000 for a children's book, an amount unheard of in children's publishing.

De la Hey: Just before the UK publication, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone sold to Scholastic in the US for $105,000, an astonishing amount of money at the time. Suddenly, rather than begging for the infinitesimal amount of review space that children's books ever get, the story went on page three of the Telegraph. That was a game-changer.

Thomas Taylor's original 1997 cover, and, below, some of the many editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Thomas Taylor, illustrator of the first book jacket for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: I got a phone call from Barry Cunningham while I was in the children's bookshop in Norwich where I worked after finishing art school. He said he liked my drawings, would I like to do a book cover. I was 22 or 23. I went into London to the office of Bloomsbury, where I met Barry and he showed me this book called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by an author I'd never heard of. He gave me the book, a stack of paper which had notes in the margins and chapters missing because the author was still working on it. I read it on the train home and quite enjoyed it.

Barry was very specific about what he wanted. Looking back, I don't think there's enough magic in there, but at the time I was just following instructions. I drew some rough sketches. Once he approved the composition I spent two days with a piece of very nice cold-pressed watercolour paper and I had my crayons and my concentrated watercolours and I created this image. I took it into London to hand it in.

Emma Matthewson, children's books editor, Bloomsbury (now publishing director, Hot Key): I was very lucky to arrive at Bloomsbury in 1997. Barry had just left. He had acquired Harry Potter and then he left before publication to set up his own company. I remember his replacement saying to me: "Look, Emma, it's our list now, if there are any books that aren't published yet that we think we should cancel we should do that now." And Harry Potter was on the list. I started reading it and it was really charming, really funny and full of magical adventures, and I said: "No, we should keep this one. Definitely." That was the moment that yet another publisher might have failed to take on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

From the outset, Jo had written the last paragraph of the last book, which was to become Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007. In her mind, it was always going to be seven books, and that was where she was going. A lot of our conversation at the beginning was about how the story was going to unfold. I wanted to get rid of the giants at one point, but she wanted to keep them because they would be important in book seven.

Lindsey Fraser, executive director of Scottish Book Trust and children's books reviewer: There were loads of good books around at the time, but things were a bit gritty and grisly. When I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, I remember thinking: "Ah, this is a breath of fresh air." I wrote the first review as part of a roundup for the Scotsman, only about 80 words. We were lucky to get space for children's book reviews at all at that time. Fortunately I liked it. It said something like: "This has all the signs of a classic of the future." Thank goodness.

De la Hey: The reviews were stunning. After the Smarties prize shortlist in October I made a bet with Nigel that we'd sell 20,000 copies by Christmas and he laughed me out of town. He still owes me a case of champagne.

Taylor: We had 10 of the first hardback editions stacked up on a table at the front of the shop. I kept thinking I should buy one, but thought I'd wait for the signed copy they were going to send me.About six months after publication, I began to realise this book was becoming really quite popular. My colleagues kept saying to customers: "Do you know who this is? He illustrated the cover art." People didn't believe it because why would I be standing behind the till? It was very awkward and embarrassing. Of course, those 10 books all went and I didn't buy one, so I never had a first edition.

Julia Eccleshare, children's books editor of the Guardian (now director of Hay Children's festival and author of A Guide to the Harry Potter Novels): I was the chair of the Smarties book prize the first year JK Rowling won in 1997. The judges chose three books and submitted them to a huge panel of children from across the country. The author judge that year was Malorie Blackman, who immediately said that she thought Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was the best book. As soon as we got the votes back from the children we were overwhelmed by their support for this novel.

De la Hey: I got back from the party and threw Smarties around the entire office. The win led to an interview with Konnie Huq on Blue Peter, which, because it was on TV, revealed that Rowling was a woman. Until then all the fan mail was addressed to "Dear Sir". All of it. The first book cover proof has "Joanne Rowling" on it. Before publication, I remember saying: "This book is completely unisex, we don't want to put off boys." I was also aware that the children's writer Jacqueline Wilson, hugely popular at the time, was another long female name. Emma rang Jo and asked how she'd feel about using initials. Jo said: "OK, fine, you know best." And Emma said: "So what's your initial?" Jo replied "K" very quickly - she doesn't have a middle name, she just took her grandmother's name, Kathleen.

Hoggarth: It was my job to check the final proofs before they were sent off to the printer, and as usual this was always done against the clock in a blind panic. I had inadvertently left a typo on the back cover and on page 53 as part of the Hogwarts kit list - wand was listed twice - but it was too late. Those first edition copies are now worth thousands because of my mistake!

Newton: We printed 5,150 paperbacks and 500 hardbacks. That may sound small but it isn't. I've never had a first edition. I read the typescript of the next book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, en route to a family holiday in France and as I read each chapter, I'd throw it in the bin on the ferry.

Matthewson: The first time I met Jo in person was when I went up to Edinburgh for one of her first events. It was in the back room of a pub that you reached up a shadowy staircase. She turned to me and said: "I am so nervous. I am so nervous."

De la Hey: The launch of the paperback of Chamber of Secrets, book two, in 1998, was the first to be held at King's Cross station, London. I had contacted a bunch of potential Dumbledores through an acting agency. The guy who did it was called Jeffery Dench, who turned out to be Judi Dench's brother.

Newton: For the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 1999, I borrowed the idea of a timed release from movie companies. We chose 3.45pm to stop children playing truant from school. There was a photograph on the front page of the Daily Telegraph of a queue of children outside The Lion & Unicorn Bookshop in Richmond. For the later books I changed it to midnight because we were having to be global.

Tony West, assistant manager of The Lion & Unicorn bookshop (now manager of The Alligator's Mouth bookshop, Richmond): Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban must have been the first children's book to be embargoed. We had all dressed up for the launch and I was wearing stripy trousers trying to look Dumbledoreish. With only one till in the shop, it was all hands on deck. We took out bowls of snacks to keep the crowds happy while they waited. With book four came the midnight launches, and the queue stretched right down the alley towards the green. It was a special event for all the family, children and teenagers, everyone in the crowd had dressed up as witches and wizards. I've been in bookselling nearly 30 years and I haven't seen anything like it before or since.

Newton: For the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2000 we hired the dining carriage in which the Armistice treaty had been signed, and put together a whole Edwardian train which left from King's Cross.

De la Hey: We had to get special permission to paint the train scarlet and do the signs. There was practically a riot on the platform at King's Cross. There were parents behaving very badly trying to get closer and someone stowed away in the cold storage. It was quite an epic tour of four or five days with two events a day and 500 kids at each stop. What we didn't realise is that there's a very big train-spotting community on the internet, so the further up the country we got we were followed along sidings. At one point between Newcastle and Edinburgh, we stopped suddenly because we had run out of coal, and a crowd began to amass.

Newton: I remember getting a phone call from Christopher Little saying: "Nigel, drink, The Pelican, six o' clock!" And I thought: "Oh, The Pelican, that means there's a book." [Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003.] So I drove to this pub near Stamford Bridge football ground, not too far from Christopher's office, and he was sitting at the bar with a pint and a Sainsbury's bag at his feet. We never mentioned Harry Potter. We just had a drink, and when I left I was carrying the Sainsbury's bag. It was a classic dead-letter drop. I drove the manuscript home in a state of excitement and fear and put it by my bed and stuck the title page of David Guterson's forthcoming novelon the top as we had a houseful of Harry Potter fans by then. I read the book through the night in bed. I even put it in the safe for a couple of hours. The next day I drove it to Emma's house, and was so relieved to hand it over.

Matthewson: I had the call from Nigel, saying "Can I come round to your house?" Which is a little unusual for the CEO of the company. He turned up and said: "I have something for you," and presented me with this bag. And I said: "Is it what I think it is?" And he said: "Yes, it is. Right, we must celebrate."

Newton: One tabloid allegedly sent a guy with a briefcase with five grand in it to the printers and was stopping people as they came off shift saying: "Will you go and get me Harry Potter?" The landlady of the pub where he was staying heard this and alerted us, and we got the police there. It was one of many Harry Potter theft stories. The worst one was with book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. One of the guards at the printers conducted an auction between the Sun and the Mirror. The reporter from the Sun decided to rescue the book. The guard ran after him and shot him, deliberately wide. Meanwhile, the reporter from the Mirror rang the police and it took seven of them to restrain the guard, who was a body builder. The book was saved. The next day the Sun's front page was:"I looked down the barrel of a gun - and thought I was about to die for the sake of Harry Potter."

Matthewson: I was given a laptop that had never been connected to the internet, so I had to back everything up on floppy disks. I would keep the manuscript and the disks under my bed. When I had friends round, if someone went up to the bathroom, I would find myself quietly following them, just in case. At that point in time reporters were going through Jo's dustbins.

In the early days, after I finished working on it, I would take the script to a safety deposit box at Coutts bank. Eventually, Bloomsbury bought me the biggest safe that Banham could supply. It was so heavy we needed extra floor support upstairs, but at least I could go out.

De la Hey: If you could have stopped the madness at the level of book three, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that would have been perfect. I feel nostalgic for that time of innocence when it was us against the world, just wanting to tell as many people as possible about this incredible book. By book four it was sanctioned that only four people were allowed to read it, and by book seven nobody apart from Emma could read the manuscript, not even me.

Matthewson: Our emails were encrypted, and we would discuss small edits, but always just bits, so that it would be difficult to work out what it was. Jo and I were both pregnant at the same time, first while we were working on Order of the Phoenix in 2003 and then again while we were working on the Half-Blood Prince in 2005. By this point, there was no way that Jo was coming to London, because it was all so secret, so I would take the train up to Jo's house in Edinburgh. I had this dog-eared manuscript in my bag, and when I went to the loo I would take it with me. Then we would work on the edits at Jo's kitchen table, which neither of us could quite get close to. It was very intense and we both had this other very important deadline.

Newton: If you are publisher that is what you live for - to change the world by getting people to read your books. And the Harry Potter books are more popular than ever.

Eccleshare: Children who love to read used to be thought of as bookworms, a bit isolated, but that all changed. Everybody was reading the same book, talking about it became a big thing, and parents were talking to their children about it because they had read it too. Coinciding with the publication of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, the success of Harry Potter gave children's books both intellectual respectability and incredible earning power.

Taylor: I didn't want to talk about it for a long time, because this Harry Potter shadow seemed to be constantly pursuing me. My very first piece of art has followed me around for my whole career. I am proud to have done the cover and to have had that magical start to my career, but I'm pleased to have arrived at a point where it's OK to talk about it without it distorting everything else. I always wanted to write successful books on my own terms. I don't do the illustrations for my own books, the Malamander series. I get asked all the time: "Why did you do the cover for Harry Potter, but you don't do the covers for your books?"

De la Hey: I left Bloomsbury after book seven. After Jo's all-night signing for Deathly Hallows, I went to stay with friends for the weekend. As I hadn't been allowed to read the manuscript, I obsessively read the book the whole time - I didn't talk to anyone. Harry Potter completely dominated my life for 10 years.

Matthewson: On the publication of the final book in 2007, I was sitting on a train and I looked up and there were three different passengers all sitting there reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I said: "I edited that!" I couldn't resist it. They just looked at me. All they wanted to do was to get back to reading. It's only now, after 25 years, that I feel able to speak openly about it.

Cunningham: Leaving Bloomsbury was a bit like leaving the Beatles, but I'm glad I did it, because otherwise I'd be talking about Harry Potter for the rest of my life. I am still humbled by my part in this phenomenon that has meant so much to children around the world. In Britain these books are seen as magical, entertaining and warm, but in some countries they are also about standing up to authority, being yourself and not being scared. Harry and his friends have to stick by what they believe in. Every child should believe they have something special inside them, whether it's called magic or not. Harry Potter's legacy is vast, and continues.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - the 25th Anniversary Edition, is published by Bloomsbury Children's Books.

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'There was practically a riot at King's Cross': an oral history of Harry Potter at 25

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e'll be famous - a legend - every child in our world will know his name." So predicts Professor McGonagall in the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Breaking sales records from the beginning, Harry Potter is the biggest success in children's publishing history, making its author, JK Rowling, one of the most famous writers in the world.

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In a few weeks, you will witness, or perhaps participate in, one of the world's biggest-ever brand events. Simultaneously, in thousands of retail outlets all over the world, millions of people will gather with the same purpose: to buy the new Harry Potter book.

It must be magic. In less than 10 years, Harry Potter has become one of the world's most widely recognised names. A brand name indeed. In terms of books sold, Harry Potter stands third in the all-time literary charts behind the Bible and the thoughts of Chairman Mao. And, I suspect, read rather more avidly over the past 10 years than either of those other literary heavyweights.

But is it a brand - and what makes it one? Our understanding of brands ranges from 'it's a logo' to 'it's a set of values by which you organise and drive a business'. On the first, simple definition, Harry Potter's lightning flash is becoming as recognisable as Nike's swoosh or the golden arches of McDonald's, and he has many other distinctive brand elements such as ownable words. 'Quidditch', for example, was recently voted one of the nation's favourite words, even though it has yet to find its way into most dictionaries.

On the second definition, it's tempting simply to let the figures make the case. Worldwide sales of 250 million books, with translations into 61 languages, including Ancient Greek. With films made of the first three books in the series (and numbers four to seven bound to follow) almost £1 billion has been earned at the global box office. But let's not forget £430 million worth of DVD and video sales, more than 400 items of merchandise and a brand valuation of £2.2bn.

A book by Stephen Brown -Wizard! Harry Potter's Brand Magic - makes clear that this success is a triumph of marketing. Perhaps not marketing in its most traditional or conventional form, but marketing as it has been developing and will continue to develop. Harry Potter - or his creator, JK Rowling, and the marketing machine that now surrounds her creation - has used the techniques of branding and marketing in a way that can only be envied (and will no doubt be copied) by other super-brands. Look at the way every retailer who has ever picked up a book has been falling over itself in its haste to sell Harry Potter's latest at virtually cost price. They simply want a little of the glory, the magic, to translate into the patter of greater footfall in their shops.

Brown is a professor of marketing and a Harry Potter fan. It seems at first an unlikely combination, but soon becomes perfectly natural, because the books and marketing are inextricably intertwined. The basic argument is that Rowling, far from being hijacked by the marketing sorcerers who have exploited her innocence, is actually something of a marketing professor herself, even if she has never had a day's academic education in the subject. She has created Harry Potter using branding techniques and the books themselves are full of brilliantly invented brands, corporate strategies, advertising campaigns and every element of the marketing mix. In effect, they make a textbook case for marketing.

But where Harry Potter is a quintessentially contemporary brand is in its adherence to and belief in the idea of story. And what could be more natural for a brand that is itself based on the telling of stories? Brown identifies narrative as a key success factor for the brand. With this he identifies storytelling as the management method of the moment. Having picked up one-word solutions ('synergy', 're-engineering', 'disintermediation') management has cast them aside as exhausted concepts. Having run the gamut of acronyms and mnemonics (TQM, CSR, 4Ps, 3Cs etc) the reality of the fog created has become apparent. Businesses and brands have been crying out for clarity and emotional engagement. Nothing supplies these qualities better than stories. So, belatedly, marketing has been discovering the fundamental power of parable, myth and narrative.

What the Harry Potter brand story makes clear is that stories feed off stories. They gain power and momentum through constant movement. Rather than fixating, as brands have conventionally done, on one focused brand idea - Volvo's safety, Marlboro's freedom - Harry Potter's essential commitment to storytelling proves a catalyst to create a swarm of stories that feed the developing brand story.

Barnstorming bookselling, multi-billion pound movie franchises, gratuitous merchandise tie-ins, anti-witchcraft critics, obsessive consumers, ongoing publicity campaigns and 'what is going to happen when the series reaches its seventh book climax?' There is no one coherent story. As if in hot pursuit of Mao on the all-time bestsellers list, Harry Potter succeeds by allowing a thousand stories to bloom.

Of course, readers contribute. Harry Potter becomes part of their story too, and they add to the development of the brand by evangelising for it. The process seems appropriately magical, a concept Brown believes is crucial for the future of branding, and he makes a compelling case. Other brands - and brand managers - should learn from Harry Potter. The books are full of insights into marketing excellence - and are more fun to read than most management books.

John Simmons is editor of 'Great brand stories', a Cyan Books series exploring iconic brands. 'Wizard! Harry Potter's Brand Magic' is published by Cyan Books at £7.99. Observer readers can buy it for £6.99 (Free P&P in UK) by calling 01202 665432 and quoting 'CYN9 Wizard'.
Wild about Harry
Some figures to beat. Can the new Harry Potter book beat these facts about the last one? We'll know after 16 July, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is released.

· Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had 766 pages and was more than 255,000 words long. It weighed 1.3kg (2.8lb) in hardback.

· It was launched simultaneously in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries in an English edition.

· After the publishing date was announced on 15 January 2003, Amazon took more than 1.1 million advance orders, with 400,000 in the UK alone, making it the most pre-ordered book in history.

· About 8.5 million copies of the book were shipped to the US.

· British libraries ordered 11,000 advance copies.

· Tesco opened 367 stores across the UK at 00.01am on Saturday 21 June 2003. Tesco's website received more than 50,000 pre-orders for Phoenix

· Asda ordered 500,000 copies of the book and each of its 260 stores gave 10 books to local schools.

· JK Rowling made approximately £30m from the book.

· Before Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the fastest-selling book in history; 372,000 copies were sold on the first weekend of publication in July 2000. Half of all UK copies of the paperback were sold by Tesco in the week of release.

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Global brand managers should copy the spell of JK Rowling's young wizard, says John Simmons .

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For as long as I can remember I wanted to be an author, and I am at my happiest alone in my writing room making things up.

I grew up in a small village on the English/Welsh border and wrote my first story when I was six years old about a rabbit called "Rabbit" and when I was eleven, I wrote my first "novel" about seven cursed diamonds and the people who owned them. I studied French and Classics at University and spent a year in Paris as part of my course.

A few years later in 1990, after moving to London, I was sitting on a delayed train back home from Manchester when suddenly I had the idea of a boy wizard who went to wizarding school. Harry Potter and Hogwarts came out of nowhere in the most physical rush of excitement, and ideas came teeming into my head. I simply knew it was something I would love to write, but that day I was pen-less for once in my life, so as I sat there on the train, I had to rely on imagining the details, most of which ended up being in the books.

From the start I knew there would be seven books and I had the whole story plotted out early on. It took me five years to write the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Within that time, my mother had died, I had moved to Portugal to teach English, got married, and had my first daughter Jessica.

The marriage didn't work out and I moved with Jessica and the first three chapters of Harry Potter in a suitcase, to Edinburgh in Scotland, where my sister lived. There I trained and taught as a French teacher but continued to write in every spare moment I had, mostly in cafés around the city, whilst Jessica slept in her pram.

Having finished the full manuscript, I sent the first three chapters to a number of literary agents, one of whom wrote back asking to see the rest of it. It was honestly the best letter I had ever received in my life.

It took a year for my agent Christopher Little to find a publisher. Lots of them turned it down. Then in June 1997 Bloomsbury published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone under the name J.K. Rowling. The "K" stands for Kathleen, my paternal grandmothers name. I added it and used the initials at the publisher's request, as they said it would make the books more appealing to boys.

The book was published in the US a year later, in August 1998, with a slightly different title (again at the publisher's request), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was at this point that my life changed for ever and the books took off in a big way.

The next six books of the Harry Potter series took me nearly another 10 years to write and publish, with the movies based on the books released in between publications. By the time I finished writing the final, seventh book in the series in 2007 in the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh, I had been living with Harry for seventeen years.

The books have now been translated into more than 80 different languages including Latin, Hebrew and Welsh, and recorded as audiobooks in nearly as many languages. I also wrote three short "Hogwarts Library" companion books for charity: Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in aid of Comic Relief, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard in aid of Lumos.

After finishing the series, I decided to have a change from writing children's books and wrote a novel for grown-ups instead, set in the real world. The Casual Vacancy was published in 2012 and adapted for television in 2015. I also started writing crime fiction, which I'd always wanted to try, and in 2013 I managed to publish a crime novel under another name, without anybody knowing it was me. 'Robert Galbraith' was subsequently revealed to be my crime writing pseudonym. However, I've continued to write the Cormoran Strike series under this name. There are currently five books in the series with more to come, and each one has been adapted for TV by the BBC and HBO.

In 2016 I returned to the wizarding world I'd created. I worked with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany to continue Harry's story in a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened in London, followed by the USA and Australia.

I also wrote the screenplay for the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which was a very different process and experience to writing a novel. It was the first in a series of new adventures, taking place before the time of Harry Potter, featuring wizarding world magizoologist Newt Scamander, the "author" of the book I created for Comic Relief in 2001. The second film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, was released in 2018 and the third, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, was released in 2022.

In 2020, I decided to release my fairy tale The Ickabog in free online instalments, to help entertain children, parents and carers confined at home during the Covid-19 lockdown. The response was phenomenal and reminded me just how much I love writing for children. From reader engagement to the avalanche of the children's pictures submitted to the illustration competition, sharing The Ickabog was a wonderful experience during a very dark time for us all.

It's now been published as a book and translated into 26 languages, each edition illustrated by the winners of the illustration competition. I'm donating my royalties from the published book of The Ickabog to my charitable trust, Volant, which is then distributing them to charities supporting groups particularly hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK and internationally.

My latest children's novel The Christmas Pig, a standalone adventure story about a boy's love for his most treasured thing and how far he will go to find it, is out now.

Alongside my writing and my family life, my other priority is the charities and causes I support. My charitable trust, Volant, was set up to help women, children and young people at risk. I support research and patient care for Multiple Sclerosis through the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic in Edinburgh, named after my mother, who died of the condition. I'm also the founder and president of the international children's charity Lumos, which fights for every child's right to a family by transforming care systems around the world, so that they are raised in a safe, loving home, supported by family to help them thrive.

I live in Scotland with my family and two dogs.

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For as long as I can remember I wanted to be an author, and I am at my happiest alone in my writing room making things up.

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[Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone]
Galley Sheet, one of a small number of copies produced for review purposes (x12?), 224 numbered pages on 109 sheets, date & time stamped 'Harry Potter pages 'B' 2/25/97 11:59 (- 12.16)' printed landscape on A4 sheets, signed by Fiona Waters to the first page, preserved in cloth archival box. [Not in Errington].

***Provenance. Als from Rosamund Walker - Children's Marketing Manager - Bloomsbury Children's Books to Fiona Waters 26 th February 1997 - 'Dear Fiona // Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by Joanne Rowling // ....I have enclosed a manuscript for your interest as promised......I would really appreciate if you would let me know your comments for pre-publication quotes'. Al (not signed) Fiona Waters reply to Rosamund Walker 28 th March 1997 - 'Dear Roz .... I just loved this book.....There is something about Harry Potter that reminds me of Charlie Buckett in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ...' these are the lines that are printed as the review on the rear cover of the first edition. Als. Rosamund Walker replies to Fiona Waters....Dear Fiona '....I can't tell you how nice it is to hear such praise for Harry Potter, and I am sure the author will be most flattered with the allusion to Charlie Buckett'.

***Fiona Waters is an anthologist and children's book reviewer.

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Lot 69 - Rowling: Harry Potter/Philosopher's Stone.

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Lot 69 - Rowling: Harry Potter/Philosopher's Stone. - Estimate 20000-30000 GBP

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Inside the Succession Drama at Scholastic, Where Harry Potter and Clifford Hang in the Balance

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Inside the Succession Drama at Scholastic, Where Harry Potter and Clifford Hang in the Balance

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Inside the Succession Drama at Scholastic, Where ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Clifford’ Hang in the Balance | Vanity Fair

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Exclusive Interview: Thomas Taylor, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone illustrator

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Exclusive Interview: Thomas Taylor, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone illustrator

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Harry Potter is a huge franchise. Movies, merchandising and a lot of books. A guy with a scar and glasses. But the first person who gave Harry a public face was Thomas Taylor, the artist responsible for the cover for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ( 1997, Bloomsbury).

Thomas Taylor drew the first Harry Potter cover ever and was one of the first people to read the book. I asked him for an interview and he kindly agreed to it. Questions, answers and a surprise, next:

Hello Mr. Taylor. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Our readers know you for being the first Harry Potter illustrator in the Potter phenomenon. How does that title make you feel?

Hello, Patricio. It's a pleasure to be interviewed about Harry Potter and my cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Being the first person to have illustrated Harry Potter certainly makes an exciting entry on my C.V, and a great conversation opener at parties. Of course, the fact that many countries commissioned their own cover artwork does mean that my image isn't as widely known as is sometimes thought. But it's certainly something I'm very proud of.
Can you tell us about the cover illustration process? Are there any other illustrations that never came out?
I would always expect to read the text I was illustrating, and this was no different with HP. I must have been one of the first people in world to have read Harry Potter, since the author was still working on the text when it was sent to me, over a year before publication. This was in 1996.

As for the process, there is often quite a bit of art direction concerning what should or shouldn't be depicted on a cover, and this leads to sketches, possibly around several different ideas. These are then discussed with an editor, and a final design agreed on.

