Company of the Day, classic edition*: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Call this one an extended studio cut: it’s the longer version of the article that eventually appeared on our Company of the Day page.
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In the mega-selling Harry Potter fantasy series, the title character is sometimes called The Boy Who Lived, because he alone survived an attack from the wicked Lord Voldemort. In the business world, Bloomsbury Publishing could be called The Press That Profited — thanks to the Harry Potter phenomenon. The original publisher of the Harry Potter books has come a long way since 1996, when it paid Jo Rowling a mere £1,500 advance for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. (In the US, where the series is put out by Scholastic, “Philosopher’s” was changed to “Sorcerer’s.”) In 1998, the company’s annual revenue was $25 million; by 2005, it was nearly $190 million. Even when you start stripping away retail markups and sales in the US and the non-English-speaking world, the 325 million copies sold of the first six Harry Potter novels works out pretty nicely for Bloomsbury.
But now that Bloomsbury has published the series finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, how will any book replace the impact that Harry Potter has had for Bloomsbury over the past ten years? The quick answer is “nothing could.” Not that Bloomsbury hasn’t taken steps to diversify: the company already has other bestsellers in its catalog, and has announced plans to publish other likely bestsellers, including a book of investment advice by Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.
Beyond that, any reports of the demise of the Harry Potter franchise are premature. Hardback boxed sets of the entire series come out later this year, and the paper of Deathly Hallows is scheduled for 2008. Should Rowling decide to write an encyclopedia of Harry Potter lore as a companion volume to the series, which she has talked about doing as a charity benefit, Bloomsbury should have no trouble peddling the odd few million copies. And with two more installments of the vastly successful Harry Potter film franchise due by 2010, Bloomsbury will have plenty in the way of free advertising.
The best comparison for the Harry Potter series might be J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, which has sold strongly across the globe since its debut in 1954. Earlier this year Tolkein’s longtime US publisher Houghton Mifflin brought out The Children of Hurin, a novel compiled from Tolkein’s unpublished manuscripts by his son Christopher. Upon its debut, the book leapt to the top of the New York Times bestseller list — 34 years after Tolkien’s death. Meanwhile Rowling, who so far seems perfectly happy to keep Bloomsbury as her publisher, is only 41 years old and apparently the picture of health. More potential good news for Bloomsbury: Rowling has made it clear that she’ll keep writing books, even after Harry Potter is done.
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For more of this blog’s coverage on Harry Potter, see here, here, here, here, and here. (Did I go a little overboard? Maybe. But when you have a Potter-crazed nine-year-old in the house, it’s hard not to . . .)
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* This article first appeared on 2 August 2007.
Category: Company of the Day, Entertainment, Media10 Comments so far
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Everybody seems to repeat what the editorial house, Scholastic and Bloomsbury told people to say, but in the time, 1997, Harry Potter wasn´t even written. Now people want to actualize what they didn´t write in the moment because that information was not available. The real owner of everything is Warner Bros. and not J Rowling (the front for Harry POtter) and probably David Heyman has earned more money with Christopher Columbus than J Rowling who might not have writen a single word of the book, which is packaged!!!!!!
Thanks for the comment, Adriana.
I have a couple of questions:
1. How much difference does it make if some or all of the Harry Potter books are “packaged”? Plenty of big-selling books with big names on the cover are at least partly ghostwritten. And while I don’t *think* that happened in this case . . . so what if it did?
2. I think you’d have a hard time proving that “Harry Potter wasn’t even written” in 1997. In a few minutes of looking I found contemporaneous 1990s-era stories about the publication of the first book in the series from The Guardian and Publisher’s Weekly. Plus, the UK and US editions of the book reflect 1997 and 1998 publication dates, as you’d expect. How does this jibe with what you said above?
I have about everything written around Harry Potter, I know when and where it appeared. What matters about packaged books is that they take material from databases, or where do you think they knit the material? from other people´s works!!! who might not be recognized. I have a response from Publisher´s weekly: the first review of this title appears in the issue of July 20, 1998. Regarding The Guardian, is more or less the same. Also the various Legal Deposit offices you have in UK give the data from 1998. The heavy advertisement done on this “poor woman” writing in cafes has made not you, but millions “think” that. I give that to ALLOY the company that packaged the book. They are good at what they do.
Thanks for your reply, Adriana. I have some follow-up questions:
–Do you think that others’ works were infringed or plagiarized by the Harry Potter books? If so, whose? And if so, why have we not heard more about this?
–Publisher’s Weekly covers primarily U.S. publishing, and the first H.P. book appeared in 1998, so why would a review would have appeared earlier? As for The Guardian, the link I included in my previous comment is dated July 8, 1997, so that’s not “more or less the same” as July 1998.
