ABSTRACT
What is the secret of J. K. Rowling’s success? As I write this essay, Rowling has completed four of her projected seven-volume Harry Potter series, and all have been runaway bestsellers. All four are still on the New York Times bestseller list; in fact, their phenomenal sales prompted the newspaper to create a separate children’s bestseller list. Anticipation for the fourth volume, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was at fever-pitch, with the largest advance order and the largest first printing for any book, ever. On the morning of July 8, 2000, many bookstores opened at midnight and held Harry Potter parties. Those purchasers who had shown the foresight to place an advance order for the book with online retailer https://Amazon.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Amazon.com waited with bated breath for the Federal Express delivery truck to pull up with the volume—the result of a special arrangement between FedEx and https://Amazon.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Amazon.com. At my own household we weren’t able to hold out for the FedEx delivery; we piled into the family minivan and charged off to the local children’s bookstore for a copy. I need hardly add that having two copies did not prove to be excessive, given all the readers (adults as well as children) competing for them; indeed, at one point I wondered whether I had erred in not purchasing a third copy. Later that same day I telephoned my parents, both retired academics in their seventies. “We can’t talk to you now,” said they. “We’re reading Harry Potter.”