When I was first approached about cover art for HP, the brief included chapter heading illustrations in black and white line, and I did make a few rough sketches of other characters in the book. But very quickly the brief firmed up as cover artwork only.
Why did you choose that particular scene (the Hogwarts Express) to illustrate? Did you talk to Joanne Rowling before working on the art?
This scene was chosen for me by Bloomsbury. I was told I could explore other scenes, but I liked the moment when Harry discovers Platform 9 3/4 anyway, so I was happy to stick to that. I didn't meet the author at all during the process and that is quite normal. Commissioning artwork is entirely the domain of editors and publishers, and authors often get no input into the process.
I did meet J.K. Rowling, but only a couple of years after the book was published.
Did you keep reading Rowling's books? What are your thoughts about them?
I very much enjoyed the books, and feel that they speak directly and endearingly to the 11/12-year-old mind, even in those of us whose bodies have grown up! The spirit of Rowling's books is firmly in the 9-12 age range and this is best expressed in books 1 to 4, though there's obviously plenty of magic and wonder in the later ones too.
Is there a particular J.K. Rowling book you'd like to illustrate?
The Prisoner of Azkaban has some lovely imagery.
What are you working on nowadays? Which other authors besides Rowling did you work with?
I haven't done many covers in my career. It's a difficult area to work in. After the cover for HP, I illustrated two books by Enid Blyton, both Black and white line work and colour covers, and then concentrated on books for much younger children. I write and illustrate my own picture books, so a lot of my illustration has been for my own writing. I did the cover art for two Tanya Landman books, Waking Merlin and Merlin's Apprentice, and for the picture book retelling of the Sorcerer's Apprentice by Sally Grindley. Of all my illustrations for other people's writing, it's these that are most like my Harry Potter cover work.
Which painting/illustrating methods do you usually use?
I use concentrated watercolours and inks to colour a faint pencil drawing. For a long time, I would then use a black pencil to outline the picture after the colour had been added, and this is the technique I used for HP. Later though, and for a younger audience, I used coloured pencils for the outlines, and for adding texture and highlights to the inked background.
Where else can we find your illustrations?
Mostly on my own picture books for young children, such as my Clovis the Tiger books - The Loudest Roar, The Biggest Splash and The Noisiest Night, published by Oxford University Press.

These days I concentrate on writing, and I have a novel of my own coming out in 2012 through The Chicken House, the publishing company set up by Barry Cunningham, the discoverer of Harry Potter. It's called The Ghost Effect, and is about a boy who can use his dreams to travel in time. There might be some small illustrated elements in it. I'm also working on a humorous text that will have some quite Harry Potter-ish line drawings in it.
Is there an illustration you've done that remains unpublished? If so, is there a chance you could show it to our readers? (full illustration, sketch, preliminary concept, etc).
People often like to see this early pencil sketch of the Harry Potter cover, and you can see in the difference between it and the finished painting something of the way art editors steer the process. I've also sent you a scan of the original back cover, showing a very different wizard to one later used. Early editions with this wizard on are now very collectable. I hope your readers enjoy the chance to see this rare image.
Well Mr. Taylor, we can't thank you enough for this. Is there anything you'd like to tell to our readers?
Nothing, except to thank you and them for this interview, and to wish you all happy reading in the future.

So, what's the surprise? The backcover Mr. Taylor mentioned is the following one, portraying the young wizard:

He also sent me the whole drawing of the cover, without the title, displaying the entire Hogwarts Express:

But the actual surprise was a never-seen-before sketch of the cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone cover, which Mr. Taylor gently sent me:

I am really thankful to Mr. Taylor for giving me this opportunity. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did, and I encourage you to visit Mr. Taylor's blog: That Elusive Line.

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Exclusive Interview: Thomas Taylor, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone illustrator

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Harry Potter is a huge franchise. Movies, merchandising and a lot of books. A guy with a scar and glasses. But the first person who gave Harry a public face was Thomas Taylor, the artist responsible for the cover for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997, Bloomsbury).

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

It was the first time most American readers ever saw an image of Harry Potter, and yet 20 years later, the cover of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone still holds some surprises. Illustrator Mary GrandPré, Scholastic creative director David Saylor, and prolific editor Arthur A. Levine revisit the cover of the first book - and the decisions that would change everything.

Harry Potter and the What!?

At the request of the Scholastic salesforce, who thought Philosopher's Stone might be an obstacle in capturing American readers, editor Arthur Levine suggested J.K. Rowling consider changing the title to "something that brings the magic more obviously forward, maybe something that indicates the whole school experience that Harry has," he recalls. The proposal: Harry Potter and the School of Magic, which Rowling mulled over for a time, at least long enough for GrandPré to sketch it more than once. Then-art director David Saylor recalls, "It seemed like a good idea in a meeting, but then when you see it on a sketch, you're like, 'Oh no, this is not right.' To me it felt too prosaic, like School of Drama, like School of Chemistry. It didn't feel magical to me, ironically." And for Rowling, too, who ultimately nixed it and proposed the alternative Sorcerer's Stone. Levine explains, "Sometimes it's just a small change like that that makes your marketing and sales people feel a tiny bit more confident, and they took that tiny bit of extra confidence and sparked it into a real fire." Rowling has since stated that she regretted changing the title, but Levine appears more torn between the hypothetical and the reality: "I think they would have done fine with Philosopher's Stone. But they were on a mission to get every child in America to read this book. In the end, I feel like history proves that was not a bad decision."

Lightning Luck

GrandPré wasn't explicitly hired to draw the book's "logo," as we think of it now, but as a fan of typography, she asked Saylor if she could try lettering Harry's name in the gap she had allocated for the title. One sketch later, an iconic image was born. "I'm claiming this - who knows if it's true - but I think it's one of the most famous logos in the world at this point," says Saylor. " We weren't even thinking of it as a logo at the time, but now it's one of the few I can think of that was so successful on a book, the movies used it, too. It's extremely rare for a movie company to pick up book typography and use it on their movie. It's been imitated in other languages. I mean, they'll take letterforms in Cyrillic and add lightning bolts to it!" And the placement of the lightning bolt, it turns out, was just as lucky a stroke by GrandPré. "The lightning bolt just worked on that P," shrugs the illustrator. "Right there in the middle. I don't even remember thinking about trying it anywhere else."

The Sorcerer's Smudge

A crisis was narrowly averted when Saylor and Levine first presented Rowling with the finished artwork for the book. The author "was so in awe that she wanted to touch it," Saylor says. But here's why that was a problem: GrandPré notoriously uses unfixed pastels, a waxy technique that makes colors richer and brighter but also more fragile and prone to damage if the artwork is not sprayed with a fixative. Saylor laughs as he recalls the near-miss: "The artwork is so tactile that when you do see it in person, it's stunning, but I almost had a heart attack because Jo reached out and touched it with her finger and I said, 'Oh, be careful, it's not fixed!' and she pulled her forefinger away and it was just covered with pastel. It didn't spoil the painting, just so you know, but it was a moment of panic. She was just so entranced by seeing it in person."

Fluff Love (Part 2)

And here's that original cover sketch!

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7 secrets of the 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' cover

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J.K. Rowling and the smudge that almost ruined it.

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MuggleCast 567 Transcript

Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #567, 'Philosopher's Stone' Illustrator Thomas Taylor Reveals the Secrets Behind the Cover
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the wizarding world fandom. I'm Andrew.

Eric Scull: I'm Eric.

Micah Tannenbaum: I'm Micah.

Laura Tee: And I'm Laura.

Thomas Taylor interview

Thomas Taylor: Hi, hi. Thank you for inviting me on.

Andrew: Absolutely. You have a five-star zoom background, by the way...
[Micah and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: ... all the books, perfectly organized, colorful.

Thomas: Oh, thank you.

Andrew: Is a lot of that your own work?

Thomas: Yeah, a lot of it. I do a lot of zoom calls into schools with my own fiction series, so I have a lot of nautical things behind me. Often more than this, even. I toned it down a bit.
[Andrew, Eric, and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: That's amazing.

Eric: You were like, "Ah, that's too many krakens in the back. I've got to take them off the shelf."

Thomas: Absolutely.
[Laura and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Eric: That's what surprised me. There was a recent article in the Observer on the Guardian website that actually Micah sent to me, about you, interviewing you. And I was like, "I never thought to ask... this guy..." I didn't know who you were. I didn't know name recognition. "Yeah, surely there's some guy out there who drew this," and I had no idea. But come to read in the article, it's this wonderful interview about your inspiration about some things we'll be asking you about on this interview. And I said, "We have to reach out and see if this guy is interested in talking to us," because MuggleCast is the first Harry Potter podcast. We started this in 2005, as podcasts were first starting out. And I like to think that we're a little OG about Harry Potter fandom, but I never dreamed that we'd be speaking with somebody that was really there prior to even Harry Potter in America. Harry Potter in America was not a thing when you were doing that work. So it's really a very, very special opportunity to interview our most OG guest yet.

Thomas: [laughs] You make me feel ancient.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Thomas: No, but it's true. I think I must have been one of the first people in the world to read the book. And I hadn't really stopped to think about that until quite recently, [laughs] so it is quite an extraordinary thought.

Andrew: Yeah, we have a very special kinship here. You had the first cover; we had the first podcast. [laughs]

Thomas: Excellent.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: So actually, another reason that I'm assuming there's been a lot of press around this recently, is because there is a wonderful rerelease in hardcover of your Harry Potter book cover, along with a - yep, there it is...

Andrew: He's got it.

Eric: ... a 25th anniversary Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone edition published by Bloomsbury in the UK. I actually got a copy as well, from amazon.co.uk, which people don't really realize; the last time I was on there was probably to buy a paperback boxset of the original first four Harry Potter books. So because American fans... it's like, "Are you really a Harry Potter fan if you don't buy the UK covers?"
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: And so back in 2002 or 2003, I was like, "I need the British ones," and then I got the boxset. But interesting to see it in hardcover. I haven't had hardcover of that book at all, so it's wonderful to finally have that.

Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah, there weren't many published when it was first published. I think it was 500, maybe 400 hardbacks of that very first edition. It's a very rare book. So it is fun to see it come back in the anniversary edition.

Laura: You were 23 years old when you designed this book cover and fresh out of art school. Is that right?

Thomas: Yeah, I was, and I worked in a children's bookshop. So I got a job straight away in the children's book industry, but in a bookstore. And I could see that Bloomsbury, the publisher, were creating children's lists for the first time. So they didn't previously publish children's books, so they were creating a list. They were publishing a lot very quickly. And I thought, "Well, I could probably find an opportunity there. I can go in with my portfolio of sketches, leave it there, and then..." which you could do at the time and hope somebody would find something of interest in there. Maybe give me my first professional commission. And of course, that is what happened. I had some drawings of wizards and dragons in there by chance - I think more dragons than wizards, but still - and then a few days later, I was in the bookshop and the phone rang. I think somebody else answered it, but they passed it to me. And it was Barry Cunningham, who was the editor at Bloomsbury, saying, "Well, we've got a book by an unknown author, a completely new book. Do you fancy having a go at doing the book cover?" So of course, I was very excited. And it was my first job, so I mean, I was over the moon. I had no idea that it was going to be what it became. So I went into London and I met him, and he gave me this great big printed stack of paper, huge, only printed on one side, and that was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and he asked me to do the cover.

Andrew and Laura: Wow.

Thomas: I think to start with it, nothing really happened for a few months after it was published. But then it started to appear in papers, and I could see it in the newspaper. I could see occasionally there would be talks about it on television, usually in quite a small way, but people would mention it. And then of course, people would be coming in the shop, asking for it, and my colleagues would put me over towards this customer and sort of hold up the book and say, "And he did the cover art."
[Laura laughs]
Thomas: Of course, that didn't seem very convincing to the average customer, so it was a bit awkward. And I had to tell people to not do that, please, because they didn't believe it. You could tell they didn't believe it. A few asked me to sign the book, but you could tell they weren't sure. [laughs] So it was a bit awkward. And in fact, my early experiences of Harry Potter, as it became really big, were quite negative for me, really. So that's partly why I'd buried it a little bit, because it's a big thing for your very first illustration job. Normally when you start out as an illustrator, you want your first work to be quietly forgotten, because it's not your best, you know?
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Right, right.

Thomas: [laughs] In my case, the very first thing I did. Here I am 26 years later, talking about it still, so it's there warts and all, and I have to live with that. But now it's fine. I mean, I quite enjoy talking about it and thinking about how I was there at the beginning, and that's a great thing. I mean, it's really exciting. But at the time, it was a bit tricky. Because it was so big, it became so big that for someone like me trying to grow a career organically moving from one job to the next, the fact that my very first job kept on jumping back and overshadowing everything else was a bit tricky. But I'll just say now, it's great fun to think about.

Eric: Kind of like that feeling like you peaked in high school over everything else.
[Thomas laughs]
Eric: We started this podcast and were traveling the world while we were still in high school, so it's like, "Oh, how do we get out from under our own shadow?"
[Andrew, Eric, and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: How do you beat that? Yeah. That's so interesting.

Eric: Well, but it does speak that you had a great deal of hustle there. I mean, if you're talking about dropping your portfolio directly at Bloomsbury, which you could do, working in a children's bookstore, you must have had some inkling that that was your trajectory. And it seems like you really made a lot of effort to make that happen for yourself, which is really cool. I really admire the ambition there and putting yourself out there like that.

Thomas: Yeah, thank you. And it wasn't pure chance, because I had thought of the opportunity and gone out to try and seize it, but of course I didn't know how that would pan out. But yeah, I mean, you can't sit around waiting for things to happen; you have to go out there and find them. But what's quite funny... I mean, you were talking about being the first person to read it; of course I didn't know that as I sat on a train going home from London reading this manuscript on my lap. And of course, my station to go home from London was King's Cross Station.

Laura: Wow.
[Andrew laughs]
Thomas: And the platform my train left from was platform 9, and so I was reading about Platform 9 3/4 - I mean, I'd already left [laughs] - but I was reading and realizing that I catch the train right next door to this magical portal that takes wizards to Hogwarts. So that was quite an interesting thought.

Andrew: It was destiny.
[Thomas laughs]
Eric: It's almost like the book was written for you. [laughs]

Micah: Did you ask the conductor to stop the train so you could go back and then try and get through 9 3/4?
[Everyone laughs]
Thomas: Yeah, "On the wrong train. I should've run through the wall just next to where I was," yeah.
[Eric and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: Did you get to keep that manuscript?

Thomas: I knew you'd asked me about that. So can you guess what I did with that manuscript?

Andrew: Uh-oh, you got rid of it and you regret that now.

Eric: Recycled it?

Thomas: [laughs] Yeah, well, it was blank on one side, so obviously, I'd used most of it as rough for sketching.

Eric: Oh my gosh.

Thomas: And then I threw all of it away in the recycling bin in the end. So it was covered in drawings, and it also had notes in the margins from the editor. But it all went to be recycled, so there you go.

Andrew, Laura, and Micah: Wow.

Thomas: That would be quite something to have now. That would be a unique thing to have now, but of course...

Andrew: Absolutely, and you having sketches on the back sides of these pages? Oh my gosh.

Eric: Oh man.

Thomas: [laughs] I know. But that just goes to show how I had no idea. I didn't know what it was going to be.

Andrew and Eric: Yeah.

Micah: How did you feel, though, when you were reading it? Did you get a sense that this was going to be a success? Were you fully engaged in the story? Or were there maybe even some doubts when you were going through, saying, "Eh, I'm not quite sure if this is going to be a success"?

Thomas: Well, I mean, I've always loved fantasy stories. I grew up reading Tolkien and Pratchett and so it was in my courtyard; this was the kind of thing I liked. So I was pretty excited about it. And I was pleased to be... I mean, I wouldn't have drawn those sample drawings if I wasn't already interested in that kind of subject matter. And I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it very much. But I didn't know it was going to go and become so massive. I had no idea about that. I've always admired how the author captures that sense of warmth, of friendship; I think she writes about friendship really well. And I remember thinking about that, even when I was reading it for the first time, that these friends are great to read about.

Micah: Definitely.

Laura: I love that.

Eric: Yeah, the character dynamics, definitely what drew, I think, a lot of us in as kids too. We wanted... they were our friends, too.

Laura and Thomas: Yeah.

Micah: Was there a character that jumped out at you at all?

Thomas: I don't know that there was. I think Dumbledore was always a very impressive character because I've always been drawn to Gandalf, the sort of Gandalfian presence in the story. But of course, completely unrelatable to me at the time, but somebody very impressive. Always, always imagined there must be this rich backstory to a character like that. But I just liked Hogwarts Castle. I liked Peeves the ghost. There were so many details that were really likable in the story. And Diagon Alley. I mean, just the idea of Diagon Alley just seemed really, really great.

Andrew and Laura: Yeah.

Eric: As far as getting back to the cover real quickly, I know in the book, which is the 25th anniversary edition, you actually get a write-up at the back, which is really cool. And you get into very specifics about the materials used for the cover. But could you reiterate just how did you create what became the book cover?

Thomas: Yeah, so I had worked... I mean, I had done samples before, so I had a technique. I used watercolor paper and concentrated watercolors. This was before digital media was really good enough, and I hadn't really trained in it. So I'd come out of art school using traditional media, and so that's what I did. I painted it. It's concentrated watercolors. It's Charisma soft crayon for the black line. It's cold press watercolor paper, which was stretched over a board. And it took me about two days to paint the picture. I did a kind of first pass, and then... this was after sending in sketches. So I used a fax machine, if anybody remembers what one of those is...
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Thomas: ... to fax drawings into Bloomsbury. Guys, you can hardly believe these things existed. And so I did some drawings for Barry Cunningham, who was the editor, and I should just say Barry was the one who asked for that scene. So he said to me, "Could you please draw the train, draw the Hogwarts Express? Please draw Harry approaching the train. Draw Platform 9 3/4." I don't know why he liked that, but I mean, fair enough. And so I was basically just trying to get my first professional job done, trying to get it done properly, and I think maybe if I'd been more experienced, I might have said to him, "Well, I could do that. But I could also draw Hogwarts Castle, or I could do Diagon Alley with all the shops, so I could do some magic happening." But at the time, I just did what he wanted, because I wanted to get the job done properly. So I've always regretted that I didn't put a bit more magic into it. But like I said, first jobs, you know?

Andrew: Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was going to be my next question, how you chose that scene, and you just answered, the editor asked you to do that. But I really like that scene, actually, because it is sort of Harry's first entry into the wizarding world, at least one of them. It's the starting point.

Eric: The humble beginnings.

Andrew: Yeah, to me it feels appropriate that he's seeing that train for the first time on the cover. But you wanted to do something.... maybe him approaching Hogwarts, are you thinking?

Thomas: Something with a bit more drama, maybe, but I was very, very inexperienced, and not really in a position to start throwing my weight around. And I mean, it's fine; I'm not really criticizing it. And I know there's a lot of attachment to that image and it's got a really strong and nostalgic charge for people, so that's great. I'm not trying to run it down. But as an artist who's gone on to do other things, looking at it now, I think, "Oh gosh, why didn't I do something...? Wow, why didn't I do...?" And of course, Jonny Duddle has gone on to illustrate the whole series, I think in the US as well - I don't know, actually, in the US - anyway, and he's done such a great job. He's done the kind of thing I could have aspired to try to aspire to do. He's done it brilliantly. So it's all worked out okay. But yeah, I was asked to paint that scene. And on the back, I know you were curious about the wizard on the back. So I was also just asked, kind of offhand, as I left the meeting with Barry, he said, "Oh, well, just do a wizard for the back. We need a wizard to just decorate the back."

Eric: I want to talk about that wizard in a moment. Sorry to cut you - I want to talk about that wizard in a moment. But actually, just talking about trying to put more magic in the cover, I did notice there are a lot of stars on the front...
[Thomas laughs]
Eric: ... in between billows of smoke, and that's very magical to me.

Thomas: Yeah, there are, and I remember being criticized for those stars, actually, quite early on.

Laura: Really?

Eric: I think they're great.

Thomas: Somebody said, "They look like they're pieces of paper floating around." [laughs]

Eric: They're perfectly serviceable stars. [laughs]

Thomas: Thank you. Well, the thing is, the image is much bigger than this, actually. This is a detail from a much bigger image that was supposed to be full bleed; it was supposed to go right to the edge, and the text was actually just written across the smoke. So there was a lot more going on in the original image. And they created this graphic border to offset it; I'm not quite sure why. I didn't see it. I didn't see this until it was actually published. So in my mind, I'd seen a color mock-up of the cover, which they'd sent me, but I never actually saw this design until it appeared. So I didn't recognize it to start with.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Right.

Thomas: Like I said, we had them in the shop because I'd done the cover. We would never probably stock the book otherwise, but because I'd worked on it, the manager bought ten copies. So we had a pile of ten hardbacks on a tabletop of a book nobody'd heard of, and we really struggled to sell them. But of course, now those books, I mean, in good condition, they go for something like 80,000 pounds each. So in fact, for a while, there was the better part of a million pounds worth of book standing there.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Thomas: And I didn't buy any of them. I didn't buy a single one. [laughs]

Eric: Man.

Thomas: And no one did. And looking back, I think, "Crikey, I could be living off those if I'd bought the lot."

Andrew: Truly.

Thomas: But it just goes to show.

Laura: Hindsight is 20/20.

Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.

Laura: I think if any of us knew then what we know now, we all would have bought a copy back in the day.

Thomas: [laughs] Absolutely.

Eric: If I could ask, what made it difficult to sell? You mentioned the bookstore wouldn't have normally stocked them. It was a children's bookstore, was it not? So was it just the lack of...?

Thomas: Yeah, well, they might have stocked them, but they might have had one copy maybe.

Eric: Oh, okay.

Thomas: But I think because they were a commercial bookstore, they would probably have wanted paperbacks, which were out later on. The hardback was done mainly for libraries, so they probably wouldn't have had those hardbacks in, and people coming in initially wouldn't have had any kind of name recognition or have understood the book as anything noticeable. It might have just been one copy on a shelf. But of course, then once it became a big bestseller, then it was different. But in those very first weeks, those books just sat there. [laughs]

Laura: I'm wondering, in those first weeks and months before Harry Potter became a household name, it was obviously a much smaller universe of people who were in the know about the stories. And I'm wondering if because of that, did you ever have an opportunity to speak to J.K. Rowling? And if so, would you be willing to share more?

Thomas: Yes, so I did meet her, actually. I didn't meet her in the initial phases. I didn't meet her while I was working on... it's quite uncommon, actually, for an artist and author to to get together, because the publisher always mediates that. But a couple of years later - I forget exactly when - well, she was still doing events to promote the publication of the new books, so it would have been pretty early on. She came to the bookshop, and the manager said, "Well, you need to be the one who looks after her, and then you can talk to her and you can get to meet her." So I did get to meet her, and that was very nice. And we talked about... yeah, we didn't talk about books at all. We talked about gardening, I think, I seem to recall.
[Everyone laughs]
Thomas: I think we had both decided to grow tomatoes, and it wasn't going very well. So we had something to talk about.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Thomas: Yeah, but it was great to meet her because I'd obviously wanted to. And then being on the margins of the book industry anyway, being in the bookshop was a great opportunity to meet lots of authors, anyway.

Andrew: Yeah. And you were also like, "I accidentally recycled my manuscript. Can I get another copy of that, please?"
[Everyone laughs]
Thomas: Yeah, well, imagine that. Even if I bought one of those hardbacks, that would be my moment to say, "Could you just sign my book?"

Eric: Goodness, then it'll be up to the 200,000 pound level, or more.
[Eric and Thomas laugh]
Thomas: But no, she was lovely. She really was. And she was great with children and everything, so it was a great example to see.

Eric: Again, for me, buying that UK addition, it really felt like I was completing my Harry Potter fanhood, my journey, because it was the original. For years, I remember seeing news articles out of the UK, and anytime somebody was talking about Harry Potter, you would pretty much see your book cover. And it was the people with those books, and that's why it's so ingrained in me as being just in the complete DNA of Harry Potter. And as we mentioned before, I actually have the full country list. So our friend Jacob is a collector, a listener, and he actually compiled and figured out... I asked him earlier in the week; I said, "How many other countries use that cover? Because the France cover, the US cover all have different illustrators." But the full list he got back to me said that - he does believe this is definitive - it's Macedonia, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ancient Greek, Sinhala, Latin, Luxembourgish, Catalonia, Valencia, and more recently, the Scots translation edition all used your art. I mean, how does it feel? I guess just, again, from the blowing up standpoint, I know it's probably insane. But just that your work is so around the world is so... that for many people, that was their cover of their first book of Harry Potter, something which they may have taken with them throughout their lives the way we've done. How does that feel?