Here, I guess, is my larger point: the Harry Potter books are the most-studied publishing phenomenon of the past twenty years, by far. And yes, the story of the “poor woman” writing in cafes IS a great story that was bound to make headlines. But, given the *massive* attention paid to the Harry Potter series over the past dozen years, wouldn’t there be more widespread doubts cast on Rowling’s authorship (or the appearance dates of the books, etc.) if there were serious questions about its validity?
OK I MAKE YOU A QUESTION: DO YOU THINK THAT IT WOULD BE EASY FOR ANYONE TO COME OUT WITH THE PLAGIARIZE STORY ONCE THEY HAVE SPEND MILLIONS IN MAKING THIS STORY AS THEY HAVE TOLD IT. THE NANCY STOUFFER STORY DENOUNCING J ROWLING CAME WITHOUT WARNING, BUT IF THEY KNOW SOMEONE IS AFTER THEM, WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY (THE PACKAGERS AND THE COMPANIES INVOLVED IN PACKAGING WITH STOLEN MATERIAL) WOULD DO, ALLOW IT OR MARK THE PEOPLE IN ORDER NOT TO COME OUT WITH THE STORY? IT IS NOT AN EASY THING. NOW THAT YOU ARE SO KNOWLEDGEABLE, AND ABLE TO INVESTIGATE, WHY DON´T YOU HELP ME WITH THIS ONE: JOANNE ROWLING MADE HER REGISTRATION AS A UNITED STATES CITIZEN, AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (TX-4-879-549) WHEN SHE WAS LIVING IN NEW YORK. WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO KNOW HER ADDRESS, AND THE COMPANY WHERE THE HUSBAND, YES, JORGE ARANTES, WORKED?}
HOPE YOU ARE LUCKIER THAN ME,
REGARDS,
ADRIANA
Adriana — I’m afraid I lack the people-finding skills (and the time) the track down any legal documents regarding Rowling.
Here is the underlying issue I have with what you say:
Presumably Warners would benefit from packaging the book as you describe, fabricating the rags-to-riches of Rowling’s success, and so on . . . but Bloomsbury and Warner Bros. have both come under incredibly sustained attention from readers, the financial markets, the news media, and even religious groups because of the popularity of the Potter franchise.
Many of these folks have no axe to grind with Warners (or Rowling), but neither do they have any reason to defend them, or to look the other way if they were involved in some sort of misconduct. Think about it: it would be the media story of the year - any year - to find out that Rowling was NOT the author of the Potter books. That would motivate plenty of investigative journalists (e.g. at The Guardian) to pursue such a story.
And yet, a dozen years later, where is the evidence of this kind of misconduct, or of a cover-up about it?
Maybe you have such evidence, e.g. re Stouffer (about whom I had never heard before this). Personally, I don’t know of any. But I would love to know what sources of evidence you’re drawing from.
OK. WHEN THE MOMENT COMES I PROMISE YOU, I´LL LET YOU KNOW EVERYTHING. I SWEAR TO GOD THAT THIS IS NOT A FABRICATION, AND IT WOULD BE WONDERFUL IF YOU LET ME KNOW WHERE TO FIND THOSE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS. LET ME TELL YOU I BEGAN TO DO THE RESEARCH BECAUSE OF THE AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE FROM MEXICO, WHERE IT HAS ITS ORIGIN. SO, HOW IN THE WORLD WILL ANY INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER FIND OUT? BESIDES NOT MANY PEOPLE WANTS TO FIGHT WITH WARNER. NO AXE TO GRIND. WARNER KNOWS IT AND HAS BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS. I HOPE THIS STORY DOES NOT GO UNPUNISHED AND MOST OF ALL, UNKNOWN. BY THE WAY, NANCY STOUFFER IS A WOMAN THAT SUED SCHOLASTIC, WARNER, JK ROWLING, MATTEL, ETC. TO NO AVAIL. SHE COULDN´T FIND HELP NOR ANYONE WAS WILLING TO GIVE IT TO HER. IF YOU LOOK FOR A PAGE CALLED MUGGLES YOU´LL FIND OUT. I THINK SHE IS PARTIALLY RIGHT, BUT DIDN´T GET ENOUGH EVIDENCE.
REGARDS,
ADRIANA
Adriana — Thanks for the follow-up. I’ll await further developments with interest.
ANOTHER QUESTION: IS THE GUARDIAN ELECTRONIC OR PAPERBOUND?
THANKS,
ADRIANA
Adriana - The Guardian has been published in paper form since 1821. It’s been online since the 1990s.