Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

There’s an interesting article in the LA Times, asking whether its possible for the next Harry Potter book to hold on to all the fans that have bought and read the previous books. The problem as presented in the article is that children who were pre-teen when the first couple of books came out are now are now entering their late teens and may no longer be interested in the trials and tribulations of Harry Potter.

On the surface this seems to be a reasonable enough argument as far as it goes, but it does have some problems. For a start J K Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books has actually addressed the issue directly to some extent by aging Harry by one year in each book and modifying her writing and the tone of her story to match. Read the first Harry Potter book and then the fifth, try to tell me these are aimed at children of the same age.

Here’s another big flaw in the argument. It assumes that the audience is non-replenishing. Last I checked there were new children picking up these books every year. So you lose some of the older ones, no big deal there are always younger children who will be interested.

What about this? The initial print runs for each book in the Harry Potter series have increased. Half-blood Prince will have a print run of almost 11 million copies which shows the publisher is confident if nothing else.

Here’s another problem. The fans of Harry Potter have never been exclusively kids. Many adults, including myself are fans of the series. So simply getting older won’t immediately discourage people from reading the next book.

In the article, the LA Times does point to the fact that the first book is the series top seller and that each successive book has a lower print number. But then the article even points out the obvious flaw in that argument which is thats total print over the entire life of the book and the first book has been out longer than any of the others.

Now all of the counter arguments I just gave were available in the LA Times article itself, so what exactly are they hanging the initial question on? Well it turns out the do have some evidence. Apparently there’s a 17 year old boy who used to like Harry Potter and doesn’t any more.

If I was a more cynical person I might suggest that the paper just wanted to run an article mentioning Harry Potter and this was what they came up with.

To answer the question posed by my own headline? Harry Potter has demonstrably already held on to the bulk of his readers. Not only that he’s expanded that readership beyond children and has showed the ability to attract new readers as children reach a suitable age to try the books.

Link: LA Times: Still Wild About Harry

Eoghann Irving is amongst other things the creator and Editor of Solar Flare. He has a life long interest in all forms of science fiction and fantasy and a pressing need to share this interest with anyone who will listen. Find out more at his personal website eoghann.com..

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