Thomas: It's something that's only crept up on me recently, because I did spend a period of time playing it down and not really promoting myself with this image. But then, of course, on reflection, yes, it has been used widely. It's been used very widely around the world, and so it does feel quite extraordinary to think so many people have seen this image. And I wonder how I would have felt when I was painting it if somebody told me that it would have been seen so widely; I don't think I would have been quite so relaxed about doing it. I think what touches me, though, is that sense of nostalgia. I pick up on this a lot, especially lately; people come and they don't really want to hear me say how, as an artist, I would have done it better. They just want to hear about it because they were children perhaps, or they were young, or they were finding Harry Potter for the first time as adults, or whatever it was. They were finding the stories and falling in love with the characters, and they just have a lot of nostalgia and warm feelings about that image, and I'm really very proud of that. So that's probably my strongest response to the question.

Eric: Excellent. Should we all talk about the back cover now?
[Eric and Thomas laugh]
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.

Andrew: Let's get back to that.

Laura: I'm ready.

Eric: So there is something about a mystery around this, I think.

Thomas: Yes.

Laura: Yeah. And I think that we probably theorized about this on the show at some point way back in the day.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: "Who is that mystery man?"

Eric: I think we all had different editions. It was hard to find this guy because some of us - I think even I had the later version.

Thomas: Yes.

Eric: But images... because at MuggleNet, we had a book cover section. And I remember seeing an original book cover and I said, "That's not who I have on my back cover. Who...? What's going on here?"
[Laura and Thomas laugh]
Thomas: Yeah, so if your listeners aren't sure what's happening here. When I was asked, I said earlier - I spoiled it slightly - about that back wizard, I was told to just draw a back wizard to decorate the book. I just imagine - because I'd read the book, and really liked it, and I understood that there was a wizarding world, I just thought, "There are bound to be loads of wizards out there, I'll just make one up." I didn't understand that anybody needed to see a character from the book. I just thought I understood the instruction as "Make up a wizard."
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Thomas: So I did make up a wizard, who isn't actually in the story at all. But of course, when the books became more and more well known, more and more successful, especially when it came on a full-on Potter mania, people began asking, "Who is this character?" Because it's clearly not Dumbledore. And it was always that people wanted to see Dumbledore, expected to see Dumbledore, and it's not Quirrell and it's not Snape, so who is this? Is it Nicolas Flamel? So there were lots of questions being asked; even online things were getting quite heated in some places, and there were lots of theories. And the truth of it is, it's just my dad. I just painted my dad as a wizard.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Aww, I love that.

Thomas: Because he is quite an eccentric character; he used to wear quite flamboyant clothing. And I liked the idea in the story that in the Muggle world, you could spot somebody who's connected to the wizarding world by how they're dressed or something like that. So I thought, "Well, maybe people would see my dad and maybe think he was a wizard." So I thought, "Right, I'm going to make him a wizard." So I painted him as a wizard, and I really didn't think much would come of this or anybody would ask anything about it, but of course, in the end Bloomsbury were being so flooded with questions. "Who is this? Who is this person?" And then specifically, "What is that in his pocket?" Because if you've got an image, there's a painting, I painted a bulge in his pocket because I just thought wizards are just going to have stuff in their pocket, some interesting stuff.

Laura: Right.

Thomas: So yeah, so in the end, I was asked to replace my dad. He was retired as a wizard and Dumbledore was put in his place.
[Andrew laughs]
Andrew: Oh my gosh.

Thomas: And no one has ever asked me what it says or commented. I mean, some people might know. But yeah, so there's a bit of mystery for you there, if you get a chance to see it.
[Laura and Thomas laugh]
Thomas: I've written something on the back of Harry Potter.

Andrew: Yeah, I want to ask what the message is...

Thomas: Well, I could tell you.

Andrew: Well, or should we keep it a mystery? I don't know. I feel like people should go figure it out. [laughs]

Laura: Yeah, I'm super curious, but I also don't want to ruin the mystique.

Thomas: It won't take a lot to figure it out.

Andrew: Okay.

Thomas: It's not rude; don't worry.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: "I don't like Harry Potter."

Eric: That would be an all-time great, because how many hundreds of millions of copies of this book have that on it?
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Thomas: But no one else... I mean, I thought Bloomsbury would get straight back and say, "Uh, what does it say?" But they didn't.
[Everyone laughs]
Thomas: I'd've said, "Don't worry; it's nothing shocking. It's nothing shocking."

Eric: Yeah, it's probably "Hello." [laughs]

Laura: Maybe it's been a while since they picked up a copy of The Hobbit. [laughs]

Andrew: What does it say? I guess we may as well find out. What does it say?

Thomas: Well, it just says his name, "Albus Dumbledore." That's it.

Andrew: Oh, okay.
[Andrew and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: That sounds like something he would do, put his own name on his clothes.

Laura: It is. That's in keeping with the character.

Thomas: Yeah, but I was just trying to make it clear, so that if anybody questioned who this wizard was, there was actually proof who it was on the cloak. [laughs]

Eric: Ahh, yes, yes.

Laura: I love that.

Eric: Well, honestly, for me, it's the long hair tucked into the belt.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: I don't know anybody else that's done that other than Dumbledore. That's very Dumbledore-esque.

Thomas: Yeah. And if you notice, he's wearing the same trousers and shoes, almost, as the other one. [laughs]

Andrew: I was going to bring that up, yeah. That's a nice tribute to your dad.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Thomas: But people were quite keen for any story at one point. There was a moment when it was really... people were really looking for stories.

Eric: I don't think we said, what is it in your dad's pocket on the back cover?

Thomas: It's just a hedgehog.
[Andrew laughs]
Thomas: Because I thought that was quite funny.

Eric: That was my first guess. Yeah, I would've guessed hedgehog.

Laura: Yeah, it's a natural guess.

Thomas: Oh, of course, yeah. If you're a wizard, you're going to have all these animal familiars and potion ingredients and things. But I just thought a hedgehog was funny, because how do you get a hedgehog out of your pocket? You've got to put your hand in your pocket, and then there's all these spines in there.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Thomas: So it made me laugh. [laughs]

Eric: Well, it reminds me a lot of Newt Scamander, the hero of the new wizarding world film franchise, because he has a Niffler and many other animals in his pockets all the time. And it really throws it back to Hagrid, as well.

Thomas: Okay, yeah.

Eric: He's got an owl in his pocket or something.
[Eric and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, I was thinking about that too. It's a nice little connection.

Eric: It's so wonderful to be inspired. And I'm glad that your father seemed to really appreciate that.

Thomas: Yeah, he did. He passed away during the pandemic.

Andrew: Oh, I'm sorry.

Thomas: But he always, always, always appreciated that anecdote that [laughs] gave him his brief career. Well, not that brief, because he was on the back of the cover for three or four years, I think, before he was found out.

Laura: Right.

Andrew: And the original Harry Potter cover, even if they eventually replaced them with Dumbledore, that's still incredible to be on the first cover.

Laura: It's still iconic.

Thomas: Yeah. Well, I loved it. I got to see one of the preview showings in London. I think it was the first time it was shown in London. I was invited along, and I just thought it was brilliant. I mean, I still like it. I still think it's a great adaptation.

Andrew: It really is, yeah.

Thomas: But I mean, I haven't even seen all the films. I mean, my experience of Harry Potter is locked into that early phase, so I haven't even read all the books. [laughs]

Andrew: Oh, really?

Thomas: I mean, I really am very, very much... yeah. And in fact, I remember, I read the first three and I really enjoyed them. And then I remember somebody gave me a copy of the fourth one, Goblet of Fire. It was a bookseller who gave it to me early before it was released, so they shouldn't have done that. And I think they were trying to impress me.
[Andrew laughs]
Thomas: And I remember seeing it, and I would never, never expect to be given this book. And, well, as soon as I saw how big it was, I thought, "I don't think I'm going to read that in a hurry."
[Eric, Laura, and Thomas laugh]
Thomas: And it's true, I didn't read it. But I have to say that all this talk about Harry Potter recently and the fact that I'm being interviewed a few times just made me curious about it, so I have started reading it.

Andrew: Aww.

Thomas: So I'm a few chapters in and I'm really enjoying it, so I'm sort of recapturing a little bit of that sense of how much I enjoyed it in those those early days.

Eric: Book 4 is Laura's favorite book, I think.

Thomas: Okay.

Eric: Isn't that right?

Laura: Yeah, it's my favorite. And honestly, I have to say, as people who read the books when we were much younger, it is a really special experience to revisit them as adults, because you get so much more out of them as an adult. There's just a different lens that you have. So I think you're really going to enjoy the experience.

Thomas: Yeah, I really am so far. I mean, I'm a great believer in... I mean, I don't really believe in a distinction between children's books and adults' books anyway. I just think a good story is a great story, and we all love great stories. And I'm really enjoying being back there again.

Laura: That's amazing.

Thomas: Yeah, I think... I mean, I was a bit disappointed about that initially. But then I sort of shrugged it off. I think it was when I actually saw pictures of the book cover, it was a pretty clear hint that I wasn't going to be asked.

Eric: Oh no!
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: "I don't remember doing that!"

Eric: "Hey, um, yeah." [laughs]

Thomas: Yeah, I know. But I think really, there came a certain point where if I was going to be asked, I'd have been asked by now, because they're going to need it pretty soon. But it's fine, because the guy they replaced me with had already done some books with wizards in and was sort of a more established artist. And so I understood that world. That's how it goes.

Andrew: You still set the tone, I think. Especially in the early books, right? I mean, you defined what these covers are going to look like.

Thomas: I hope so. I think so. Somebody told me that Gryffindor colors are defined by the scarf I painted, but I haven't been able... I haven't gone back through to check whether the author says what colors Gryffindor are. So I don't know. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't make too many claims about it. But I just think that having had the opportunity to set an image for Harry Potter really early on, a year before it was even published, is quite something. So I am very proud of that.

Andrew: I wanted to ask about that, actually. So yeah, Harry does have a scarf on in this cover that you illustrated, and it's red and gold. But you're saying you didn't know Gryffindor was going to be red and gold? Because that is the House colors.

Thomas: Yeah, I can't remember now if it says it in the text that it's red and gold. Because I was basing my whole illustration... I think it's in Chapter 2, there's a little description of Harry, and basically, I just worked off that description.

Andrew: Interesting.

Thomas: So I'd be interested if anybody could find out whether that's true or not, but people have told me that, that there was no red and gold until... I mean, could be. I don't know. [laughs]

Andrew: Well, because some people... and we actually brought this up on the show, I think, a while ago: Some people were like, "Well, wait a second, how does Harry already have his Gryffindor scarf if he's seeing the Hogwarts Express for the first time so he hasn't been to Hogwarts yet?" People are like, "Loophole!"
[Andrew and Thomas laugh]
Eric: I think the movie fixes that by establishing that when you go to buy your robes, you can buy... it's the crest that's the multiple color one.

Andrew: Ahh.

Laura: Yeah, you can buy it as memorabilia. But also, there's not anything Hogwarts-specific about having a red and gold scarf; let's be honest. [laughs]

Andrew: Right.

Laura: It's totally possible.

Eric: Could be a coincidence. That would be a heck of a coincidence.

Thomas: But I don't remember. I mean, I certainly didn't paint it to be to be Gryffindor; I just painted red and gold stripes because it was a vibrant color.

Andrew: Interesting.

Thomas: I wanted something in that corner to pop out.

Laura: Yeah, it's perfect.

Andrew: That's a very fascinating factoid.

Micah: I think what we're really finding out here is that Thomas is in fact Godric Gryffindor.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: The founder of Gryffindor.

Eric: Oh, in Diagon Alley, there is a... so I'm reading - this is page 22 of the US edition - it says, "They had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold was a goblin."

Andrew: Oh, well, there you go.

Eric: At Gringotts. Perhaps it's the Gringotts colors.
[Laura laughs]
Thomas: It could do. I don't remember.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Maybe.

Eric: No, no. Very interesting stuff, though.

Laura: And because we're talking about Houses here, we're a Harry Potter podcast; we ask every guest this: What is your Hogwarts House? [laughs]

Thomas: Well, look, I would aim for Ravenclaw; of course I would. But I'd probably get Hufflepuff. I think I fit there best. [laughs] So I'd be happy with that.

Laura: Hey, we love Hufflepuffs. [laughs]

Eric: Hufflepuff.

Andrew: But there are two Ravenclaws on this panel. Micah and Laura are both Ravenclaws.

Thomas: Oh, okay. I remember reading it thinking, "Why would anyone not want to be a Ravenclaw?" That was my impression after reading the book.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Thomas: "Why would you not want that?" But I don't think I quite cut the mustard. [laughs]

Laura: No, I think so. I mean, the whole point of the Sorting Hat is there's an element of choice involved, so I would say you're a Ravenclaw.

Eric: You know, what's interesting is more of the books' villains than not are Ravenclaw, especially in the early ones. Quirrell was the Ravenclaw, and so was Professor Lockhart.

Thomas: Oh, okay, okay.

Eric: The second one. So Ravenclaws not always just the best and the brightest. They can turn dark.
[Thomas laughs]
Eric: I thought you'd appreciate that.

Laura: Hey.

Micah: Well, I would still argue they're bright. I don't know if they're the best.

Eric: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Thomas: It's a great invention. The Sorting Hat is a great narrative device for the story for how to generate story out of that element in a story. It's great.

Thomas: Yes, that's right. I think in the US, it's coming out actually in the spring, but in the UK, it will come out this autumn, this fall. And yeah, I mean, I can't quite understand where the time has gone. Because I mean, I'm already working on the fifth book, and that's pretty much finished. So it's been quite an exciting process. It's a five-book series. It's a story. I mean, obviously, sometimes Harry Potter fans ask me, "How is this connected to Harry Potter?" And I have to say, "Well, of course, it's not. It's not connected to Harry Potter." [laughs] But it's still in that sort of middle grade, magical mystery vibe that I really love. So it's a similar sort of setup, I guess, but a mysterious seaside town.

Eric: Yeah, having read the first book, I appreciate all first books of series that focus or have something to do with a small glowing red orb with magical properties.
[Laura and Thomas laugh]
Eric: Pretty interesting, actually.

Thomas: Oh, yeah. Are you alluding to the Philosopher's Stone?

Eric: Yeah, perhaps.

Thomas: I hadn't ever really thought about that. Oh gosh. [laughs]

Eric: And grant some life... it seems intentional. [laughs] But I won't get into spoilers about Malamander.

Thomas: No, but people often find things and say, "Is that because of Harry Potter?" and I have to say, "No, I'm sorry."
[Andrew and Thomas laugh]
Eric: But based on your life. So you live by the sea.

Thomas: I do, yeah.

Eric: How much of your life experiences inspired the characters and settings of the series in general, but also Malamander?

Thomas: Yeah, well, it's just because I moved by the sea about ten years ago, and I found out that by the sea in the winter, it's very different. The town changes a lot. Quite creepy. It's quite strange. And when all the fun and bright things of summer are locked up and covered in a bit of frost, and the wind is really strong, and it's quite spooky, that can be quite creepy, really quite, to some, disturbing. And so the town of Eerie-on-Sea is based heavily on the town near where I live, and some of the characters I've met. And this town is beset by legends, and there are these magical creatures that people encounter. And where I live, I live one of the few places in UK where at low tide, if you're very lucky, you can actually find dinosaur remains on the beach, just sort of rolling dinosaur bones.

Laura: Wow!

Andrew: Whoa.

Thomas: 135-million-year-old fossil bones, and even dinosaur footprints. So I've been inspired sort of directly to create a... you can understand why I've written about a sea monster, when you think that you can actually see all these theropod footprints down on the beach, and they're wet. They're in the stone, they're in the rock, but it's wet when you see them, and it almost looks like the creature has just made that mark. When you're down there in the mist, you want to turn around and just check it's not still there. So that was the inspiration for these mystery stories.

Laura: That's incredible.

Eric: And how did you come up with Herbie and Violet, for instance, as characters? What was your inspiration?

Thomas: Yeah, well, Herbie is basically me. So Herbie would be a Hufflepuff, I think.
[Andrew, Laura, and Thomas laugh]
Thomas: He's basically me, and I just sort of regressed back to childhood to write that character. And then I needed, because I'm a bit of a bit of a wuss, really, a bit bound by the rules, perhaps, but then Violet is just a kind of foil to that. So Violet is the opposite. So they work together, they complement each other, and together they are this great team. That's the intention. And they're named after traditional British candy. This isn't always apparent, I think, to people in the US, but they're named after Sherbet Lemons and Parma Violets, which are... instantly, people in the UK get where the names come from, but I have to often explain that.

Eric: Herbert, ohh.

Thomas: Herbert Lemon is Sherbet Lemon, and Parma Violets become Violet Parma.

Andrew: Got it. Yeah, we are all Americans here; that went over our heads.
[Everyone laughs]
Thomas: I actually came to the US to tour these books a little bit, and I got asked that everywhere. So I actually brought these sweets with me, and I was sort of fighting trying to stop children from just grabbing them, because I only had this very small supply and they were... [laughs]

Andrew: "Let me explain to you why I brought these first!"
[Thomas laughs]
Eric: Yeah, yeah. A wonderful book-themed candy. It's wonderful that they made this candy based on the characters of this beloved book series.
[Thomas laughs]
Eric: Oh my goodness.

Micah: I think, actually, "Sherbet lemon" is one of the passwords to Dumbledore's office in the series.

Eric: At some point.

Thomas: It could be, yeah. It could be. Because it's that sort of thing that's a very, very traditional Victorian candy.

Andrew: Ahh.

Micah: Yeah. I'm curious, though, going from illustrator to author, what that process has been like, and maybe what the most challenging aspect in that shift has been for you.

Thomas: Yeah, I think the hardest thing was getting people to take me seriously as a writer. So I did after Harry Potter, I actually had a career about ten years of working in picture books, mostly as an illustrator. And that was great, and I enjoyed doing that. But I kind of ran out of steam; I had run out of picture book-shaped ideas, and was itching more and more to write more substantial texts. Because I started to write as well as illustrate while I was working on picture books, and so making that jump to actually start working on a piece of fiction that was going to be longer, yeah, it was a psychological barrier to jump over, and then having to admit to my agent further up and say, "You know you took me on as an illustrator all those years ago. Well, I've written a book; would you like to read it?"
[Andrew laughs]
Thomas: And she was a very, very formidable lady and wasn't going to take any nonsense, and she made it very clear that I would have to win her 'round, that I wasn't going to get a literary agent by sneaking in through the illustrators door and then sitting down with the office. [laughs] I had to actually prove myself. So it was quite nerve-wracking when she read the book I wrote, which is completely unpublishable; it hasn't been published. But she was incredibly encouraging, and so that gave me the impulse of "Keep going." Had she said, "This is awful; go back to painting," maybe things would be different, because I did respect her opinion. But she was incredibly encouraging.

Andrew: So illustrating or being an author, do you prefer one or the other?

Thomas: These days I think of myself as an author primarily. I do still draw a bit, so the UK editions of my books have little chapter heading drawings I do, and I draw the maps and things like that. In the US, they're illustrated by Tom Booth, absolutely brilliantly illustrated by him, really excellently. But he's illustrated them far more than I would like to have done. These days I don't like to do big illustration jobs; I think I find it just a bit exhausting. I started to get repetitive strain problems in my hands; especially trying to use digital means, it gets really quite exhausting. And I find I just really love writing. You can conjure anything. You think about how long it takes to write the word "elephant," and then think about how long it takes to draw the elephant.
[Andrew and Thomas laugh]
Thomas: You can see how writing can be so much more immediate and you can get a lot more done.

Laura: [laughs] Definitely see the appeal there, for sure.
[Eric and Thomas laugh]
Laura: Pivoting to considering your time as an author, what feedback have you most enjoyed getting from readers who read Eerie-on-Sea?

Thomas: Well, the best thing is when children dress up as my characters on World Book Day, which is just an amazing thing.

Andrew: Aww.

Thomas: As an author, if you get up for anything in the morning, that's what you get up for. Because to get those pictures sent to me, "Here's my little boy dressed as Herbert Lemon," and "Here's my daughter dressed as Violet Palma going to school," it's just amazing. And then children write to me, and I write back as if I'm in the Grand Nautilus Hotel, which is the hotel in Eerie-on-Sea. I write back on headed notepaper.

Eric and Laura: Ohh!

Andrew: That's so great.

Thomas: And I've been told that that always creates quite a bit of an excitement when it arrives. And it looks like I'm actually in one of the rooms there, and their letters reach me there and I'm just writing back.

Laura: That's amazing.

Andrew: I bet. That's awesome.

Thomas: So things like that, the interaction with readers is just really, really exciting.

Laura: Wow, that is so cool. As a kid I would have flipped.
[Thomas laughs]
Laura: As an adult I would flip, honestly.

Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Thomas: I don't know, really. A few years ago, I managed to realize an ambition to do a comic book. I've always wanted to do a comic book for many years. I have a friend who is an author called Marcus Sedgwick, who is very, very successful, and he and I have always talked about doing a comic book. A few years ago we did, and First Second published it in the US; it was primarily a US Publication. It's called Scarlett Hart: Monster Hunter. And yeah, he wrote the text, I did the drawings, and so that was quite exciting. And it's out there, and that's a bucket list item ticked off. And I really enjoyed working on it, but it kind of broke my hands working on it, because just in the actual physical work of creating panel after panel after panel for hundreds of pages was pretty exhausting. So I realized I probably am not going to do many more of those. But yeah, that's out in the US if anybody wants to look it up, and it's got monsters in it. So there's always that.

Laura: I just made a note. I love comic books. So I'm definitely going to head out and get that.
[Andrew, Laura, and Thomas laugh]
Andrew: Thomas, this has been really great. Where can our listeners find you online?

Thomas: My website is ThomasTaylor-Author.com. I'm on Twitter quite a lot, and Instagram. On Instagram I'm on @thomskagram. I should change that, really.

Andrew: [laughs] That's a fun name.

Thomas: But I'm quite findable. You can search me up. There are hundreds of millions of Thomas Taylors out there. Many of them have written books, but ultimately you will find me if you search.

Eric: I'm very excited to keep going on the Eerie-on-Sea. I love the characters. I'm very engaged.

Thomas: I hope you enjoy the next one.

Eric: Okay.

Andrew: And stay tuned for a letter from Eric, and he's expecting that letterhead back.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: "Hi, um, I love the book, thanks," waiting for him to write me back like, "Yesss."
[Andrew and Thomas laugh]
Thomas: Well, I'll look out for that, yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.

Andrew: Yeah, thanks.

Laura: Wow, he was delightful.

Andrew and Micah: Yeah.

Andrew: That was such a great interview. That was so much fun. Everyone, check out his series Eerie-on-Sea, and we'll include links in the show notes. I'm still shook by this Gryffindor scarf revelation on the cover. [laughs]

Eric: Yeah, the fact that that wasn't intentional.

Micah: We got a couple of exclusives between the Gryffindor scarf and then the Hobbit writing on Dumbledore's cloak.

Eric: That Hobbit thing is real, yeah.

Andrew: We need to write articles about this on MuggleCast.com. "What's that code mean on the back cover?"
[Laura laughs]
Eric: "Decoding the back cover of Philosopher's ..."

Laura: As long as we don't make it one of those annoying click-baity articles that's like, "What does it mean?" and then the text goes on for like eight miles where we're like, "Albus Dumbledore is the renowned headmaster of Hogwarts" before we even talk.

Andrew: Laura, that's how we make the money! We put 30 ads before you get to the answer.

Eric: Yeah, Chloé knows. She said she's pro-click bait.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: We also need an article on what the bulge is on the original back cover in Thomas's dad's pocket. [laughs]

Micah: It's a Hobbit.

Andrew: [laughs] It's a Hobbit.

Eric: It's the Niffler. It's Teddy.

Andrew: No, he said porcupine, right?

Laura: Yeah, it's a porcupine.

Eric: A hedgehog.

Andrew: Hedgehog, right.

Micah: Sonic.

Andrew: Anyway. Well, if you have any feedback about today's great interview with Thomas Taylor, you can write or send a voice message to MuggleCast@gmail.com. If you're going to send us a voice message, just record that message using the Voice Memo app on your phone. And you can also use the contact form on MuggleCast.com if you don't want to do the old school email, or you can leave a voicemail on our phone. The number is 1-920-3-MUGGLE. That's 1-920-368-4453. By the way, coming up on our Patreon today, Patreon.com/MuggleCast, many of our patrons are tuned in live this morning and they got to watch our interview with Thomas Taylor, so thanks to everybody who's joining us this morning. We are going to have a bonus MuggleCast installment to celebrate Pride Month: Gay Harry Potter pickup lines.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: 'Nuff said.

Andrew: Explicit content warning.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: That's all I'll say before we go into this.

Eric: Happy Pride, everybody.

Andrew: Micah messaged us last night saying, "I'm having way too much fun writing these pickup lines."
[Micah laughs]
Eric: Oh no, I haven't looked since Micah has been in... oh no.

Andrew: Brace yourselves. I might... yeah, I'm going to scream a couple times. [laughs]

Micah: That'll make it even better.

Andrew: We do a monthly bonus MuggleCast installment on our Patreon to thank everybody for their support. We did a pickup line bonus MuggleCast back in February 2021 around Valentine's Day, but now this one is Pride Month-themed, so that's going to be a lot of fun.

Quizzitch

Andrew: All right, it's time for some Quizzitch.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Eric: Last week's question, bit of a teaser: Who illustrated the first book cover for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone published in 1997 by Bloomsbury in UK? The correct answer, of course - we just met him - Mr. Thomas Taylor. Congratulations to the few people who did enter and get it, including Jessica your friendly neighborhood Slytherin; What does the Fawkes say?; Yo I don't want to fight Cerberus; Liz Ravenclaw; Colin Creevey's brother; The rogue Niffler; and A small glass of firewhisky with a gilly water chaser plus a slice of lemon. Sounds good.

Micah: Oh, I'm disappointed. I entered as Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I thought I got...

Eric: I was just going to mention that!
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Thomas Taylor, Jonathan Taylor Thomas... I'll tell you, Micah, maybe you're doing it wrong. This whole time I had to switch it. Where you put the name...

Micah: Yeah, I noticed I did that, yep.

Eric: Okay. Yeah, the name, the answer...

Micah: I noticed that.

Andrew: Yeah, where did you get that info from? Because I think over the years, it's been a bit of a mystery, the exact publication date, right?

Eric: It has been, and it wasn't until Thomas Taylor's publicist mentioned it as being the date to shoot for with our episode. And I'm assuming she got that from Bloomsbury.

Andrew: Okay, so that's another exclusive that we need a 8,000 word article for with the 40 banner ads.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Yes! "When exactly was the book published? Well, it is uncertain because no good records were kept before the Internet, yes."

Andrew: "But stay tuned; we have a theory." 30 banner ads.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: "So the first Harry Potter book..." blah, blah, blah.

Eric: Yeah, so happy 25th anniversary to the book that changed all of our lives. This was a great way to celebrate that.

Andrew: Yeah, he was a lot of fun, Thomas was.

Eric: So if you're looking to enter Quizzitch, submit your answer to us on the MuggleCast website, MuggleCast.com/Quizzitch, or go to the website and click "Quizzitch" in the menu bar.

Andrew: Make sure you're following MuggleCast for free in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode, and leave us a review if you can in that podcast app. Also, don't forget to follow us on social media. Our username is MuggleCast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. And once again, don't forget to pledge on Patreon if you love what we do here and want to support the show and see it thrive. Patreon.com/MuggleCast. If you can't pledge, that's okay; we understand. Just make sure you're following the show for free so you get every episode. If you're interested in any of our sponsors, feel free to use those promo codes and links. It all helps. Tell a friend about the show. It all helps grow the show and support the show, so thank you. Laura, what's coming up on next week's episode of MuggleCast?

Laura: So on next week's episode, we're going to be doing a full-on "In defense of" episode in which we talk about a number of characters from the series that we'll be playing a little bit of devil's advocate on. I think the first one we're going to kick it off with is James Potter. Did he mature? Are we to believe that had he lived longer, he would have been a more exemplary adult than he was a teenager? You'll have to listen next week to find out.

Andrew: Yeah, this is sort of a follow-up to our "In defense of each of the Hogwarts Houses" series, where we're going to support some of the characters who maybe get a bad rap, and sometimes, not deservedly so. So we'll talk about that next week, getting back to some old school Harry Potter talk just like we did today. All right, thanks, everybody, for listening. I'm Andrew.

Eric: I'm Eric.

Micah: I'm Micah.

Laura: And I'm Laura.

Andrew: Bye, everyone.

Laura: Bye.

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MuggleCast 567 Transcript Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #567, 'Philosopher's Stone' Illustrator Thomas Taylor Reveals the Secrets Behind the Cover [Show music plays] Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the wizarding world fandom. I'm Andrew. Eric Scull: I'm Eric. Micah Tannenbaum: I'm Micah. Laura Tee: And I'm Laura.

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Anelli, Melissa. Interview of Arthur Levine. PotterCast #22, 23, & 24, January-February, 2006

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Anelli, Melissa. Interview of Arthur Levine. PotterCast #22, 23, & 24, January-February, 2006

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This interview of Rowling's American editor Arthur Levine was broadcast over three episodes of The Leaky Cauldron's PotterCast. Transcript courtesy of PotterCast. If you wish to listen, each podcast is linked separately.

On this page:
PotterCast 22: Origins of Harry Potter | PotterCast 23: Changing Harry Potter | PotterCast 24: Ending Harry Potter

PotterCast #22, "The Origins of Harry Potter," Jan 17, 2006 [ audio]
Arthur Levine (AL): Glad to be here!
MA: (laughs) ...for that we thank you.
AL: Well done, by the way! You got all of that right!
MA: (laughs) Well, hopefully, hopefully, if there's anyone who can get it right, it's the, it's the crazy fansites. So, anyway, thank you very much. We're excited to have you. I guess let's just start! There's a lot of confusion. You've told the story a million times, but there's a lot of confusion about exactly how this happened - what portion in the time line did you buy the rights, how popular was it in Britain at that time, you know, which books have been published? A Potter fan says they know the story, buy you ask them and they, they'll get it wrong.
AL: Okay, so this is for the permanent record.
MA: For the permanent record.
AL: This is great, because you're right - I have said this about eight billion times.
MA: Yeah.
AL: But I will say it eight billion and one! (MA laughs) This is, this was the chronology. So, this was just around the time that I had started my imprint, Arthur Levine Books, at Scholastic. And that's significant because it speaks to what I was thinking when I went to Bologna that year. So this is the first year I went to the Bologna International Children's Book Fair...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...as a representative of my own imprint. So, this was this spring of 1997.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: March 1997, I believe. And my imprint was gonna publish its first book in the fall of 1997.
MA: Which book was that?
AL: It was called When She Was Good, by Norma Fox Mazer.
MA: I've heard of it.
AL: Still in print! (MA laughs) Proud of it! And I had... This was a very important fair for me because this is where publishers from all around the world get together and they talk about books and authors that they're excited about and try to figure out what they can publish in their countries or languages. And since I very much wanted my - one the hallmarks - of my imprint to be about bringing the best of the world's literature to American kids, this is going to be a very exciting fair! It's the first time I got to go and to start a new adventure. And I had all of these meetings, 'cause that's how the fair works; you have half hour meetings where you go from publisher to publisher, then generally you talk to the subsidiary rights director. Publishers talk to rights directors, usually.
MA: Okay.
AL: Although, you know, we all have our friends who are fellow publishers that we have dinner with, or lunch, or we have a cappuccino in between meetings. And you kind of have this conversation where the rights director says, "Well, this is what we have." And the editor says, "Okay, well, I might be interested in that or not be interested." We have a conversation. So, of course, one of the companies I was excited about seeing is, was little Bloomsbury, who had recently, also recently started. They've been a few years old, publishing very wonderful books. They had a varied literary identity. I felt a very strong affinity for what they were publishing and what they were trying to do, and I was as always looking forward to meeting with Ruth, the rights director.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: So we had our, we had our meeting. A lovely meeting, although nothing that Ruth was presenting was the perfect fit for me right at that moment.
MA: Right.
AL: So at the end of the meeting - she's got a great sense of humor and she's a fabulous rights director - she kind of crossed her arms and went, "Well, you know, so if none of those things were perfect, then what exactly is it that you are looking for?" So I give her my little speech about what my, what I wanted my imprint to be about.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: I wanted it to be the best of the world's literature and looking to publish some books that kids will remember for the rest of their lives, as, "Oh, that was my favorite book from my childhood! Oh, I still have that on my shelf!" You know? This book was just the book that I read to the pieces. And she said, "Well, we're about to publish a book by a very exciting new writer that we think you might like! We don't actually even control the rights. You know the agent does." That may be another technical thing you want to explain separately to your readers...
MA: Right, right.
AL: ...but she said, "Here is a set of galleys. I think you'll really like it. Why don't you read it on the, on the trip home." And that, of course, was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, by J.K. Rowling, and that was the first time I read it. It was not yet published...
MA: Right.
AL: ...in England, so there was no, there was no, you know, it wasn't popular, it wasn't known. There was nothing that had happened yet.
MA: And this was the big point of misconception: people think that it was just because it was known and...
AL: Right.
MA: Right.
AL: It was not, no. It was not known. She was unpublished.
MA: Right.
AL: It was, you know, there was the enthusiasm of a credible literary publisher behind her, at that point. So that's not nothin'!
MA: Right.
AL: You know, at that point, (unintelligible), a lot of respect for Bloomsbury, and that rights... Ruth is saying to me, "This is really, this is something we are really excited about." You know, I'll pay attention to that. And I did! I actually read it on the plane home, which I wouldn't have had I not had the level of respect for her. But, there was no international moment going on. I brought it home, and I read it on the plane, so I was extremely excited about it, and just loved it! It was exactly what I was looking for! Exactly those qualities! It was, it had the sense of being a book of enduring quality, a book for the ages, not just for now. It was funny, it was exciting. It was, you know, a lot of things that was a very rare find in one book...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...and I really wanted it. Now, the fact was that several other American publishers also really wanted it. And they, too, read - based on the same factors that was the center of my enthusiasm - I had read it! (laughs)
MA: (laughing) It's a big point.
AL: People were excited about the book that they had read. I'd assume, but I have no evidence of this, they all, you know, had a sense of credibility of Bloomsbury behind them...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...um, but nothing else! And then we had this, this auction.
MA: A rights auction, right? That's...
AL: A rights auction!
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: So the agent, Christopher Little, held an auction for the US rights, and I think there were a beginning seven publishers and then as auctions go it dropped down it dropped down dropped down...
MA: Right-
AL: ...and, you know,I won that auction...
MA: Mmm-hmm-
AL: ...so that's why I got to publish it.
MA: Right.
AL: Now, I will say that the auction itself was a moment in the, in what happens to the book...
MA: Mmm-hmm-
AL: ...because that, there was a lot of coverage of that auction, in England.
MA: Mmm-hmm, press coverage you mean?
AL: Yes, a lot of press coverage. And that was partly because of the back story - you know that at that time, Jo was, had been on public assistance, you know, like many writers, was struggling...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...to make a living so that wasn't her very unique position but it was the position that she was in: that she was a single mother, a young daughter. So, it's a really great story that a person in that situation has persevered and managed to get her first book published, then has this windfall, you know, of a uh, you know, a six-figured sum from an American publisher. So this was like, this was big, sexy news and I think that was part of what made people in England sit up and say, "Oh, maybe this is something we need to read!"
MA: Right.
AL: You know, brought the book to their attention. And it is notoriously hard to make people pay attention to first novels, especially first childrens' novels. So there's a lot of things like that.
MA: Right.
AL: And that was the chronology. So, I think, Bloomsbury published their book in July of 1997.
MA: Yeah. Okay, when did the auction happen?
AL: In April.
MA: Around April. So but, but as the bidding went up, had you ever paid this much money? What was the sum again? I forget. Was it 125,000?
AL: 105,000 [US dollars].
MA: 105,000. So, what was the closest you've ever paid to that for another book?
AL: You know, I don't remember.
MA: Yeah.
AL: I mean I do remember that that was by far the most I'd ever paid for a first novel.
MA: Yeah.
AL: And, it was, it was, a lot more than I've paid for almost any other novel. And that's still true. That is a huge amount of money.
MA: Yeah. (MA and AL laugh) You say it like, it looks like you're remembering what that was like. Because it must have been nerve-racking.
AL: Well, it was nerve-racking, you know this was my, my first big risk at, I mean my first huge risk at a new publisher. So, you know, the rest of the publishing houses going along with me, they were supporting me, "Yeah, okay, sure go ahead" you know? "Keep going, stay in it if you're passionate." Yes I am, so they were all behind me, it wasn't a matter of I had to convince reluctant people, but having brought the company along with me, it's then my responsibility whether this works or not. And, there wasn't a lot of reason, other than my belief in the author and the writing...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...to think that it would work to the extent that it would need to work to pay back a $105,000.00 advance. That, that has to be a substantial hit. And, what I thought at the time was, this is such a good book that it will be around for a long, long time. And, maybe we won't earn back this advance in two or three years, but we will earn it back in five years. You know, in the long term we will be fine. And, I am confident.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: So, that's what I was thinking.
MA: At that point, what did you know about the books? Only the first book? Did you know anything about the rest of the series?
AL: I mean, I only knew that she saw it as a seven part story. That it was, that this was the first, that she was going to tell us, write a book for every year that this young man, Harry, was going to be in school. So it's a story of his training and coming of age.
MA: Right, but there was no indication that it would be this over-arching, massive, masterfully plotted mystery kind of thing. For all you knew it could have been a serial, you know, like, sort of disconnected.
AL: Well, I'm not, I'm not sure what the difference is there. I mean, you can't know in advance how...
MA: Right.
AL: ...something is going to fall into place...
MA: Well, a lot, a lot of...
AL: ...I'm mean, you're right, I didn't know what it would be, just seven adventures of a particular character, or, I mean it is that.
MA: Right.
AL: So, I think that, you know, as the books went along, it had, you get to know what the character, characteristics are. I mean, I knew he would get a year older. I mean, if you look back, I knew all of those things, I knew he would get a year older in each one. And, so, if I thought that, thought that through I would think well okay so it's getting the characteristics of the books are gonna to develop along with the character. But, in fact it's very, that turns out to be a very unusual characteristic of the books that they, while they retain their essential J.K. Rowling character, the characters really do grow up and change and therefore the some of the themes the plots the sub-plots change with them.
MA: Yeah. I think the thing that people are most interested to know - which I think you've answered - is that those, that first sale, that initial interest was based on, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone alone, that it was just on the Stone and it was not, "Well, and there we have six more coming..." And, surely it factored into the decision but it was the strength of that book that, that fueled the sale.
AL: Right, I mean I think at that point, you know honestly you have to, you have to say, sure, we'll see. I mean from my points, what I was falling in love with, was the author and her capability. You know, I was certainly happy to hear she had other books in mind because I wasn't interested in publishing somebody whose only going to write one book. I mean not that I should say I wasn't interested, I mean, my hope was to be finding authors.
MA: Right.
AL: And, certainly an author as good as that, you want them to write other books, and so it's that the excitement of being there at the start of someone's career, you know, you hope that the person will have a career and develop as a writer that will be part of the pleasure of publishing that is to watch, watch as that happens.
MA: Right. So you got the rights. And, the big decision, that so many of our readers still to this day, either kvetch about or just discuss, is the changing of "Philosopher's" to "Sorcerer's." So, can you explain the process that went behind that?
AL: Sure you know that did not, did not and does seem like a big decision. And it wasn't at the time. You know, I would have been happy to call it "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." That would have been fine, but at the time that we were introducing it here within our own company and thinking about introducing it to American readers, many people who heard the title and then read the books said "Oh, this is really a different book than I thought it would be with the title "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone""
MA: Hmm.
AL: You know, I'm a literary imprint - I can publish a book called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" or, you know, called "The Philosopher's Stone."
MA: Right.
AL: But what readers now do not have the benefit of the, that point of view that we had at that point. Which is: this is an unknown author. She is, at the time that I'm publishing this, I'm publishing a British author is not, you know, is not something that is considered commercially a plus. The fact that an author is from England, you know, is maybe, you know, a strike against it.
MA: Is that in the market, in the consumer marketplace? Is that why?
AL: Yeah.
MA: Or is it...
AL: ...well, and frankly, with reader feedback as well.
MA: Really?
AL: With people there was an idea that kids are not, don't want to read about people who are not like them. So, anyway. While I know what a philosopher's stone is, and many people, probably many others do now, particularly since Harry Potter is such a big phenomenon that it has probably induced many people to find out what a philosopher's stone is.
MA: Yeah.
AL: If you think about marketing a book, it is possible that someone hears "Philosopher's Stone" and thinks it's a book about philosophy.
MA: Right.
AL: So our idea was we would really like to make sure that the title of the book invokes in kid's minds the nature of the book itself.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So we're trying to make sure that in the general consumer's mind they get what they think they're getting.
MA: Right.
AL: And we didn't think Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was necessarily the best title.
MA: Well there's a different connotation in England right? When people hear Philosopher's Stone in England, you do get the Sorcerer's Stone implication, is that correct?
AL: You know that's possible. But it's also, think about England, their publishing a person they paid 3,000 pounds. They, you know, they're a literary publisher and their goal is to just launch the book and launch the author and it's really fine if they sell 300, 500 copies. You know, I'm making, I'm just making that number up.
MA: I think the first is about 500.
AL: A really small number of copies. I know that they paid something like 3,000 pounds, so it's really fine if they get a very small audience That's all they're thinking they're going to get.
MA: Right.
AL: Now me, on the other hand, are thinking, well actually we think there's a bigger audience for this particular book. How can we convey that? How can we convey the nature of the book? So I went to, went back to Jo. This is also, by the way, an extremely common occurrence in books that come from other countries, that we say, is this the best title? It's also an extremely common occurrence for books that we originate.
MA: Okay.
AL: An author sends in a manuscript that has a given title. It's one of the favorite things for a sales and marketing departments to discuss.
MA: Okay.
AL: Because it seems like a big thing and if they can get the title that they want then it gives them confidence going into the market selling the book to book sellers, etcetera. And giving the people who are selling the book confidence is an important part of a successful publishing effort. Whether you want to do that, if you can accomplish that while keeping the author happy, then you do it. It's only, it only makes sense.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So, the next step is to go to the author because whatever you do, it's the author's book.
MA: Right.
AL: And she has to be happy with the title. So, I went back to Jo and I remember the conversation, what the title that I suggested was, how about "Harry Potter and the School of Magic?" Because it seems like Hogwarts is a very important part of this.
MA: Right, especially that first year.
AL: And she thought about it and said, "I'm not really sure about that. How about, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?" And I said, "Oh, Sorcerer's Stone, okay." That evokes magic more directly and obviously. Why don't I take that back and I took that back and everyone was like, oh yes, that's great that's great. (MA laughs) So, oh, okay, so the sales and marketing department are happy the author is happy. The book goes out.
MA: Right.
AL: You know P.S. - there are two P.S.'s. P.S. number one, I think that it worked (laughs).
MA: Maybe. (laughs)
AL: Uh, you know, I feel. Well, not maybe.
MA: (laughing) No, I'm just kidding.
AL: Oh, right, right. I'm thinking maybe is, maybe it would have been fine with "Philosopher's Stone."
MA: Right.
AL: I certainly think that if Book four had been called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone," that would be no problem.
MA: Right.
AL: Oh, we would, I mean, absolutely. Whatever she wants to call it she can, you know, would be absolutely fine. Because, again, fans are there. She's...
MA: Yeah.
AL: No one will take the title as an excuse to skip the book.
MA: Right.
AL: Which is a very great possibility with an unknown author. When your introducing an unknown author to booksellers or the public, particularly booksellers. Any opportunity, any reason they have to skip it, to not order it, to not put it on their shelves, they will because there is a lot of competition. And so we do a lot of things to make it impossible for the to skip it.
MA: (laughs) Right.
AL: You want to make the price, the best price you can make it. You want to make the package the most beautiful, compelling package you can. You know all of these things are not necessarily intrinsic to the book but there part of what brings the book to readers.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: And that was our priority goal: Get the book to readers. And that's the whole reason. The second P.S. is: can you tell me what the title of the book is in French? The first book?
MA: The first book, no. Four, yes. But the first book, strangely, no. What is it in French?
AL: Ask your readers... Harry Potter and uh, I can't speak French, � l'�cole des Sorciers. Which is Harry Potter...
MA: Something Sorcerer...
AL: ... and the School of Magic .
MA: Oh, really? (laughing)
AL: Yes. So really, the changing of the title is not limited...
MA: Right.
AL: ... to... You know some publishers in other countries took it directly. Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal , you know? Took it directly. Other publishers thought well, you know, we need something slightly different.
MA: Right.
AL: And so they did. But I think what happens here is that the conversation is, becomes about things that are not, that have nothing to do with the title. This interest in the title or the title change, I think comes from other unstated questions or accusations that you know, people want to make.
MA: Right, but then after, after Book One, have, have the titles changed across the board or then after Book One has it just been the same title pretty much.
AL: Yeah, well I think there is no, there was certainly Book Two: The Chamber of Secrets.
(Prologue from the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire soundtrack begins to play)
MA: Yeah, that's powerful enough on it's own. Yeah.
AL: The Prisoner of Azkaban.
MA: Yeah.
AL: Those, neither of those have a word that people could confuse and certainly, by that time, it doesn't matter.

PotterCast #23: "Changing Harry Potter," Jan 26, 2006 [ audio]
MA: What was that like, in the beginning? What was it like to try and forge this relationship with this completely unknown - the same way it would be with any writer - but with Jo specifically.
AL: Well, it was a lot of fun, because (laughs) she's a lot of fun!
MA: Yeah.
AL: You know, she's... Somebody - was it one of the fans asked what it was like to meet her?
MA: Or the initial, your initial response to her was one of our fan questions.
AL: Well, yeah, I mean, I remember, you know, my very first conversation with her, you know, after that auction...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ... I was thinking, "Wow! This, you know, this woman is unknown, you know, she's... This is like the... You know, her initial advance was £3000, and this could be really shocking."
MA: Were you the one to bring her the news?
AL: Well, I would assume her that her agent...
MA: Right, probably...
AL: ...was the one who gave her that specific news...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...but I wanted to talk to her, you know, as soon as I could...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...because also, I was excited. I wanted to meet her.
MA: Yeah.
AL: And I remember that first conversation, and just how charming she was, and disarming, and unaffected, and... She was just really lovely.
MA: What did you talk about?
AL: Well, I think mainly I just wanted to kind of reassure her that the amount of money was not particularly... It was not the most important thing. I mean, not that I thought she would think that, but I wanted her not to be freaked out by the kind of crazy auction that had taken place. And I wanted her to know that my interest and my passion was in her writing...
MA: Right.
AL: ...and that it was not going to be coming from a place of "We need to earn back this big money," you know? (laughs) So...
MA: Right, "We've taken a gamble on you, and now you have to pay us back." Like that kind of thing. You wanted to discourage that.
AL: Well, yeah. I just wanted her to know how much we truly believe in her, and how we were in it for the long term, and, you know, that she should feel confident, that she shouldn't feel... And the only expression I can think of is "freaked out," because I thought that was a possibility.
MA: Yeah. Now, how do you think that the relationship has changed between you guys over the years?
AL: Well we've, you know, we've been through a lot together. (laughs) You know, just the whole crazy process of Harry Potter and its phenomenal growth, and, you know, just and all the changes in our personal lives...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...that have happened, you know, over that period of time. And becoming parents and, you know, for her again.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So, I just think as with any friend, you know, as time goes by you just gain a closeness from shared experience.
MA: Yeah.
AL: And I also think that it's, there's something that's very special about the fact that we knew each other before it all happened.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: You know? Like this was... She must know in her heart that I was interested in her and, you know, respected her, and was excited about her as a writer before she was a famous person, you know, when she was unknown. That was when I really fell in love with her writing.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: I think that that is a close bond to have with an author...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...you know, she must know that it's not particularly... I don't particularly care about all the fame and hoopla, really. For me, just as it was in the first one, it's mostly about the excitement of the book and the writing.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: And that I care about her as a person.
MA: Yeah. Well, when this all started to happen, and the books went from something that would be around forever and would eventually pay back this huge advance to something that could sell that in about ten minutes, how did things start to change? Not specifically between your relationship, but just what was all that like as all this started to explode.
AL: Well... (laughs) It's such a big question. It's kind of hard to kind of put that into a little cup and answer it...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...as in a draft. I think a number of things happened. It certainly... There for many years and I think, I suppose even to the present, every time a new book comes out there's once more a kind of an amazement at the size of it, and the extent of it, and the drama, and, you know, it's the fact that a book and an author are a cultural, an immediate cultural phenomenon.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: And that's very unusual, or I would say that's unique to, for me, the Harry Potter books.
MA: Especially in book publishing, that doesn't really happen.
AL: Right. Yeah, the fact that I can continually and each year, each time, I'm amazed that it is a book and an author that are creating this sensation in the media. Or actually this book publication is an event that is noted by the news media, by TV, by radio.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: You know, I, of course I wish that this were true for even more books...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...but if makes you think with pleasure about how great it is that, you know, people could actually be aware of the publication date of a book...
MA: Yeah, yeah.
AL: ...and be counting down to it, excited about it. You know, that's been, that's grown and changed and gotten bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
MA: Was there... Can you remember a specific moment where-that you felt was like a benchmark? At some point during this where you just sat back and said, "Wow, we've done something really big here."
AL: (whispers) Really big... (MA laughs) You know, it's sort of quaint to me now, for me to look back at the things that I thought were big.
MA: Because they keep getting...
AL: Yeah, I remember when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone made it onto the New York Times bestseller list at number sixteen and that was, that was a fantastic accomplishment, because it was a children's book, and it was on the New York Times list, which was a combination at that time - a combination, it was an adult books list...
MA: Right.
AL: ...And here we were, a children's book - that was showing that we could have you know, big audience and make a big difference in the world of publishing, and that was - we were really excited about that. I mean, we were really excited that we had put this first-time author on to the New York Times bestseller's list - that was huge excitement! I mean I remember we had champagne and we kind of and we had a whole bunch of toasts in there, that was very exc... and then I remember when books were number one, number two and number three (MA laughing) on that very same "combined" adult and children'd bestseller list. Then I certainly knew, "Oh this is a gigantic phenomenon.
MA: Yeah. And the moment that that even caused a split ...
AL: Right.
MA: ...actually influenced the publication of the New York Times, you know, so that's huge. I mean really! I wanna make sure we get into - because the fans will never forgive me - the differences between the editions. I can not - well, if you want to explain the general process behind changing the britishism. A lot of people say : "Why can't you say 'jumper' instead of 'sweater'?" Do you know what I mean? So can you tell us the process behind that?
AL: Well, once again, it's a very common process that we go through when we're making a book for an American audience. In case of a translation from French, we change absolutely every single one of the words.
MA: (laughing) Yeah. Yeah.
AL: And I don't, I don't mean to be flip about that.
MA: Yeah. Yeah.
AL: German, every single word is changed.
MA: Yeah. You have too.
AL: There's no attempts to make the French book and that's - we never pretend we're making the french book "American", we're not "Americanizing" the French book, we're not "Americanizing" the German book - we are puting it in language that our readers will find comfortable and not intrusive and will allow them to have the experience the author intended, which is always your first, always your primary goal as a publisher; you want the reader - whether you're originating a book or bringing it from somewhere else - you want the reader to have the experience the author intended. So, when you have a book that's in English or Australian, you know English and it comes through, you read the text and you as an editor, you know points at which you stumble, or are confused, and you flag those. Then you say "Oh, stumble, stumble", you know, what's this? Now many - this is again pre-"the phenomenon"...
MA: Right.
AL: ...many, I would say - this may have changed somewhat down, maybe for other, for new books, you know- everyone knows what a jumper is, but in 1997, I would say a large majority of eight year-olds - remember this is pre-marketed, we thought this was good for eight to twelve year-olds -
MA: Right.
AL: So most eight year-old, who would have heard of the word jumper, would think of it as a dress - although a pin.. - a dress - what would you call it? A pinafore?
MA: Yeah. Yeah.
AL: This is a kind of dress. And he might say "Well, why is Harry - what is this - why is Harry Potter wearing a dress?"
MA: (laughing) This is a fair question, when you put it like that.
AL: Right. I mean - that's just so you - this is you and how you reflect - and then you say, as I did, in the end you come out with this list of incidences - I mean it could be for any reason why you've stumbled - it could the way something is written or the transition from one paragraph to another or it could be an individual word and you'd have a conversation with the author about it.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So, and the conversation goes something like this - you say, "Well, is there - we're a little confused by this" or, "There's potential for a confusion, is there another way of saying it? Is there another British way of saying this?". Would it - for instance, english people use the word sweater, it's not...
MA: It's not an Americanism.
AL: Yeah. I mean we, where we more commonly use the word sweater, but if you're walking around in England, and you point you say "Ah, how much is that sweater?"...
MA: Right.
AL: ...you know, in a window, everyone, you know - it's a common word.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So, that's not a terribly intrusive thing, and so Jo might say, "Oh that's fine." Where we are particularly careful about is when such a word came up in character speech. So then, very often, even if the word could potentially cause confusion we would leave it has is, because she said, for instance, when Hagrid speaks, it's got to be in his very specific diction...
MA: Right.
AL: ...and then we would have to try find a way to explain things. I remember there was Christmas Crackers. Now, really we don't have crackers - the only crackers - it's especially difficult when we have the word...
MA: Right.
AL: ...in American slang or parlance, but it means something different - so, a cr... We have crackers, we use the word cracker...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...but it's a different word. So how do you convey that to American readers - because you also can't, you can't translate a word - it's called a Christmas Cracker. So in that we had to - we, meaning me and Jo - had to go look at the paragraph and say, "How can we put in? How can we put in this paragraph somewhere a phrase that explains that it is something that when pulled makes noise?"
MA: Right.
AL: So, I remember we - I don't remember exactly how, but we worked into that the first, either the first instance of the mention of Christmas crackers - something like, you know, noise maker...
MA: Right.
AL: ...or we put it later without changing a word.
MA: I believe - yeah.
AL: So this is - without getting into the long specifics - but the two things to keep in mind is that our goal that is, is just to make the reader comfortable, it's not to change the... We didn't make any attempt to make him seem American...
MA: Right.
AL: We, in fact, would be avid defenders of anything that seemed, that would seem intrusive...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...and not British. But we tried wherever - that, you know, wherever it was natural to make sure that the reader wasn't stopping and stumbling. And even... This is not meant to be an educational exercise. You know, the goal in publishing a book is not to educate children about English slang.
MA: Right.
AL: I - you know, and that's, that's not my goal now and it wasn't my goal then. My goal is to introduce J.K. Rowling to the American public, and just as a, you know, French publisher is going to try very hard to make sure that their translation reflects the author's style and intention, I tried very hard to make sure that our translations, whenever they were done, were respectful and non-intrusive. And I went over every single one of them word by word with the author...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...and we discussed them. We said, "What do you think of this?" "Oh, that's fine." "Oh, I don't like that. Is there another way that we can do it?" Or, "Here is another solution." or, "You know what? I think we just have to leave that. I really want you to leave that there." That's fine. It's always, again, it's always up to the author. Just as the change in the title is up to the author.
MA: Mmm-hm-.
AL: Now, you know, I have to say that I've always had the idea in my head that as the books went along you'd have to do this less and less.
MA: Right.
AL: Because, again, part of the problem is that there is a lot of magical language...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...that is made up.
MA: Mmm-hmm. That's another block for readers to get through.
AL: Well it's also - again, when you consider the author's original intention - an English child knows when something is, oh, a fantastic magical invention, and whether it's just, you know, common slang...
MA: Mmm-hmm. (AL laughs) Yeah.
AL: So why shouldn't American readers have that same experience? And obviously as they're more and more familiar with the world - Hogwarts, and the kind of magical linguistic playfulness that is a kind of hallmark of Rowling's writing - they'll need fewer and fewer of these translations. And I think that readers would find that that is...
MA: The case.
AL: ...the case.
MA: Ron says "shufty" in Book Six, which made me... (laughs) I was looking around for a British person to ask and luckily I had one to ask what it was. But that - it's not - I think by the time a reader is invested in Book Six they'll just say "It's British, move on..."
AL: "Whatever," right.
MA: "...Whatever," yeah. But in the beginning to get them into it, yes.
AL: And, meanwhile they've also, they've had numerous other opportunities to hear words in the context - if they've heard them in the audio or they've seen the movies...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...there has been a lot that has helped to convey this language, So...
MA: Yeah, but you're never going to have Ron walking down the halls of Hogwarts and saying "Yo!" You know, that's just not ever going to happen.
AL: Right, of course not.
MA: So, yeah. That's the point.
AL: And it doesn't happen in the first book. And you know, the thing would get me kind of on edge is when people either kind of attributed other motivations to what was happening other than really trying to convey the author's work to her readership.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: And it's certainly never ever done without her express permission
MA: That's important for people to know.
AL: Not just permission, even. That's the wrong word. Without (pause) her participation. Just as, you know, editors don't go in and cut things, you know, from a book. They suggest cuts.
MA: Right.
AL: And they say to the author, "You know, I think this. I think this passage is moving a bit slowly. I don't think you need this." And then the author says either, "Why, you're right! I'll cut that out." (MA laughs) or they say, "No no, you don't - you're not understanding. This needs to - we need to have this for something later, so..."
MA: Right.
AL: "...maybe there is something else you can cut." And that's the kind of editorial conversation.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: But I think the general public - and even many writers who are just starting out - have the wrong idea, a mistaken idea, of what it is that editors do. Yeah. I don't know where it comes from, but I think they have... I think what they're thinking of is teachers...
MA: I was just thinking that.
AL: ...yeah...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...who's job it is to kind of correct. And I say that without a great knowledge of teaching since I've never done it. But I think that, you know, I've exp... I remember you would get back a paper and there would be things, you know, red lines through it and, you know, showing you the correct way to conjugate this, whatever. But that isn't what editors do.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: Editors are just reacting...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...to the text and giving the author an opportunity to respond...
MA: Right.
AL: ...you know, because I am their first reader. I am their opportunity to get a reader's response before the rest of the readers get to read it.
MA: Right.
AL: So if I'm confused, maybe somebody else will be confused.
MA: (laughs) Yeah.
AL: Maybe not, you know? I'm the ideal reader (pause) in that... Is it going fine?
MA: Just - just making sure. I always get a little paranoid but it's there.
AL: (unintelligible) But, what I mean is that I'm the ideal reader in a sense that I know the author's work and I'm so behind it. And I... My motivation is so much out of love and the passion and respect...
MA: Yeah.
AL: ...so I'm like the perfect person, you know, to read something first.
MA: Well, when you get that first draft, I mean, it's - now you're almost coming up to the last one - when you get that first draft and you're the first person in the world to see it, is - do you - is it - is it still that excitement? Or is it, or has it changed from book to book; your reaction to getting that manuscript?
AL: You know, my reaction to the manuscript is the, is absolutely the same because really, what's happened to me is that I become more and more focused on what I see as my job. You know, and my job - the most important job I have - is to be that first, that reader.
MA: Yeah.
AL: You know, other parts of my job have become absorbed by the phenomenon, you know? It is no longer... I don't have to be the driving force behind the emotional energy of the publishing effort. You know, in the beginning and for most books...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...it's the publisher - the editorial director - the editor who is driving that. Who's saying to - who's introducing the book to the publishing house...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...the sales and marketing people who will then introduce the book to the world. And it's usually the editor who is conveying, and it's up to the editor to get across how fantastic, how important the book is.
MA: Yeah.
AL: You know, that part of it, in kind of making sure that marketing and sales efforts stay on course for what the book needs and what the author wants. Again, it's a little bit less of my job.
MA: Right.
AL: I certainly don't need to be generating excitement, (MA laughs) you know?
MA: Yeah.
AL: That's, well...
MA: We've got you covered.
AL: ... no longer my job. And there are eight billion people who will be involved in introducing a book to the public.
MA: Yeah.
AL: But what has not changed, is my orientation towards the text and my responsibility to the author. Completely unchanged. What happens to the book once it is made is completely separate from what we do. Me and Jo.
MA: Right.
AL: Which is, it's my job. I have this manuscript. I'm the first reader. It's pure, absolutely pure. My job is to read it and react.
MA: Yeah.
AL: That is all that I have to do. And I have to do it in the same, in a way that is responsible only to the text. I'm not thinking about what readers, what reviewers, critics will think, or summarize or blah, blah, blah. I'm thinking now just what do I feel, what do I think and how can I express that to Jo in a way that would be helpful to her.
MA: Yeah. Now, how does that process work? Do you just get a phone call one day and hear, "Hey, the book's here?" Does Jo call and say it's coming in a week? Do you get any notice like (laughs) one day Harry Potter is on your doorstep? How does that work?
AL: I'll never tell.
MA: Uh-oh. (laughs) It's a secure kind of thing? Cool. Well, we've touched on cuts before and there's a big question in the fandom ever since Book Six came out. And I know you know this question is coming. (laughs) I just, we're not like, "Ha-ha, we've got you!" But we want to clarify for the fans, there are some extra lines in the Book Six edition... For those who aren't familiar- Book Six Spoiler, Book Six Spoiler! (AL laughs) Shut it off if you haven't read it!
AL: I love the idea that there are some people who still haven't read it.
MA: And are listening to PotterCast. (laughs) Dumbledore says to Draco, "We can hide you, we can make Voldemort think you're dead." And those lines aren't in the British edition. There have been wild theories as to why this is. Can you...?
AL: Right. Yeah, you know. Here's the thing. So, we're human.
MA: Correct.
AL: And we can make an error like anyone else.
MA: (feigning shock) No! Not Scholastic!
AL: Yeah, no. It isn't a vast team of people making this book. It's just a few people, fewer than normal...
MA: Right.
AL: ... because of the security issues with this book. And we are under... Once the manuscript is finished, we're under a great deal of pressure to manufacture the book as quickly as possible. So we go through many production stages, and at each stage things are proofread, and queries are run by Jo, and she makes decisions, she gets to read it and make last minute decisions like, "You know, I actually think this paragraph is too long. It should be shorter. The scene is running too long, I want to cut this." And at that point, the British and American editions are running along parallel tracks.
MA: Right.
AL: In the manuscript stage, we're right in it together; me and Emma and Jo, a little, a really tight, very small circle. But then as the books are starting to be manufactured, other people read the books, other people comment, questions are sent to Jo, she responds, we make the changes in both of the editions, and at the end the books both come out. Well, it's possible that somehow the production stage is due back, within an hour, and lines that were supposed to be deleted didn't get deleted.
MA: Right. But it's not something...
AL: That's what happened. (MA laughs) It wasn't some sort of conspiracy. We were supposed to delete those lines....
MA: Right.
AL: ...just as we deleted other lines and commas and things that the ultimate reader never sees.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: But in this case, the error is obvious because something different shows up in the British edition.
MA: Right.
AL: But there is nothing behind it, other than the fact that oops, we goofed.
MA: Were the reasons to cut those lines were like, "Hey, just take this out." It's not that... What people want to know is, does this spoil something for Book Seven? Is it a content change rather than just a proofreading change?
AL: Yeah, well Jo has her own reasons, which I'm not going to go into, because that's between me and Jo. An editorial process is private.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: This is one of the things... This is sometimes why - when you are asking me what has changed and what hasn't changed - the fact that Jo is famous, that these books are famously loved, doesn't change for me the protected nature of our editorial interaction. I wouldn't go into these things for any author. And this is what I say to her when I am the reader. When it is me, the editor, and the writer talking, is between the two of us. The whole point of it is that it goes on before the book comes out.
MA: Right.
AL: So they have a safe space in which they can talk about things, they can consider adding or cutting, or there can be a conversation and it doesn't get reflected.
MA: It's very personal and very emotional...
AL: Right.
MA: ...for a writer to be criticized in any forum. Not that it's criticism, but the feedback. Like you said, it's a safe space.
AL: It's important that their process has an integrity. And our meeting, my and Jo's process, has an integrity. Unfortunately, a little clerical error shows a crack in that integrity, but, I wouldn't widen that by discussing... you know?
MA: Right.
AL: Even if I knew what her motivation was or wasn't for cutting those lines. It could be anything.
(Music)

PotterCast #24, "Ending Harry Potter," Feb 23, 2006 [ audio]
MA: Well, that's another question people had, is how much do you know about Book Seven? Are you on the same slate that we all are on now, or do you know the full arc of the story? And someone suggested that if the answer is that you know the full arc of the story, it's time for me to break out the Veritaserum.
(Arthur Levine (AL) and MA laugh)
AL: Well I, by the very nature of this editorial process that we're talking about, I'm sure I know more than the average reader because I'll be asking questions all along, as I have since Book One. There are things that I have said, to give you an example without being intrusive...
MA: Right.
AL: Just generically, I might ask a question like, "Oh, I've noticed this in Book One and Book Two, why is this so?" And Jo might answer... Or I might ask, "Well, do you think, as a reader, am I really looking for an explanation here?" And Jo has the option as the author to say, "Oh, it's great to know that you're confused. I don't want you to be confused there, so I'm going to explain it this way and make a change." However she also has the option of saying, "It's fine for you to be confused. (MA laughs) I'm happy, I want you to be confused" or, "I'm perfectly comfortable with you being confused, because in Book Six..."
MA: Right.
AL: "... blah."
MA: "Blah..." Yeah.
AL: So now, I have many of those answers. Like, Oh! This is why she did that.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: So, there are some things that I know, just by inference.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: Although I'm not going to find that out until...
MA: Book Seven?
AL: ... Book Seven. Yeah. But I know they'll figure it out.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So readers and fans who are listening to this are of the sort that have read the books so carefully that they probably can come up with, at this point, as almost as good guesses as I have, because they know what remains to be... There's only one book left and the fans know what remains to be seen.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So they could probably guess almost as well as I.
MA: Has there been anything where you've said, "What's the reason behind this?" And she's said, "No, no, no. I'm not going to spoil the surprise for you?" Or do you pretty much get those answers when you ask for them?
AL: Oh, no. She tells me only when she wants me to know, (MA laughs) or when it's (unintelligible) so I could absolutely get an answer of, "You'll find that out later."
MA: Interesting. What are the things you're most interested in finding out?
AL: Well, I want to know what happens to everyone, you know? I want to know what happens to Hogwarts. You know, I'm really concerned.
MA: (laughing) Why?
AL: Well, of course I want to know what happens to Harry. Wouldn't you? Where does his life point at the end? And
obviously the same goes for Ron and Hermione. All the main characters, I love these characters. I want to know if they'll be okay. (cryingly) I want to know what happens to Lupin!
MA: (laughs) I love Lupin. He is one of my favorites.
AL: So, I'm really curious how the suggested connection between Harry and Voldemort is resolved. All of these things.
MA: Yeah.
AL: I'm dying of curiosity.
MA: Yeah.
AL: But, you know, also I have to say that I'm terrified of getting this manuscript. It's the last one! Oh, my God! (MA laughs) Up 'til now, it's just been, well, there's more. There's more coming. But it's like there's this very delicious meal, and you're coming up on
dessert.
MA: Yeah.
AL: Although I know it's going to be a great dessert. (MA laughs) A spectacular dessert, and that it'll be sweet but...
MA: It's almost over.
AL: ... it'll be gone.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So that's hard. But the same thing is true of the individual books. You're reading through and you're like, Oh, man. I so want to know what happens next, but you look a few pages down and you say, "Oh, my God! I only have "X" pages left. (mock hysterical) I have to slow down! (MA laughs) No, No. It's almost over!"
MA: But, yeah. Seriously, that is the exact fan reaction. Because you're going through and you're going, you're going, you're going. Then you're just thinking, "No!" And it's specifically with Book Six and Scotland. We were under such time pressure to finish, and I was thinking to myself, "Oh! It's so sad. In ten hours I'll have consumed this book and it will be done." But hey, listen, there was a benefit at the end of that. I'm not going to... (laughs)
AL: I have to say that I have not asked you... I don't read quickly.
MA: How long would you say it takes you to read a Harry Potter book?
AL: It takes me several days.
MA: Is that because as an editor you feel like you're more attentive to the soaking in of everything? Or is that just your...
AL: It could be. It could be. It could be that I'm taking notes, but I'm also just a slow reader. I'm not a person who races through.
MA: Yeah.
AL: That was how I was in elementary school. I'd get comments, (as if reading from a report)"Is a slow reader but has excellent retention."
(AL and MA laugh)
MA: (continuing comments) "Should be editor" in red on top of the paper. What about the book here, have you caught anyone snooping, looking for the book? Like how do you protect this thing that is worth so much, that is just kind of in this building somewhere before the public, or while the public, knows it's coming?
AL: Well, we have very stringent security procedures.
MA: (laughs) He says with a knowing nod.
AL: Well, I said I wasn't going to talk about that. But that would lessen the effectiveness of the procedure.
MA: Has anything strange happened, where you have thought that people were sort of searching for it? Has anything sort of quirky happened because of this book being in this building?
AL: Um, you know... maybe.
MA: (laughing) He goes by. You get the same look in your eyes that Jo did when she was trying to hide something.
AL: Well, I'm a person who likes to answer direct questions, so it's hard to me to not. But that's fine, it isn't appropriate for me to talk about that.
MA: Understandably so.
AL: I would say that here's one thing, as a person, that that skill that I had almost none of before Harry Potter...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ...the ability to not answer a direct question.
MA: (laughs) Yeah.
AL: You know, anyone who is my friend will tell you that I am a - even you sitting across from me not knowing me can tell - that I am a very transparent individual. And of course, in a profession that is all about communication and clarity, what I want most in any interaction is to be understood and to be clear and to be helpful and to be things that are a hallmark of my personality, I think. And so it's really difficult for me, when asked a direct question, to not say anything. But I have kind of learned how to do that.
MA: Yeah. You just have to. It is interesting that a book has made you guys sort of like Secret Service agents (AL laughs) around here.
AL: You know, I would still be a pretty bad Secret Service agent.
MA: (laughs) Over all this time, in this unique experience, how do you feel that you personally have changed as an editor because of Harry Potter?
AL: As an editor? I don't think I've changed at all as an editor. I think that, certainly, the process, making a book, i the process of making a book. And that's different with every book and with every author and the joys of that process are in understanding that they're going to change. I think as a publisher, having been the publisher of Harry Potter has given me job security (laughs)...
MA: Yeah. (laughs)
AL: ... that I probably wouldn't have ordinarily had. You know I've published other prominent authors and illustrators as well, and I would hope that they would continue to want to publish with me. I don't really think it has changed that much.
MA: Well, what sort of opportunities have come to you from being the editor of the Harry Potter books?
AL: I think it's a good question, so I'm thinking in order to not be filp about the answer. I think that my imprint, and I as an editor, have gained visibility beyond the circles of normal literary childrens' books that I wouldn't have. So really, I could talk more. I think I could introduce myself to any literary agent with that. I have a line of introduction: "Hi, I'm Arthur Levine. I'm the publisher of Harry Potter." That would at least get a nod of recognition, whereas prior to that it would have be a more select group...
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: ... that would have heard of the books and authors and illustrators that I have been involved with. Even if our people had won Caldecotts and major awards and were very important in that circle.
MA: Right.
AL: The circle of children's books is smaller in general. The circle of people who have heard of J.K. Rowling and of Harry Potter is an enormous one. So there is, at least, a line of introduction. Whether it gets me beyond that, remains to be seen. I'd like to hope that people think of me for great books, who might not have otherwise. I hope that the agents, and I hope that authors out there are thinking, "I have a really great book, who should I send it to? Why not send it to Arthur Levine?"
MA: Right.
AL: You know my fear is that people think, "Oh, he's published Harry Potter so why would he be interested." Of course, that's not true.
MA: Because you never know who the next one is, that's sitting on public assistance in Britain.
AL: Right.
MA: If Jo publishes her next book, this children's book that she's been talking about, after Harry Potter, what do you think; as Jo Rowling or pseudonym? (laughs)
AL: Well, I think that is absolutely up to her.
MA: Right, but personally...
AL: Frankly, I think it would be to fine either way.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: Again, I'm interested in her as a writer. So I'd be happy to publish her as an anonymous, pseudonymous writer again. (MA laughs) She'll be fine, I'm sure whatever she writes is going to be very, very good.
MA: The question becomes, how long would it remain a mystery? I think that the world's sleuths would be out to figure it out.
AL: I think so.
MA: Yeah.
AL: But, maybe not. One of the great advantages and privileges of Jo's position is that she doesn't need, on any level, to be identified as the author of the upcoming book that she's written pseudonymously. She has a very secure ego, so she doesn't need the strokes.
MA: Right.
AL: She has a secure income, she doesn't need the money. She really has terrific freedom to write whatever she'd like.
MA: She doesn't need to publish to make a living anymore.
AL: She doesn't need to publish, so if she wants to publish it under a different name...
MA: More power to her.
AL: ... why not?
MA: Yeah. So let's do fan questions. I feel like we've answered most of the fan questions that we had chosen for this, so I know we'll be running a little over, very over actually. So the question is, has Jo indicated, or what do you think, that the writing of Book Six (meaning to say Book Seven)...
AL: Book Seven?
MA: ... to be a little faster because it's all planned, or slower because she doesn't want to let it go? Either has she indicated...
AL: I don't really know the answer to that question.
MA: Yeah.
AL: You know, we'll see. It seems to be plausible. Although I will say the fact that it's all planned... I don't know if Book Seven is any more planned than any of the other books, but I think that Jo has the idea of what's going to happen. But I think she takes great pleasure in the writing of each book.
MA: Right.
AL: So she's not just going to go mechanically, filling in the plots. She's going off and writing, and I think that that process takes as long as it takes.
MA: Right.
AL: It's very sensitive of this fan to think, might there be some sadness. I'm sure that she would feel... Wouldn't anyone feel the emotional tug of finishing such a project that has been so dear to her heart. I can't imaging that it would be otherwise.
MA: Yeah.
AL: But I don't know what kind of impact that would have on...
MA: Her writing?
AL: ... the speed of her writing.
MA: Okay, our next one. What are your personal favorite moments in the series?
AL: That's a very difficult question, so difficult. (laughs) I don't even know if I can answer that. But not for being coy, just that there are so many that they're not right up in my memory.
MA: Right.
AL: I think that Dumbledore's conversation with Harry in front of the Mirror of Erised is one of my great favorites. How do I pick a moment our of Azkaban and say that it's my favorite moment? How about every time McGonagall opens her mouth? (AL and MA laugh) She's so great!
MA: Especially in Book Five when she says, that "it screws the other way." (laughs)
AL: The standing up to Umbridge scenes, I really loved. It's such a melange, it's very difficult for me to pick out specific moments like that. There were many, many of them.
MA: Okay. When you were finished reading the first book, were your thoughts, "I need to know what happens next!" or was it just that you loved the book as a whole?
AL: Oh, I think that is more a question of order, rather than choice.
MA: Mmm-hmm.
AL: You know, clearly both things were true. It's more of my nature to just see each book as an individual unit, than to be mostly focused on my pleasure in the completion of a book. That's how I am as a reader. So, that's undoubtedly what my main feeling was, one of great satisfaction and pleasure. But, of course, I was dying to find out what happened next.
MA: Okay, you know all the ones we had chosen, we had talked about earlier. So here, at the end, we have a segment on PotterCast - a Fan Interview, we interview a fan every week, and at the end of it we play a little game with them, called "Live or Die?" And we name a bunch of characters and we say, "What do you think will happen to them at the end. Will they live, or will they die?" So...
AL: Oh, I don't think we should play that.
MA: (laughing) Because you think it's going to be hard? Or...
AL: Yeah, A) it would be hard and B) it would be misleading to the fans because people tend to think...
MA: ...that you know more. Well let's disclaim this.
AL: No, no. None of that. (MA laughs) I think they'd get confused.
MA: Well can I ask if you think that Harry is going to survive the series?
AL: You know, I can honestly say that I don't know.
MA: Do you think it's do-able without breaking, as they always say, "Oh, if she does that she'll break ten million hearts." Do you think it's do-able for her to kill him, and have it not be something simply heart-breaking? And, you know?
AL: No, I think if she killed, if Harry dies at the end of this story, it will be heart-breaking.
MA: Yeah.
AL: I do think that as an author, J.K. Rowling has shown that she's not afraid to tell a story that breaks your heart. When you think of that, that is one of the powers of fiction and with writing, is that they can break your heart, because life can break your heart. And people die in life. And I think that she is an emotionally courageous person, in that she's not afraid of a very difficult truth like that. We all know that people, everyone, dies. No one will dispute
that.
MA: Right.
AL: It's an indisputable fact. How we feel about being confronted with that in fiction, in fictional characters that we
carry around, we probably are only marginally more resistant to that idea in fiction when we care it, than in our actual real lives. That doesn't mean it won't be so. So...
MA: Mmm-hmm. Can you remember or name another book or series that has had the main hero die, supposedly heroically, and it worked?
AL: Charlotte's Web.
MA: Yeah, it's a big one. (laughs)
AL: It immediately comes to mind. And remember that other people that read that... I reread that a few years ago and was struck by how E.B. White was so direct about that scene. That when Charlotte dies, he specifically says she died and she's all alone, and no one knew. And I remember this as an adult once again wept copious tears. I was inconsolable, I couldn't believe he was so stark. And yet, my memory of the book was it was a book that I loved as a child.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So, it does happen in fiction, and again I would have to say even if it weren't true, that wouldn't necessarily mean that Jo Rowling wouldn't do it.
MA: Right.
AL: But I don't know. I mean, I don't know what the final arc of the story is for her.
MA: Yeah.
AL: People that we care about have already died in these books, so I think that it depends on what she wants to say about with this story. And I don't know what that is at the end of the day. That's something that will be answered.
MA: In other words, we put nothing past her (laughs) I personally put nothing past her.
AL: Well, I think we have to remember that she is writing this story. I know that she cares very deeply what her fans think, she finds ways to talk directly to them. They're brilliant. I think she cares about that more than anything else, really. But at the end of the day, she is writing her book. She's writing the books that she wanted to write.
MA: Right.
AL: And she has to tell her story, whatever that story is. I think that she has not in the past been influenced by what she perceives what people have said, "Oh, don't do that. You can't do that." Because people have their feelings. Romeo and Juliet have died. Had people been able to write to Shakespeare, (MA laughs) (AL in a mock hysterical voice) "No, no! Don't kill them! Romeo and Juliet! You know we love them!" You know, that's part of their story.
MA: Well, I think that's a great place to wrap things up. And thank you, Arthur Levine, for coming on PotterCast. Hopefully this is a...
AL: You're welcome.
MA: ... I think the fans will really enjoy this.
AL: Marvelous.
MA: Thank you.
AL: Sure! My pleasure.

Original page date 29 May 2007; last updated 21 May 2007.

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Interview of Arthur Levine (Accio Quote!, the Largest Archive of J.K. Rowling quotes on the web)

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This interview of Rowling's American editor Arthur Levine was broadcast over three episodes of The Leaky Cauldron's PotterCast. Transcript courtesy of PotterCast. If you wish to listen, each podcast is linked separately.

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Scholastic History in Here (How Harry Potter changed the world)

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Scholastic History in Here (How Harry Potter changed the world)

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Almost exactly 20 years ago, on September 1, 1998, Scholastic published Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first US edition of the UK's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Harry Potter has since became such an all-encompassing phenomenon that from this vantage point, it's hard to see the full scope what it accomplished: It feels as though publishing and fandom and children's literature and all of pop culture have always been the way we know them today. But Harry Potter changed the world.

Author J.K. Rowling was an unknown single mom when she first got the idea for her story while stuck on a train; the small UK children's press that ultimately took a chance on it undoubtedly couldn't have predicted that it would have a measurable effect on everything it touched. Harry Potter made YA book-to-movie franchises into one of the biggest forces in pop culture. It changed the business model for publishing books for kids. And it introduced an entire generation to the idea that it's possible to interact with the pop culture you love - to write about it and with it, to make music and art about it, and to build a business around it.

Here's a look back at the way Harry Potter changed and influenced online fandom, millennial culture, and the publishing industry.

Harry Potter's US publication made it a bonafide phenomenon

Harry Potter did fine when it first emerged in the UK 20 years ago, winning a Smarties Award and garnering respectable sales for its publisher, Bloomsbury. But it only started to approach phenomenon levels when Scholastic bought the US publication rights for an astonishing $105,000, about 10 times more than the average foreign rights sale at the time.

Arthur Levine, the Scholastic editor who acquired the books, had an excellent eye for British books that would work in the US, having already acquired the US rights to Redwall and His Dark Materials. But even he didn't know that Harry Potter would grow as big as it did. He just knew that he loved it and wanted to publish it. Scholastic President Barbara Marcus Barbara Marcus "kept saying 'do you love it?' and Arthur said yes, so we went for it," a Scholastic spokesperson recalled in 2002. "I would have been willing to go further than that if I had to," Levine said in 2007.

The $105,000 sale granted Harry Potter two things: a built-in publicity hook, and a big budget.

The hook came from the press: Newspapers featured articles about the little English book that had garnered such a huge sale. Reviewers wanted to know what kind of book would justify that kind of money. It was a curiosity, and as such, it was a story.

The budget came from Scholastic itself. Whenever a publisher acquires a book, it creates a budget for that book. That budget is structured so that elevating the numbers in one category means elevating the numbers in the next category: If you're going to invest $105,000 just in acquiring a book, you're also going to pour extra money into marketing, publicity, and production, so that you have a reasonable chance of making that money back.

So Scholastic invested in a lovely hardcover design for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, with a soon-to-be iconic cover, even though conventional wisdom of the time held that children's books only made money in paperback. It arranged for Harry Potter to be displayed on the front tables at bookstores, and for ads to appear in the right newspapers and magazines. In short, it gave the book many more resources than are typically afforded to the average debut novel from an unknown author, and that decision paid off.

But none of Scholastic's efforts would have mattered in the end if the people who picked up the book hadn't loved it. That's what pulled Harry Potter out of flash-in-the-pan territory and elevated it into a phenomenon that defined childhood for an entire generation.

Why adults got so obsessed with the Harry Potter books

A 2012 study found that 55 percent of YA novels are bought by adults. In large part, that boom is courtesy of Harry Potter, which became a surprise crossover hit adored by both children and adults, and which made it acceptable for adults to read books that are ostensibly for children.

For some critics, that's a worrisome development, suggesting that adults are too dull and stupid to appreciate books actually written for adults. But there are plenty of reasons for a grown person to enjoy Harry Potter.

The Harry Potter books combine the intricate plotting of a mystery with the sweep and scope of epic fantasy and the intimacy and character development of a classic boarding school narrative. The result is purely pleasurable to read at any age: The puzzlebox mystery plotting keeps the pages turning propulsively forward, the fantastic mythology gives the world scope and magic and joy, and the boarding school structure makes the characters warm and familiar and charming.It also makestheir eventual death (for some) and trauma (for all) deeply affecting.

It's true that Rowling's prose is best described as workmanlike and competent; if the reasonyou read is solely to enjoy perfectly balanced and polished sentences, you may be best served elsewhere. But if you are an adult who can imagine reading for more than one reason (the pleasures of story, the joy of immersing yourself in another world), the Harry Potter books become enormously appealing.

Early on, the books were extremely controversial - and in many ways, they still are

Part of what made Harry Potter such a literary phenomenon is that so many kids were reading the books despite an unprecedented number of attempts to get them to stop reading the books.

The Harry Potter series, like many works of fantasy, involves wizardry and witchcraft. The feeling that the books thus promoted the occult proved to be the basis for constant challenges to the series' presence in school libraries and bookstores by concerned conservative parents. The books first topped the American Library Association's list of the most banned books of the year in 1999, and remained in the top spot for most of the next decade.

In some regions, pressure to censor the series was so high it led to lawsuits: In 2003, a judge ordered an Arkansas school district that had removed the books from schools due to promotion of "the religion of witchcraft" to return them. Similar formal attempts at removal persisted into the latter half of the decade, and the books continue to rile up conservative religious leaders who warn of its "demonic" influence.

But witchcraft wasn't the only evil the books were accused of peddling. In 2007, after the series' end, J.K. Rowling retroactively outed the powerful wizard Dumbledore as gay. The news prompted Christian scholars to declare the move " nonsense," while queer fans were in turn angry that Rowling had done so little to make the queer subtext of Dumbledore's character overt during the time he was actually being written (and alive). In recent years, Rowling has provoked controversy for her series' lack of diversity, for denying queer sexuality of characters, and many, many more kerfuffles.

All of this controversy speaks not only to concerns that Rowling's work would negatively influence children, but to the reality that many of those children grew up to be arguably even more progressive than the books they grew up reading - which is, in a way, a confirmation of conservatives' worst fears about the series.

Harry Potter's popularity completely changed the publishing industry - and the effect spilled over to Hollywood

Here are just two of the ways Harr y Potter changed publishing, and how those changes affected the rest of pop culture:

1) The books made it possible to publish long works aimed at children. Prior to Harry Potter, the accepted wisdom was that kids didn't have the attention span to read long books. And anyway, the thinking went, kids weren't buying their own books. Their parents were paying for everything, and they would never be willing to pay an extra dollar or two for a longer book, with its extra printing and binding.

But after Harry Potter became an unstoppable cultural force, and it was clear that fans would keep buying thebooks no matter what, it started to expand. The last four volumes of the series are all doorstoppers that clock in at well over 700 pages each.

Publishers and children's writers took notice. Booklist found that middle-grade novels expanded 115.5 percent between 2006 and 2016, the decade in which the Potter novels were at their longest. (They rose only 37.37 percent between 1996 and 2006.)

2) Harry Potter made children's literature an unstoppable force. Before Harry Potter, children's literature was often considered an afterthought. Sales were falling. Children, analysts would say wistfully, just weren't reading anymore.

After Harry Potter, children's literature became a category full of mega-sellers. In 2004, in the midst of the Harry Potter phenomenon, sales of non-Potter kid lit were increasing by 2 percent a year. Since then, the children's market as a whole has seen its sales increase by a total of 52 percent (4 percent a year). For comparison, the overall book market has gone up a mere 33 percent since 2004.

The Harry Potter generation likes to read, for sure - millennials read more than any other generation - and it also created a cultural landscape in which books for children are major cultural forces, and a go-to well of ideas for Hollywood. Movie studios scour the children's bestseller lists for properties they can turn into the next Harry Potter: hence Twilight and The Hunger Games and Divergent and all the rest. Before Harry Potter, the YA book-to-movie franchise was not a cliché. It is now, and that's because the boy wizard and his friendstransformed an entire industry.

Harry Potter fandom also paved the way for the mainstreaming of fandom and geek culture

Harry Potter has a tremendously outsized cultural reach: One 2011 survey suggested that a third of all American adults ages 18 to 34 at the time had read at least one of the books. But what really makes Harry Potter stand out is the way people loved (and continue to love) Harry Potter.

First and foremost, the series helped make it cool to be a geek. People generally didn't read the Harry Potter books in isolation; they wanted to talk about it with their friends, and then find more friends who loved the books as much as they did. This pattern coincided with the rise of "Web 2.0" - that is, an increasingly interactive and social internet. As more Harry Potter fans became more active online, they made discussion of YA fiction, fantasy, and science fiction seem commonplace.

This was still a pretty bold concept in the early 2000s; geek culture was largely still underground, and fantasy was seen mainly as an immature hobby - for instance, in 2003, critic A.S. Byatt's excoriation of " Harry Potter and the childish adult" claimed that adults "like to regress" when they read children's literature. But between Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings film adaptations, and the emerging visibility of online Harry Potter fandom, it was increasingly difficult to ignore fantasy and science fiction as a driving force of culture, and to write off fans of these genres as niche. By the time Twilight took over from Harry Potter as the reigning young adult phenomenon in 2005, the idea of a modern, mainstream fandom coalescing around a major sci-fi/fantasy series was well-established and generally accepted.

And Harry Potter fans' creativity is still being felt in and outside of the fandom. In the early 2000s, Harry Potter fan forums, fanfiction and fan art archives, and email discussion groups exploded across the internet. Harry Potter conventions drew thousands of fans, and Harry Potter cosplay became a well-known sight at larger geek and comic cons.

Around the same time, the "Wizard Rock" trend (shorthanded Wrock) gained momentum as Harry Potter fans on YouTube formed a litany of music groups - the first one being Harry and the Potters - devoted to personifying and singing about various characters from the books. It was later joined by another totally unique-to-Harry-Potter fan pursuit: Quidditch. In 2005, students at Vermont's Middlebury college created the first real-life Quidditch game, which went on to spawn an international real-world college sport.

A number of Harry Potter fans also went on to make significant marks on mainstream culture. As a member of the University of Michigan theater troupe Starkid, a young Darren Criss starred as Harry Potter in the viral YouTube video A Very Potter Musical, and his popularity catapulted him into the role of Blaine on Glee and a career on Broadway.

Two longtime members of Harry Potter fandom, siblings John and Hank Green - now known more widely as the Vlogbrothers - got their start on YouTube during the site's relative infancy, but it wasn't until Hank Green's 2007 song " Accio Deathly Hallows" went viral on the eve of the final Harry Potter book's release that they became the true YouTube stars and industry success models they are today.

And the list goes on: The author of the bestselling Mortal Instruments series, Cassandra Clare first gained fame online as Cassandra Claire, author of the incredibly popular Harry Potter fanfic The Draco Trilogy. Other Harry Potter fans, like fan convention organizer Melissa Anelli and social activist Andrew Slack launched careers directly out of Harry Potter fandom. In general, the Harry Potter fandom was among the first to see a number of people actively leveraging their success through fandom toward their professional careers. Just as Harry Potter made it easier for fans to own their geeky habits, the Harry Potter fandom made it easier for fans to market those geeky habits as professional assets.

What made all of this possible - the industries transformed, the careers built - are the books themselves, and the expansive, wondrous world they created. The Harry Potter series is a phenomenon not just because it had a good publicity and marketing budget (although that helped) and not just because the curiosity and controversy surrounding it made it appealing to the press (although that helped). The Harry Potter series is a phenomenon because it tells a story that millions of people loved, and it introduced the world to an enormous and magical world that millions of people have dreamed of escaping into.

That's why we're still talking about these books 20 years later, and that's why all of this matters.

Watch: Harry Potter and the translator's nightmare

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J.K. Rowling's books about a boy wizard transformed publishing, fandom, and the rest of pop culture.

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U.S. Harry Potter Book Sales Underperforming, According To Recent Industry Figures

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U.S. Harry Potter Book Sales Underperforming, According To Recent Industry Figures

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U.S. Harry Potter print sales down in June 2020, according to recent figures
Getty Images

Amid an industry-wide sales boom in the U.S., sales of print books by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling lagged, according to recent figures.

Variety reported on numbers from NPD BookScan, which saw fiction print book sales increase 31.4% in June across children's, young adult and adult fiction. Sales of print books by Rowling, however, saw a rise of just 10.9%, with sales of Harry Potter printbooks rising just 7.7%.

They point out that this lag in June is not consistent with Rowling's print sales for the rest of the year, up 26.5% compared to the first half of 2019. As the industry as a whole experiences a surge of print sales, Rowling's works, and sales of Harry Potter books (including licensed titles), have seen a sudden drop.

This reported U.S. print book sales drop in June coincides with controversy around tweets and statements made by Rowling via Twitter from June 6 onward. Speaking on the topics of sex, gender identity and transgender women, Rowling posted various threads to Twitter, as well as a statement on her own website explaining her point of view, with the caption "TERF wars". Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts stars (including franchise leaders Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Eddie Redmayne), as well as long-standing members of the Harry Potter fandom, spoke out on the author's statements. Various developments continue to take place, the latest being an open latter on Harper's, published July 7th, signed by Rowling, condemning "a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity".

No comment has been made by Rowling's U.S. book publishers. It is worth noting that NPD BookScan figures do not account for eBook, audiobook sales, or sales to libraries and direct publisher sales. Harry Potter at Home, a free initiative by Wizarding World Digital in collaboration with Pottermore Publishing, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Overdrive and Audible, have seen eBooks and audiobooks being pushed in particular since April, with the first book being offered free in eBook and audiobook formats in an effort to provide material to those at home during Covid-19 lockdown measures.

The recent free celebrity chapter readings of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone released on WizardingWorld.com as part of the Harry Potter at Home initiative, took a brief hiatus in June (following Rowling's controversy on Twitter).

Kristen McLean, analyst and executive director of business development at The NPD Group, declined to speculate on this decrease in sales, citing a lack of consumer research, but explained:

"Looking at [Rowling's] performance against the rest of the market, especially as benchmarked against her performance in 2019 - which was very consistent with the rest of the market - I think she's down.

"She's certainly underperforming the rest of the market, comparatively, by two thirds."

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U.S. Harry Potter Book Sales Underperforming, According To Recent Industry Figures

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Amid an industry-wide sales boom in the U. S., sales of print books by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling lagged, according to recent figures.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
by J. K. Rowling; illus. by Mary Grandpré
Levine/Scholastic
Reviewed 1/99

Orphaned Harry Potter has been living a dog's life with his horrible relatives. He sleeps in the broom cupboard under the stairs and is treated as a slave by his aunt and uncle. On his eleventh birthday, mysterious missives begin arriving for him, culminating eventually in the arrival of a giant named Hagrid, who has come to escort him to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry learns that his parents died saving him from an evil sorcerer and that he himself is destined to be a wizard of great power. Harry's astonished introduction to the life of wizardry starts with his purchase, under Hagrid's guidance, of all the tools of an aspiring sorcerer: wand, robes, cauldron, broomstick, owl. Hogwarts is the typical British public school, with much emphasis placed on games and the honor of the Houses. Harry's house is Gryffindor, the time-honored rival of Slytherin: he becomes a star at Quidditch, an extremely complicated game played with four different balls while the whole team swoops about on broomsticks. He studies Herbology, the History of Magic, Charms, Potions, the Dark Arts, and other arcane subjects, all the while getting closer to his destiny and the secret of the sorcerer's stone. He makes friends (and enemies), goes through dangerous and exciting adventures, and justifies the hopeful predictions about him. The light-hearted caper travels through the territory owned by the late Roald Dahl, especially in the treatment of the bad guys - they are uniformly as unshadedly awful as possible - but the tone is a great deal more affectionate. A charming and readable romp with a most sympathetic hero and filled with delightful magic details. ANN A. FLOWERS

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
by J. K. Rowling; illus. by Mary Grandpré
Scholastic/Levine
Reviewed 7/99

In this sequel to the phenomenally popular Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry returns to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his second year after a miserable summer with his Muggle (nonmagical) relatives. Once again, Harry's school experiences are colored by encounters with genial ghosts and antagonistic teachers, by the rivalry between good-guy Gryffindor House and slimy Slytherin House, and by an ominous mystery to be solved involving Harry's archenemy, the dark sorcerer Lord Voldemort. Once again, the attraction of Rowling's traditional British school story is magnified tenfold by the fantasy elements superimposed upon it. The atmosphere Rowling creates is unique; the story whizzes along; Harry is an unassuming and completely sympathetic hero. But, truth to tell, you may feel as if you've read it all before. Rowling clearly hit on a winning formula with the first Harry Potter book; the second book - though still great fun - feels a tad, well, formulaic. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
by J. K. Rowling; illus. by Mary Grandpré
Levine/Scholastic
Reviewed 11/99

All current reviews of Harry Potter books should probably be addressed to some future audience for whom Harry is book rather than phenomenon; at the moment, reviews seem superfluous. For the record, then, O future reader, this latest installment in Harry's saga is quite a good book. The basics remain the same: it's another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (where there's perforce a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher); it's still Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, Gryffindor House, and the headmaster versus Professor Snape, Draco Malfoy and his Slytherin goons, Lord Voldemort, and various other forces of darkness. But all the elements that make the formula work are heightened here. The characters are particularly interesting, especially the aforementioned new teacher, Professor Lupin, a man with a howling secret; Sirius Black, a feared, possibly mad, escaped prisoner who is believed to have betrayed Harry's parents and is now said to be after Harry; and Harry himself, who in facing the reality of his parents' violent deaths becomes a stronger person - and a more complex hero. The Quidditch action is the best yet; the Hogwarts classes (Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, and Potions) are inventive and entertaining; and Rowling pulls off a nifty bit of time manipulation in the book's exciting climax. There's hope, too, for a lessening in the power Harry's Muggle relatives seem to have over him - and so a probability that we won't have to endure quite so much of these tiresomely one-dimensional characters in the future. Speaking of which . . . have a hot butterbeer, future reader, and enjoy. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
by J. K. Rowling; illus. by Mary Grandpré
Scholastic/Levine
Reviewed 11/00

The fourth book in the Harry Potter phenomenon, at 734 pages, is what you call a wallow - one that some will find wide-ranging, compellingly written, and absorbing; others, long, rambling, and tortuously fraught with adverbs ("'What sort of objects are Portkeys?' said Harry curiously"). Year Four at Hogwarts finds Harry enjoined as the surprising fourth contestant in the Triwizard Tournament - "a friendly competition between the three largest European schools of wizardry" - during which he bests a dragon, rescues Ron from merpeople, and finds his way through a maze that, unbeknownst to Dumbledore and the powers of good, leads to the dark wizard Voldemort and to the death of one of the other contestants. Before and in between the book's major action (the tournament is not announced until page 186, and Harry's involvement not until page 271), Rowling explores her major theme of good vs. evil and her minor themes of the value of loyalty and moral courage and the evils of yellow journalism, oppression, and bigotry. We find out, for instance, that Hagrid is not just oversized but part-giant, which is considered a shameful heritage; we see Hermione being taunted as a "mudblood" for her mixed Muggle-wizard parentage. Rowling's emphasis here is much less on school life (not a single inter-house Quidditch match!) and much more on the wider wizard world and, simultaneously, on Harry's more narrow, personal world, as he has his first fight with Ron and asks a girl to his first dance. But on the whole the emotional impact is disappointingly slight. The death of the Hogwarts student causes nary a lift of the reader's eyebrow; the complicated explanation for Voldemort's infiltration of Hogwarts is fairly preposterous and impossible to work out from the clues given. The characterization, as well, seems to be getting thinner, with Dumbledore in particular reduced to a caricature of geniality. As a transitional book, however, Goblet of Fire does its job - thoroughly if facilely - and raises some tantalizing questions: Will Snape really turn out to be one of the good guys? What's the connection between Harry's and Voldemort's wands, between Harry and Voldemort himself? When Harry tells his tale of Voldemort's return, what does the fleeting gleam of triumph in Dumbledore's eyes signify? Stay tuned, Pottermaniacs, for Year Five. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
by J. K. Rowling; illus. by Mary GrandPré
Levine/Scholastic
Reviewed 9/03

This review is much like the proverbial tree falling in an uninhabited forest: unlikely to make a sound. But for the record, HP5 is the best in the series since Azkaban, and far superior to the turgid HP4. With Rowling once again following the formula of giving Harry's day-to-day troubles and preoccupations the same weight as the larger battle of good vs. evil, Harry, now a sullen fifteen, finds himself in the role of outsider. The adult wizards in the Order of the Phoenix prepare for the return of Voldemort without him; at Hogwarts, he is ignored by Dumbledore, banned from Quidditch, and - thanks to slanted press coverage - generally regarded as a liar and a "weirdo." A new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, backed by a Ministry of Magic in Voldemort-denial, begins taking over Hogwarts one repressive educational decree at a time, providing Rowling with the opportunity for some sharp-edged satire. This is one of the funniest of the books, with comic set pieces starring Uncle Vernon and Hagrid, and with Fred and George Weasley outdoing themselves in wickedly funny asides. But it is also one of the most unpleasantly aggressive: adults snarl at one another; Slytherins and Gryffindors seem perpetually to be insulting each other, and even come to blows. The plot doesn't bear close scrutiny, and the climactic confrontation between "Dumbledore's Army" (a group of Hogwarts students led by Harry) and a horde of Death Eaters is a banal shoot-'em-up scene with a little magic thrown in. The concluding wrap-up, though, in which Dumbledore explains it all to Harry (and to us), contains a revelation regarding Neville Longbottom that should keep fans fizzing with wild surmise until the next installment. HP5 remains a highly passive reading experience, with all the work done by the author and none required of the reader (viz. those omnipresent, ambiguity-leaching adverbs: "'I'm not staying behind!' said Hermione furiously"). But tally the book's strengths and weaknesses as you may, the fact remains that Rowling has once again created a fully-fledged world, and for the experience of being there with Harry, HP5 can't be beat. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
J. K. Rowling ; illus. by Mary GrandPré
Levine/Scholastic
Reviewed 9/05

This sixth Harry Potter will wow the series' many fans - Rowling delivers the likable characters and thrilling situations that have made the series so popular, handily weaving in plots begun in earlier books and returning to comic staples of wizard school life while providing fresh novelties. Connoisseurs will note that Rowling's real attention is focused on setting up Harry's final showdown with Lord Voldemort: Dumbledore's private Pensieve tutorials with Harry, in which the two sift through various characters' memories about the Dark Lord's history, searching for the means to defeat him, are the main thrust of the book but will pay off fully only in the last volume. Even so, there's plenty of engaging mystery and suspense here: the title character, the Half-Blood Prince, occluded for most of the book as merely the author of some helpful notes in Harry's potions text, bursts into startling prominence by the end. Harry himself, grown more independent, decisive, and "fanciable," comes of age, committing himself by his own choice to defeating Voldemort and accepting that former protectors like his parents and Dumbledore (and even the Dursleys) no longer stand between him and danger. Old animosities against Snape, now the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher (whose twisted loyalties become even more opaque), and Draco Malfoy, the newest Death Eater recruit, continue unabated and crescendo into an epochal betrayal at the close, brilliantly conjured by Rowling. In the war against Voldemort, Snape may prove to be the linchpin just as much as Harry, but to find out for sure, readers will have to wait for the ultimate Harry, book seven. ANITA L. BURKAM

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J. K. Rowling ; illus. by Mary GrandPré
Levine/Scholastic
Reviewed 9/07

The wildly popular series ends with a bang as Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, abandons the familiar haven of Hogwarts to defeat Lord Voldemort once and for all - or so he hopes. From a hair-raising escape at book's beginning to the monumental battle at its end that pits the Death Eaters against the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's Army, and numerous magical creatures (including an unlikely contingent of house elves), Deathly Hallows breaks formula, eschewing the schoolboy setup of the past for a straight-up quest adventure devoid of Quidditch, detentions, and exams. On the run, now-seventeen-year-old Harry, Ron, and Hermione search out the Horcruxes, introduced in Book Six as the key to Voldemort's destruction. Meanwhile, Harry, distraught over his mentor Dumbledore's death, puzzles through the former Hogwarts headmaster's shady past and discovers a new means of defeating Voldemort: the Deathly Hallows, three legendary objects that together give their possessor power over death.

As the book opens, Voldemort has begun to seize power in a silent coup: with discrimination codified, step by step, into law and critics swiftly "disappeared," the resulting society is a familiar dystopic nightmare - and Hogwarts is no sanctuary. Rather, with the still-enigmatic Snape installed as headmaster and several Death Eaters added to the staff, it is a youth prison and indoctrination center. Rowling pulls few punches in depicting this bleak landscape: torture, if not graphically described, is implacably present, and the body count climbs ever higher. Readers who grew up with the series will appreciate how it has matured, but younger newcomers may be overwhelmed by a level of violence and loss that far surpasses all previous volumes.

Rowling obviously had a long eye for plotting: numerous minor personalities emerge from the woodwork to fulfill past foreshadowing, while others - Ron and Neville Longbottom, especially - finally come into their own. As for Harry, the boy hero flirts with darkness, casting Unforgivable curses with a feeling of "heady control" and ominously tempted by the promise of power that tainted Dumbledore. Ultimately, however, he is saved by his capacity for love and self-sacrifice, and it is here that Rowling's message rings loud and clear. Harry is consistently defined by his compassion; it can even be his (temporary) downfall, as when his choice to disarm rather than kill one of the enemy identifies him amid a cadre of decoys. But compassion is the quality that allows Harry to break the cycle of hatred between Muggle and wizard, house elf and human, and even Gryffindor and Slytherin - and the ripple effects of this achievement are incalculable.

Ravenous fans and higher-than-ever stakes aside, the book has its flaws. Rowling still discounts the ability of her audience to read between the lines and leaves no subtlety to the imagination (to a righteously angry Hermione, "'Yeah,' said Ron sycophantically"); certain plot devices seem like hasty additions to the magical rulebook; and the scenes of conceptual exposition, particularly a plodding one that bisects Harry and Voldemort's final showdown, are poorly integrated, rarely sustaining tension. Nevertheless, Rowling fulfills the promise of earlier volumes, tying up loose threads, deepening character complexities to match Harry's evolving recognition of life's shades of gray, pulling out every emotional stop, and leading her hero into adulthood while still producing the most focused plot line and layered, heart-in-throat climax of the series. (Snape plays his part, and rather than resolving his character as pure good or pure evil, Rowling allows him a full measure of both and the internal conflict to match.) After all the adrenaline, an epilogue gently releases readers, shining a brief nineteen-years-later light on the aftermath for all involved that contains small, satisfying echoes of Harry's own first introduction to the wizarding world.

It is unsettling to reach the end of a saga that attained such heights of cultural saturation; there's not enough action or bittersweet resolution in the world to prepare us for the finality of that last page turn, and readers will always want one more chapter, one more story, before leaving the universe of the book. Rowling gracefully acknowledges this ambivalence. The opening scenes of Deathly Hallows find Harry, for the last time inside the Dursleys' house at number four, Privet Drive, sifting through his belongings, recalling past escapades, and wistfully bidding goodbye to those who, like his parents and godfather, were lost to him. Readers will share his feelings of nostalgia in this triumphant farewell to the boy wizard. CLAIRE E. GROSS

For more in our Fan Week series, click on the tag Fan Week 2016 and see #HBFanWeek on Twitter.

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Reviews of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.

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The author J.K. Rowling is expected to be an executive producer of the show, which will appear on Max, the streaming service from Warner Bros. Discovery.

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Hogwarts Legacy Sells 12 Million Copies During Dispute Over Rowling

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Hogwarts Legacy Sells 12 Million Copies During Dispute Over Rowling

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The video game generated $850 million in sales in two weeks. Online discussion before its release was largely about the “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling’s comments on transgender issues.

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Harry Potter Fans Reimagine Their World Without Its Creator

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Harry Potter Fans Reimagine Their World Without Its Creator (Published 2020)

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Almost exactly 20 years ago, on September 1, 1998, Scholastic published Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first US edition of the UK's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Harry Potter has since became such an all-encompassing phenomenon that from this vantage point, it's hard to see the full scope what it accomplished: It feels as though publishing and fandom and children's literature and all of pop culture have always been the way we know them today. But Harry Potter changed the world.

Author J.K. Rowling was an unknown single mom when she first got the idea for her story while stuck on a train; the small UK children's press that ultimately took a chance on it undoubtedly couldn't have predicted that it would have a measurable effect on everything it touched. Harry Potter made YA book-to-movie franchises into one of the biggest forces in pop culture. It changed the business model for publishing books for kids. And it introduced an entire generation to the idea that it's possible to interact with the pop culture you love - to write about it and with it, to make music and art about it, and to build a business around it.

Here's a look back at the way Harry Potter changed and influenced online fandom, millennial culture, and the publishing industry.

Harry Potter's US publication made it a bonafide phenomenon

Harry Potter did fine when it first emerged in the UK 20 years ago, winning a Smarties Award and garnering respectable sales for its publisher, Bloomsbury. But it only started to approach phenomenon levels when Scholastic bought the US publication rights for an astonishing $105,000, about 10 times more than the average foreign rights sale at the time.

Arthur Levine, the Scholastic editor who acquired the books, had an excellent eye for British books that would work in the US, having already acquired the US rights to Redwall and His Dark Materials. But even he didn't know that Harry Potter would grow as big as it did. He just knew that he loved it and wanted to publish it. Scholastic President Barbara Marcus Barbara Marcus "kept saying 'do you love it?' and Arthur said yes, so we went for it," a Scholastic spokesperson recalled in 2002. "I would have been willing to go further than that if I had to," Levine said in 2007.

The $105,000 sale granted Harry Potter two things: a built-in publicity hook, and a big budget.

The hook came from the press: Newspapers featured articles about the little English book that had garnered such a huge sale. Reviewers wanted to know what kind of book would justify that kind of money. It was a curiosity, and as such, it was a story.

The budget came from Scholastic itself. Whenever a publisher acquires a book, it creates a budget for that book. That budget is structured so that elevating the numbers in one category means elevating the numbers in the next category: If you're going to invest $105,000 just in acquiring a book, you're also going to pour extra money into marketing, publicity, and production, so that you have a reasonable chance of making that money back.

So Scholastic invested in a lovely hardcover design for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, with a soon-to-be iconic cover, even though conventional wisdom of the time held that children's books only made money in paperback. It arranged for Harry Potter to be displayed on the front tables at bookstores, and for ads to appear in the right newspapers and magazines. In short, it gave the book many more resources than are typically afforded to the average debut novel from an unknown author, and that decision paid off.

But none of Scholastic's efforts would have mattered in the end if the people who picked up the book hadn't loved it. That's what pulled Harry Potter out of flash-in-the-pan territory and elevated it into a phenomenon that defined childhood for an entire generation.

Why adults got so obsessed with the Harry Potter books

A 2012 study found that 55 percent of YA novels are bought by adults. In large part, that boom is courtesy of Harry Potter, which became a surprise crossover hit adored by both children and adults, and which made it acceptable for adults to read books that are ostensibly for children.

For some critics, that's a worrisome development, suggesting that adults are too dull and stupid to appreciate books actually written for adults. But there are plenty of reasons for a grown person to enjoy Harry Potter.

The Harry Potter books combine the intricate plotting of a mystery with the sweep and scope of epic fantasy and the intimacy and character development of a classic boarding school narrative. The result is purely pleasurable to read at any age: The puzzlebox mystery plotting keeps the pages turning propulsively forward, the fantastic mythology gives the world scope and magic and joy, and the boarding school structure makes the characters warm and familiar and charming.It also makestheir eventual death (for some) and trauma (for all) deeply affecting.

It's true that Rowling's prose is best described as workmanlike and competent; if the reasonyou read is solely to enjoy perfectly balanced and polished sentences, you may be best served elsewhere. But if you are an adult who can imagine reading for more than one reason (the pleasures of story, the joy of immersing yourself in another world), the Harry Potter books become enormously appealing.

Early on, the books were extremely controversial - and in many ways, they still are

Part of what made Harry Potter such a literary phenomenon is that so many kids were reading the books despite an unprecedented number of attempts to get them to stop reading the books.

The Harry Potter series, like many works of fantasy, involves wizardry and witchcraft. The feeling that the books thus promoted the occult proved to be the basis for constant challenges to the series' presence in school libraries and bookstores by concerned conservative parents. The books first topped the American Library Association's list of the most banned books of the year in 1999, and remained in the top spot for most of the next decade.

In some regions, pressure to censor the series was so high it led to lawsuits: In 2003, a judge ordered an Arkansas school district that had removed the books from schools due to promotion of "the religion of witchcraft" to return them. Similar formal attempts at removal persisted into the latter half of the decade, and the books continue to rile up conservative religious leaders who warn of its "demonic" influence.

But witchcraft wasn't the only evil the books were accused of peddling. In 2007, after the series' end, J.K. Rowling retroactively outed the powerful wizard Dumbledore as gay. The news prompted Christian scholars to declare the move " nonsense," while queer fans were in turn angry that Rowling had done so little to make the queer subtext of Dumbledore's character overt during the time he was actually being written (and alive). In recent years, Rowling has provoked controversy for her series' lack of diversity, for denying queer sexuality of characters, and many, many more kerfuffles.

All of this controversy speaks not only to concerns that Rowling's work would negatively influence children, but to the reality that many of those children grew up to be arguably even more progressive than the books they grew up reading - which is, in a way, a confirmation of conservatives' worst fears about the series.

Harry Potter's popularity completely changed the publishing industry - and the effect spilled over to Hollywood

Here are just two of the ways Harr y Potter changed publishing, and how those changes affected the rest of pop culture:

1) The books made it possible to publish long works aimed at children. Prior to Harry Potter, the accepted wisdom was that kids didn't have the attention span to read long books. And anyway, the thinking went, kids weren't buying their own books. Their parents were paying for everything, and they would never be willing to pay an extra dollar or two for a longer book, with its extra printing and binding.

But after Harry Potter became an unstoppable cultural force, and it was clear that fans would keep buying thebooks no matter what, it started to expand. The last four volumes of the series are all doorstoppers that clock in at well over 700 pages each.

Publishers and children's writers took notice. Booklist found that middle-grade novels expanded 115.5 percent between 2006 and 2016, the decade in which the Potter novels were at their longest. (They rose only 37.37 percent between 1996 and 2006.)

2) Harry Potter made children's literature an unstoppable force. Before Harry Potter, children's literature was often considered an afterthought. Sales were falling. Children, analysts would say wistfully, just weren't reading anymore.

After Harry Potter, children's literature became a category full of mega-sellers. In 2004, in the midst of the Harry Potter phenomenon, sales of non-Potter kid lit were increasing by 2 percent a year. Since then, the children's market as a whole has seen its sales increase by a total of 52 percent (4 percent a year). For comparison, the overall book market has gone up a mere 33 percent since 2004.

The Harry Potter generation likes to read, for sure - millennials read more than any other generation - and it also created a cultural landscape in which books for children are major cultural forces, and a go-to well of ideas for Hollywood. Movie studios scour the children's bestseller lists for properties they can turn into the next Harry Potter: hence Twilight and The Hunger Games and Divergent and all the rest. Before Harry Potter, the YA book-to-movie franchise was not a cliché. It is now, and that's because the boy wizard and his friendstransformed an entire industry.

Harry Potter fandom also paved the way for the mainstreaming of fandom and geek culture

Harry Potter has a tremendously outsized cultural reach: One 2011 survey suggested that a third of all American adults ages 18 to 34 at the time had read at least one of the books. But what really makes Harry Potter stand out is the way people loved (and continue to love) Harry Potter.

First and foremost, the series helped make it cool to be a geek. People generally didn't read the Harry Potter books in isolation; they wanted to talk about it with their friends, and then find more friends who loved the books as much as they did. This pattern coincided with the rise of "Web 2.0" - that is, an increasingly interactive and social internet. As more Harry Potter fans became more active online, they made discussion of YA fiction, fantasy, and science fiction seem commonplace.

This was still a pretty bold concept in the early 2000s; geek culture was largely still underground, and fantasy was seen mainly as an immature hobby - for instance, in 2003, critic A.S. Byatt's excoriation of " Harry Potter and the childish adult" claimed that adults "like to regress" when they read children's literature. But between Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings film adaptations, and the emerging visibility of online Harry Potter fandom, it was increasingly difficult to ignore fantasy and science fiction as a driving force of culture, and to write off fans of these genres as niche. By the time Twilight took over from Harry Potter as the reigning young adult phenomenon in 2005, the idea of a modern, mainstream fandom coalescing around a major sci-fi/fantasy series was well-established and generally accepted.

And Harry Potter fans' creativity is still being felt in and outside of the fandom. In the early 2000s, Harry Potter fan forums, fanfiction and fan art archives, and email discussion groups exploded across the internet. Harry Potter conventions drew thousands of fans, and Harry Potter cosplay became a well-known sight at larger geek and comic cons.

Around the same time, the "Wizard Rock" trend (shorthanded Wrock) gained momentum as Harry Potter fans on YouTube formed a litany of music groups - the first one being Harry and the Potters - devoted to personifying and singing about various characters from the books. It was later joined by another totally unique-to-Harry-Potter fan pursuit: Quidditch. In 2005, students at Vermont's Middlebury college created the first real-life Quidditch game, which went on to spawn an international real-world college sport.

A number of Harry Potter fans also went on to make significant marks on mainstream culture. As a member of the University of Michigan theater troupe Starkid, a young Darren Criss starred as Harry Potter in the viral YouTube video A Very Potter Musical, and his popularity catapulted him into the role of Blaine on Glee and a career on Broadway.

Two longtime members of Harry Potter fandom, siblings John and Hank Green - now known more widely as the Vlogbrothers - got their start on YouTube during the site's relative infancy, but it wasn't until Hank Green's 2007 song " Accio Deathly Hallows" went viral on the eve of the final Harry Potter book's release that they became the true YouTube stars and industry success models they are today.

And the list goes on: The author of the bestselling Mortal Instruments series, Cassandra Clare first gained fame online as Cassandra Claire, author of the incredibly popular Harry Potter fanfic The Draco Trilogy. Other Harry Potter fans, like fan convention organizer Melissa Anelli and social activist Andrew Slack launched careers directly out of Harry Potter fandom. In general, the Harry Potter fandom was among the first to see a number of people actively leveraging their success through fandom toward their professional careers. Just as Harry Potter made it easier for fans to own their geeky habits, the Harry Potter fandom made it easier for fans to market those geeky habits as professional assets.

What made all of this possible - the industries transformed, the careers built - are the books themselves, and the expansive, wondrous world they created. The Harry Potter series is a phenomenon not just because it had a good publicity and marketing budget (although that helped) and not just because the curiosity and controversy surrounding it made it appealing to the press (although that helped). The Harry Potter series is a phenomenon because it tells a story that millions of people loved, and it introduced the world to an enormous and magical world that millions of people have dreamed of escaping into.

That's why we're still talking about these books 20 years later, and that's why all of this matters.

Watch: Harry Potter and the translator's nightmare

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J.K. Rowling's celebrated "Harry Potter" series of children's books uses antisemitic tropes. Most people don't notice this because antisemitic tropes are ubiquitous in our popular culture. But this is a problem much bigger than Rowling.

Rowling's novels have often been seen as metaphors for the fight against fascism.

Indeed, Rowling's novels have often been seen as metaphors for the fight against fascism. Her main villain, Lord Voldemort, is motivated by a kind of eugenic prejudice against non-magic-users that's an obvious nod to Nazi ideology.

But critics have been pointing out for years that the hook-nosed, greedy goblin bankers who run Gringotts Wizarding Bank look a lot like the hook-nosed, greedy Jewish caricatures that have been a hallmark of antisemitic propaganda from the Middle Ages to Der Stürmer.

In a December podcast episode, comedian Jon Stewart summed up the argument succinctly: "Have you ever seen a 'Harry Potter' movie? Have you ever seen the scenes in Gringotts bank? Do you know what those folks who run the bank are? Jews!" Stewart then pointed out the similarities between the goblins and the caricatures of antisemitic texts like the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Stewart has since clarified that he wasn't calling Rowling personally antisemitic, nor does he think the "Harry Potter" books and movies - which he loves "probably too much for a gentleman of my considerable age" - require any changes. Nonetheless, the stereotypes exist. And their ubiquity doesn't negate their potential harmfulness.

Probably the most influential greedy Jewish caricature after Shakespeare's Shylock is Charles Dickens' Scrooge. Scrooge (as many Jewish writers have pointed out) is a miser with an obviously Jewish name (Ebenezer) and a pointed nose. He doesn't celebrate Christmas and needs to be converted to charity and piety. It's not especially subtle.

Scrooge has influenced many an antisemitic caricature after him. Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" is a twisted, disabled Scrooge of the American Midwest. Dr. Seuss' Grinch is Scrooge in a fur suit and a vaguely fantasy setting; he's a scheming outsider who, like his blueprint, has to be converted. The thin, ugly Gollum of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is an amalgam of Scrooge and Alberich, the gold-obsessed antagonist of composer (and notorious antisemite) Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold." From his introduction in "The Hobbit" on, Gollum is motivated by a lust for a magic ring he calls "my precious."

Watto, the hook-nosed, greedy small-businessman in "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" even "happens to have a thick Yiddish accent," as Bruce Gottlieb wrote in Slate. Hans Gruber in "Die Hard" is a foreign, sneering, anti-Christmas villain who murders for gold. Then there are the skeletal-like shape-shifting aliens in John Carpenter's "They Live," who combine stereotypes of Jewish greed with tropes of Jewish alienness and shape-shifting assimilation. The parallel here was so blatant that neo-Nazis embraced the movie as their own, much to Carpenter's horror.

Many argue that the pervasive nature of antisemitic tropes means the Gringotts goblins and their ilk do no harm. Most children watching the "Harry Potter" films wouldn't have picked up on the reference. The British charity Campaign Against Antisemitism, for example, tweeted a statement arguing that there are "centuries of association of Jews with grotesque and malevolent creatures in folklore" and that "those who continue to use such representations are often not thinking of Jews at all" but are innocently thinking "of how readers or viewers will imagine goblins to look."

No doubt that (as Stewart said) Rowling didn't intend to use antisemitic tropes, just as Carpenter didn't. There's a clear distinction between Rowling's clumsy, clueless use of antisemitic caricature and her enthusiastic, ideological embrace of transphobic hate.

But it's possible to do harm even if you don't mean to. The conflation of greed and Judaism, and the constant subliminal drumbeat that Jewish people are ugly manipulative alien outsiders, can shape and reinforce ugly ideas about real Jewish people. Faces like mine are exaggerated and distorted and put on Rowling's goblins and the Ferengi of "Star Trek." That's why on social media, trolls often tweet pictures of my face at me because I have Jewish features. They've been taught by all their pop culture that "Jewish" is a stand-in for "ugly."

Most disturbingly, there's a direct line between Gringotts and the Grinch and the antisemitic attacks on George Soros. Soros is a billionaire Democratic donor and Holocaust survivor who has become a favorite target of the global far right. He's been falsely accused of collaborating with Nazis and funding antifa. The right also (again falsely) claimed he was bankrolling the migrant caravan in 2018. That last conspiracy theory allegedly inspired one far-right radical to kill 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Embodying greed in Jewish caricatures puts Jews at risk. But it also makes it harder to address the actual evils of greed and inequity. When people imagine they are being oppressed by these ugly aliens over here, it becomes hard to see actual injustice and exploitation committed by supposedly good, upstanding co-nationalists and co-religionists. It's not an accident that former President Donald Trump has signed on to Soros conspiracy theories.

Jewish people are not the main targets of hate and violence in the United States. Again, Rowling's campaign of hatred against trans people has been much more harmful, and much more consequential, than her goblins.

Still, Jewish stereotypes and prejudice persist. That is reflected, and to some degree advanced, by fictional narratives and imagery that (unconsciously or otherwise) associate goodness with Christian charity and evil with supposed Jewish greed. In his "lighthearted" criticism of Rowling, Stewart reminded us that our fantasies remain structured around antisemitism. As long as that's the case, Jewish people will be at risk, and defeating Voldemort will be that much harder.

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Opinion | Why most people still miss these antisemitic tropes in "Harry Potter"

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Jon Stewart's trending comments on 'Harry Potter' movie goblins and Jewish stereotypes don't implicate J.K. Rowling like her trans hate, but they're not great

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Approximately eight years after the Walt Disney Co. sold the lion's share of its adult book business to Hachette Book Group, Disney Publishing is returning to that market with the launch of Hyperion Avenue. First books from the imprint, directed by Jennifer Levesque, will come out this summer, with a full rollout in fall 2022-and within five years Disney aims to release 50-60 titles through Hyperion Avenue, according to Tonya Agurto, Disney Publishing's senior v-p, publisher, imprint and IP development.

The news of the launch of Hyperion Avenue follows a number of other developments at Disney-including the appointment this past winter of Sarah Weisinger as senior v-p, group publisher, Disney Publishing Worldwide-that reflect the desire to remake parts of its book publishing operations. That strategy flows from Disney Co. acquisitions and startups over the past two years "that have given us a broader audience to appeal to," Agurto said. "We believe we can reach a new audience through book publishing."

Agurto pointed to the 2019 purchase of 20th Century Fox, which brought Disney the 20th Century Fox film and television studios and a controlling interest in the Hulu streaming service, as well as the late-2019 launch of the Disney+ streaming service. She said the new adult imprint will tap into those properties and will use such long-standing Disney properties as ESPN and ABC to publish fiction, memoir, and nonfiction in such areas as self-help, sports, lifestyle, pop culture, and humor.

Though a portion of Hyperion Avenue's list will be developed in-house, Agurto stressed that the company is looking to publish authors outside the Disney family. "We are 100% in acquisition mode," she added.

Agurto said Hyperion Avenue will seek to acquire titles that can take advantage of Disney's varied media properties, including its streaming services-meaning books that could be adapted into series and books based on series. An early acquisition is A Little Closer to Home by Ginger Zee, ABC chief meteorologist. In-house adaptations of original projects already in the works include Yes, And, described by Disney as a "contemporary novel set in the world of improv," by former SNL writer Katie Rich.

According to Agurto, another element of Disney Publishing will be "reimagining" some of the company's best-known narrative works by publishing new versions written by diverse talent. An example of that effort is If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy, the first title in the Meant to Be series, which, Disney said, is inspired by classic fairy tales. If The Shoe Fits will publish in August.

In addition to Hyperion Avenue, other Disney imprints that publish for the adult market are Disney Editions, which produces high-end coffee table books, and National Geographic Books, which has a backlist of 1,800 titles for adults and children.

The Disney Hyperion children's imprint is also undergoing some reimagining, with an eye toward expanding its offerings and reach. New editorial director Kieran Viola is now overseeing all acquisitions for Disney Hyperion with a mandate to find new potential bestselling authors. Recent acquisitions include two books by Leah Johnson; the first in the series, Ellie Engle Saves Herself, is set to be released in spring 2023. Disney Hyperion has also signed a YA debut by Britney S. Lewis, The Undead Truth of Us, that features a Black dancer and a "speculative twist," the publisher said. Current bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz has written two new novels in her Blue Blood series, and the publisher will repackage the original series for release in 2022.

New titles are also coming from popular author Rick Riordan's Rick Riordan Presents imprint: recent additions include two titles in Daniel José Older's Outlaw Saints series, two titles in a middle grade series by Stacey Lee based on Chinese folktales, and two books in a middle grade series by Tracey Baptiste titled Moko Magic, based on Caribbean folklore.

Disney Hyperion will also look to develop original stories in-house by identifying titles that have the potential to be adapted into Disney Co. products, games, and theatrical productions. One of the first books coming from that effort is Anne of Greenville, the first YA novel from the Melissa de la Cruz Studio, written by Mariko Tamaki.

And like Hyperion Avenue, Disney Hyperion is seeking to create new versions of popular characters that have appeared in various Disney Co. properties. In this area, National Book Award-finalist Victoria Jamieson's Operation Parent Trap is set to be the first book in the Disney Remix graphic novel series, with each story based on a Disney live action film.

The new push at Disney Hyperion is in keeping with the strategy Agurto outlined in February 2020, following the sale of 1,100 Disney Book Group children's titles to HBG, when she said that the company would focus on books and authors that can take advantage of the media giant's many platforms. In that vein, she said the new initiatives are not expected to grow the overall Disney Hyperion target of publishing 60 titles annually.

Along with broadening Disney Hyperion's program, Disney Publishing is continuing to release titles for readers up to age 18 under Disney Press, Disney Editions, Marvel Press, and Lucasfilm Press. And Agurto said it's business as usual in Disney Publishing's robust licensing program, through which the company partners with publishers with strengths outside its own, such as Del Rey in the sci-fi genre, with which it has an ongoing agreement.

In addition to the appointments of Levesque and Viola, Disney Publishing has named Carol Roeder associate publisher, working across all Disney imprints. Heading up sales at Disney Publishing Worldwide is Nicole Elmes, who reports to Daniel Saeva, v-p, publishing commercialization.

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With Hyperion Avenue, the media giant gets back into adult publishing and makes a new effort to find books that can take advantage of its myriad platforms.

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Is my Harry Potter book a "First Edition"? How can I tell?

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Is my Harry Potter book a "First Edition"? How can I tell?

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The numberline is a standard printing indicator telling what print run the book in question was printed. The lowest number in the numberline is the printing. In this case, the "1" being present represents the "1st" printing of the book. The "2nd" printing will have all of these numbers except the "1" thus "2" as the lowest number, etc.

If your copy of Harry Potter shows a numberline of "29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22" this will indicate the book is a "22nd" printing.

The numbers to the right of the numberline (in many cases) account for the year the book was printed. In the first printing, the numbers show "8 9/9 0/0 01 02" which indicates this book was printed in the year "1998".

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Is my Harry Potter book a "First Edition"? How can I tell? - RED FOX RARE BOOKS

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There are many ways to tell if a book is a first edition. Each publisher has it's own guidelines on how they determine to print their first run. In modern first editions, it is perhaps a bit easier to identify as publishers tend to adopt much similar formulas on their print run indicators.

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Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

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The website and portfolio of Joe Sutphin, New York Times bestselling children’s illustrator.

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Kristina Kister is an illustrator and character designer from Essen, Germany. After graduating in Communication Design she worked as a junior art director in an ad agency in Düsseldorf, where she illustrated for clients like Weight Watchers, Fashion Designer Thomas Rath, DHL and many more.

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Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

Are we in for a treat! A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet Stephanie Lurie at a Florida SCBWI conference, as well as take a workshop she was giving. Besides being extremely informative, she couldn't have been nicer.

If you don't know her, she's the Editorial Director of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint at Disney-Hyperion, and I'm thrilled to feature her in the Editor Spotlight!

Hi Stephanie, thanks for joining us today!
JR: You've had a long, successful career in publishing. Could you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming an editor, and eventually working for Disney-Hyperion?
SL: Being a children's book editor was a career choice I made very early on. When I was fifteen, a local bookstore owner asked me to review a book a townsperson had written for young adults. As I read the book, I thought, "Too bad this woman doesn't know how kids really think." It was an "aha!" moment for me: I could help authors make their books stronger. I'm not even sure how I knew such a job existed. . . .

I went on to be a creative writing major at Oberlin College, and during the first semester of my senior year, I had an internship for college credit at Dodd, Mead and Company in New York (a publishing house that was ultimately acquired by Thomas Nelson Books). My experience working for a children's book editor at Dodd, Mead proved to me that I had found my calling. Dodd, Mead offered me a job after college-for a whopping $8,000 a year!-in sales promotion and customer service. I learned a lot, but I wanted to get back to children's editorial. I jumped over to Little, Brown, where I grew up from editorial assistant to senior editor over twelve years. After that I ran the imprint Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers for six years. My next stint was as president and publisher of Dutton Children's books at Penguin. In my ninth year there, a friend of mine who was working at Disney Hyperion talked me into applying for an editorial director job by saying, "How would you like to do what you are doing at Dutton but not have any other imprints competing for marketing and publicity attention?" That sounded pretty good to me, and over the past decade there I have enjoyed being part of a boutique publisher within a huge entertainment company.
JR: That's some exciting journey! What was the first book you worked on?
SL: I had a generous boss at Little, Brown who allowed me to "cut my teeth" on manuscripts by their top authors at the time, such as Lois Duncan, Ellen Conford, and Matt Christopher. One of the first authors I acquired was Neal Shusterman, who has gone on to be a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Award winner with other editors.
JR: When you first saw The Lightning Thief, what about it appealed to you so much?
SL: Rick Riordan's first middle grade novel, The Lightning Thief, was acquired at auction before my time at Disney. Rick chose to go with Miramax Books, which eventually became part of Disney-Hyperion. Jennifer Besser (now at Macmillan) edited the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I took over as Rick's editor after she left, picking up on the Kane Chronicles trilogy. I was amazed by how he made ancient Egyptian mythology relevant to modern readers with exciting adventure, relatable characters, a healthy dose of humor, and a breakneck pace. He makes it look easy.
JR: What's changed in publishing between the time you started and now?
SL: What hasn't? I'm so old (How old are you?), I pre-date office computers! Yes, we had to type on Selectrics, using carbon paper. The biggest changes have come from: corporate buy-outs of family-owned companies, which necessitated more attention to the bottom line; the rise of chain bookstores; the Harry Potter phenomenon, which brought hardcover fiction back from the brink of death; the importance of social media in author promotion; Amazon's dominance; and today, more focus on diversity.
JR: I grew up doing all my reports on typewriters. Slightly easier now. And by the way, I could've sworn I heard Gene Rayburn say the "I'm so old" part before you answered (How old are you?) But back to the interview. Disney has recently acquired a lot of new properties. Does that mean anything for the publishing division?
SL: Disney now encompasses several premiere brands, such as Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and Fox Entertainment. We can publish against all of these brands, from straight movie tie-ins to extension books that tell new stories based on the characters from the movies. It also means that there is more opportunity for intercompany synergy for authors writing their own IP (intellectual property).
JR: What do you enjoy the most about your job?
SL: I'm having a blast helping Rick curate the Rick Riordan Presents line of middle grade fiction by under-represented authors who want to write stories about their own cultures' folklore and mythology. I send him submissions to consider, acquire the projects we agree on, edit the manuscripts, and collaborate with my colleagues on book design and promotion.
JR: All that sounds like a tremendous amount of fun. What sort of books do you look for?
SL: For Rick Riordan Presents, we want the same qualities that make Rick's own books so popular, because the imprint was created to satisfy his fans' craving for adventure based on mythology. We look for a funny, snarky teenage voice; a fast pace; an exciting, high-stakes plot; and a likeable but flawed protagonist who grows over the course of the story.
JR: The kinds of books I love! Are you very hands-on with your authors?
SL: I've always enjoyed helping writers bring out their story by asking pointed questions and making suggestions to improve logic, flow, and clarity. For the Rick Riordan Presents authors, my guidance may be a bit more involved, because there is a certain flavor we are trying to achieve while retaining the author's own voice. It's a delicate balance.
JR: What's the state of publishing right now, in particular, Middle Grade?
SL: It can be difficult for a book-any book-to break out in this time when there is so much entertainment content for consumers to choose from and there are fewer retail outlets for print. Amazon is grabbing more and more market share, but the online site doesn't encourage browsing. Buyers who shop there usually go already knowing what they want. This is part of the reason best-selling authors remain best-selling authors and new authors have trouble competing. Authors need to partner more with their publisher on promotion as a result.
JR: Probably more important than ever for authors to get involved in the promotion process. What advice can you give to authors?
SL: The best way to learn to write is to read, read, read, and write, write, write.

Remember that you are communicating with an audience and not just writing to satisfy your own ego.

A good concept isn't enough by itself. Write the entire manuscript.

You may have to land a literary agent before you can land a publishing deal.

Choosing an agent and editor/publisher is like choosing any partner. Make sure there is good chemistry between you.

Be open to feedback but stand up for what is important to you.

Don't expect the publication of your book to satisfy all your desires or change your life.

Writing the book is only 50% of the work; promotion after publication is the other 50%.

School visits are still one of the best ways to build word-of-mouth.

Support other authors on your way up, and they will (should) do the same for you.
JR: All of that is outstanding advice. In my experience, many authors have been extremely supportive of each other. I think strong relationships are extremely important in that regard. I read that Harriet the Spy was one of your favorite childhood books. I have a few friends who wholeheartedly agree with you. What did you love about it and what other books were among your favorites?
SL: I loved how honest Harriet the Spy was about a kid's real life-I believe it was one of the first contemporary middle grade novels ever published. To this day I enjoy books in which a well-meaning main character makes a big mistake that causes them humiliation, e.g. The Truth About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin. As a kid I also enjoyed animal-based fantasies such as Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. High fantasies such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings stood out, too.
JR: The Narnia books were also among my favorites as a child. Speaking of childhood, what's one thing from your childhood that you wish could come back?
SL: My fun-loving dad. He taught me to always remain a kid at heart.
JR: Okay, that answer hit me. If there's one thing I could wish for from then, it would also be to see my dad. How can people follow you on social media?
SL: For publishing news and comments, Twitter is probably the best bet: @SOLurie.
JR: Before we go, is there anything else that you'd like to add?
SL: Thank you for inviting me to answer these questions. I greatly admire authors-both aspiring and published-and wish everyone a fulfilling journey. Your book could be the one that makes a reluctant reader a forever reader, changes a kid's perspective, and inspires someone else to be a writer.
JR: Extremely true. Thank you again for taking the time to speak with us today!
Well, that's it for now, Mixed-Up Filers. I'd like to once again thank Stephanie Lurie for joining us! And if you ever see her listed to speak at a conference, I strongly suggest you go listen!

Until next time . . .

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Interview with Stephanie Lurie, Editorial Director of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint at Disney-Hyperion! - From The Mixed Up Files

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Hello Mixed-Up Filers! Are we in for a treat! A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet Stephanie Lurie at a Florida SCBWI conference, as well as take a workshop she was giving. Besides being extremely informative, she couldn't have been nicer.

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If the author doesn’t have a distinct voice to begin with—no matter how cool their concept sounds—their book won’t stand out in the imprint or the marketplace. That’s why voice is the first thing we look for in the writing sample. Another important element is tone—that snarky brand of humor that Rick’s fans have come to love and expect.

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Blue Willow Bookshop | West Houston's Neighborhood Book Shop

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If you've been shopping at our store for a while, you know we have a special place in our hearts (and on our shelves) for "Uncle" Rick Riordan, whose magical, mythology-infused middle grade novels have been delighting readers for fifteen years. When he's not writing his own books, he's busy with his own imprint, Rick Riordan Presents, which is publishing some of the funniest, most thrilling, and exciting middle grade series today.

We caught up with Stephanie Lurie, the Editorial Director of Rick Riordan Presents, to chat about working with Uncle Rick, children's publishing, and what's coming next from the imprint-starting with The Last Fallen Star, by Graci Kim. We're delighted to host the launch event for that book on May 4, when author Graci Kim will appear in conversation with Rick Riordan himself. You can learn more about that event on our website, and purchase tickets here. In the meantime, check out our interview with Stephanie below!

Tell us about Rick Riordan Presents. How did the imprint come into being, and what kinds of books do you publish?

Rick has always been generous about posting reviews of other authors' work, to give their books a boost, so Disney invited him to start an eponymous imprint through which he could launch new talent. At first he said he was too busy to consider the prospect, but after further thought he came back to us with the idea of making it an imprint devoted to mythology-based middle grade novels, like the kind his fans enjoy, but written by authors who want to tell stories from their own heritages and backgrounds. And lest anyone think that cultural mythology is too narrow a focus to sustain, Graci Kim's The Last Fallen Star will be our sixteenth book, and we have many more signed up for the future. We publish in a variety of genres, from fantasy adventure to sci-fi to humor, and we will be soon expanding into young adult fiction and graphic novels.

Can you share a bit about your path in publishing? Also, is it true that you're the editor who acquired Andrew Clement's Frindle?

Children's book publishing is all I've ever done, beginning when I was an editorial intern while a senior in college forty years ago (gulp!). I grew up at Little, Brown; ran an imprint at Simon & Schuster (where, yes, I was lucky enough to acquire); and was the president and publisher of Dutton Children's Books at Penguin before I moved to Disney Hyperion in 2008. I started working with Rick after his original editor, Jen Besser, left the company, and the first book he and I collaborated on was The Throne of Fire, book two of the Kane Chronicles. It wasn't until the Magnus Chase series that I started embarrassing Rick by being part of his warm-up show on tour-hahaha. The last decade+ of my career has really been incredible.

We're so excited for The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim. Can you talk about that book and its journey to publication?

Speaking of incredible, when assistant editor Hannah Allaman shared the first draft of The Last Fallen Star with me, I was blown away by debut author Graci Kim's magic system. It was so well-conceived and inventive! There are many ways for readers to engage with the story, whether it is through adoptee Riley's desire to fit in with her family's Korean witch clan, or her quest to save her beloved sister, or the mystery of what the last fallen star is, or the encounters with fantastical creatures, or the delicious descriptions of food, or all the above. I was very sorry to lose Hannah to a competing publisher, but it was a delight to see the book through with Graci, and we've signed up two more in the series.

The Rick Riordan Presents books center mythologies from all over the world. How are those mythologies chosen? Does a book begin with the author or the mythology?

We don't have a checklist of mythologies we want to cover; we respond to pitches that come in from agents and we also approach authors we'd like to work with, as was the case with Carlos Hernandez, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Sarwat Chadda. If a pitch (often just a paragraph) sounds intriguing to Rick and me, I'll work with the author on a three-chapter sample and synopsis. Once that material passes muster with Rick and my editorial colleagues, it goes to the acquisition board, which is made up of people from sales, marketing, and publicity.

What else can we look forward to from Rick Riordan Presents this year?

We have many treats in store! In August, we'll be publishing the second book about Paola Santiago, entitled Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares. Having just faced the fearsome La Llorona, Paola answers another ghostly summons and is reunited with her long-lost father. But he isn't the man she thought he was. . . .

In September we're introducing Lori M. Lee's Pahua and the Soul Stealer, about an eleven-year-old Hmong girl who sees spirits all around her, including a sarcastic talking cat. When Pahua accidentally unleashes an angry ghost, it steals her brother's soul, and she has to track them down in the spirit world. Along the way she discovers a heritage that has been hidden from her all her life.

Also in September we have The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities: New Stories about Mythic Heroes. This is an anthology featuring a rollicking new story by each RRP author plus one from Rick himself! It's the first time he's written about Irish mythology.

October will bring the last installment in the Tristan Strong trilogy, Tristan Strong Keeps Punching. Tristan is back in our world, but his friends from Alke are scattered all over the place and he feels responsible for finding them. His old nemesis, Cotton, is going to distract him from that task, however. Will Tristan finally knock out the haint once and for all?

Since you work with so many authors on an ongoing basis, how do you keep their voices distinct in the editorial process?

If the author doesn't have a distinct voice to begin with-no matter how cool their concept sounds-their book won't stand out in the imprint or the marketplace. That's why voice is the first thing we look for in the writing sample. Another important element is tone-that snarky brand of humor that Rick's fans have come to love and expect. I can help authors with the logic and structure of their story, with character development, and with the polishing of prose, but I can't teach someone to be funny or to understand the teen perspective if they don't already.

Time for a silly one: What's a fun fact about Rick that not everyone knows?

Rick has been trained in scuba diving, and here's a photo to prove it. This is also a nod to his upcoming novel, Daughter of the Deep, which was recently announced. It's his unique take on Jules Vernes' 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

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Editor Stephanie Lurie on THE LAST FALLEN STAR and Rick Riordan Presents

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If you've been shopping at our store for a while, you know we have a special place in our hearts (and on our shelves) for "Uncle" Rick Riordan, whose magical, mythology-infused middle grade novels have been delighting readers for fifteen years.

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Hachette Book Group Acquires the Hyperion Adult Imprint

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Hachette Book Group Acquires the Hyperion Adult Imprint

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Deciding that a standalone adult imprint does not fit with its long-range plans, Disney is selling the majority of Hyperion titles to Hachette Book Group in a deal that is expected to close in mid-July. HBG will acquire more than 1,000 adult backlist titles plus another 25 books that it will release over the next few seasons. Disney will retain the most media-related titles such as its Castle series which ties into the ABC television show of the same name. The book franchises that will remain with Disney will be overseen by Disney Publishing Worldwide. Disney's children's imprints, Disney and Disney-Hyperion, are not affected by the sale.

The deal includes the Hyperion name and HBG will continue to publish the Hyperion books under that imprint. Hyperion employees will stay with the company until the deal is completed and will help with transition issues. Some Hyperion employees are expected to join HBG in such areas as editorial and publicity. Other Hyperion employees will be given the opportunity to interview for other positions at Disney.

HBG has been Hyperion's longtime distributor and will continue to distribute titles produced by DPW that, in addition to Castle, include tie-in cookbooks to ABC's The Chew and a upcoming book based on Shark Tank. "The addition of franchise-based titles from Disney/ABC Television Group will expand our breadth of bestselling content," said Andrew Sugerman, executive v-p, Disney Publishing Worldwide.

The purchase is a boon for HBG which has been looking to grow its presence in nonfiction. The Hyperion list includes such titles as Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy with a foreword by Caroline Kennedy, to Jamie's Food Revolution by Jamie Oliver, from Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven to Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture and Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox. "We've put a strategic emphasis on growing nonfiction and the Hyperion backlist is a perfect fit," a HBG spokesperson said.

The sale ends a 22-year run for Hyperion which was founded in 1991 by Bob Miller. In the last few years, under president and publisher Ellen Archer, Hyperion has focused almost entirely on publishing books that could benefit from synergy within the Disney/ABC Television Group family. Last September, Archer hired Laura Hopper as editorial director for franchise publishing and this January brought in Ruth Pomerance as senior editor to focus on developing stories and authors who could work across the DATG business. Those efforts were apparently not enough to convince Disney executives that they needed Hyperion - whose list had shrunk in recent years - to publish a limited number of books annually.

Hyperion authors who have questions about what the deal means for them can direct those queries to hyperion@hbgusa.com.

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Hachette Book Group Acquires the Hyperion Adult Imprint

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Disney is selling the majority of Hyperion titles to Hachette Book Group. HBG will acquire more than 1,000 adult backlist titles plus another 25 books that it will release over the next few seasons. Disney will retain rights to the most media-related titles. .

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Hyperion Books

Status

Rebranded as Hachette Books

Hyperion Books was the general-interest book publishing part of the Disney-ABC Television Group, established in 1990. Hyperion publishes general-interest fiction and non-fiction books for adults under the following imprints: ABC Daytime Press, ESPN Books, Hyperion Audio, Hyperion eBooks, Hyperion East, Miramax Books, and Voice. The company is named after Hyperion Avenue, the location of Walt Disney Studios prior to 1939. The Disney Book Group publishes children's books under the Disney-Hyperion publishing arm.
Hyperion is the home of numerous bestselling novels, including Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven and For One More Day; Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, Candace Bushnell's Trading Up and Lipstick Jungle; Laura Moriarty's The Rest of Her Life; Percy Jackson & The Olympians; Waterfire Saga and Ridley Pearson's The Kingdom Keepers . The company's bestselling memoirs include J. R. Moehringer's The Tender Bar; Duane "Dog" Chapman's You Can Run But You Can't Hide, and Bob Newhart's I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This. They are also home to influential business books like Chris Anderson's The Long Tail; self-help books like Dr. Phil McGraw's Relationship Rescue and the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff library; and celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Dave Lieberman, Dave Barry's Peter and the Starcatchers.

It is also the publisher of Percy Jackson & the Olympians, a best selling children/teens' book by Rick Riordan that features Greek gods, monsters and other fantasy elements. Coincidentally, Hyperion is a titan and actually appears in the books. Hyperion published The Red Pyramid, also by Rick Riordan, which focuses on the two Kane siblings as they find out who they really are.

Disney-Hyperion is the publisher of Miles to Go, the autobiography of Miley Cyrus. They also published the Blue Bloods series by Melissa de la Cruz and the Billi SanGreal series by Sarwat Chadda, along with the children's book "Light Up the Night" by Jean Reidy. They are also the publisher of author Ally Carter's series The Gallagher Girls and Heist Society. Disney Hyperion is the replacement for Disney Editions and Miramax Books and it publishes the young adult books under Disney Hyperion and the more mature books under Hyperion unlike Disney Press which publishes the books meant for children.

In 2014, Hyperion Books was renamed to Hachette Books to avoid brand confusion with the Disney era of the company. The Hyperion trademark was effectively discontinued by Hachette, although still remains in use by Disney for Disney*Hyperion.

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Hyperion Books was the general-interest book publishing part of the Disney-ABC Television Group, established in 1990. Hyperion publishes general-interest fiction and non-fiction books for adults under the following imprints: ABC Daytime Press, ESPN Books, Hyperion Audio, Hyperion eBooks, Hyperion East, Miramax Books, and Voice.

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Nicholas Kole is the son of two mimes. He is a wandering freelance illustrator, comic artist & character designer.

Working full time from his iPad Pro in Procreate for the past year, on the road from Rhode Island to Tokyo to Vancouver.

From various coffee shops and couches, he draws dragons and wizards for companies like Disney, Dreamworks, Blizzard, Nintendo, Skydance, Guerilla Games, Toys For Bob, Hasbro, Mattel, Warner Brothers, Riot Games, Shining Isle, Dark Horse, EA Games, and the Flight Anthology. In between adventures, he works on his own indie passion projects, with occasional breaks to sit under trees looking wistful.

email: nicholas@nicholaskole.art

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Nicholas Kole is the son of two mimes. He is a wandering freelance illustrator, comic artist & character designer. Working full time from his iPad Pro in Procreate for the past year, on the road from Rhode Island to Tokyo to Vancouver.