(From left) Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter and Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley appeared in the first three Harry Potter series. - CONTRIBUTED
WHEN THE first two Harry Potter novels came out in the late 1990s, Cinda Webb would sit in the upstairs hallway of her Irvine, California home and read aloud as her two sons drifted off to sleep, visions of wizards dancing in their heads.
Her younger son, Jon, now 14, quickly became entranced and devoured all five books, but her older son, James, now 17, lost interest around the third volume. So Webb and Jon will join 200 other bleary-eyed Harry fans at Irvine's Whale of a Tale Children's Bookshoppe for the midnight July 16 release of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
If the publishers of author J.K. Rowling's books have a challenge beyond how to spend the Harry Potter windfall, it is in trying to keep the series compelling for original readers who were 10 to 12 years old when Harry was introduced in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone', but who are now heading off to college, jobs or even the war in Iraq.
And while Rowling has hit upon a unique formula of ageing Harry as the series progresses - he was 11 in the first and is 16 in the new one - it's unclear how interesting he will be to older teens on the verge of adulthood. With a planned initial printing of 10.8 million copies - up from 8.5 million for the fifth book - Harry's American publisher, Scholastic Books, is investing in its optimism that people like James Webb are rare.
LOST READERS
"Of course, we've lost some, but I don't believe we've lost (a lot of) readers," says Barbara Marcus, executive vice-president of Scholastic in charge of children's book publishing.
"I believe we have expanded to parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents. And then we have the new readers. The beauty of the children's market is that our readers come into the market and they grow with us. There are new children every year who are ready for Harry Potter.''
The series has done well for Scholastic, which bought the American rights for US$105,000 before the first book was published in England. There are more than 103 million books now in print in the United States and when a new Harry book comes out, it accounts for about 10 per cent of Scholastic's annual $2.2 billion in revenues.
TOP SELLER
The first book is the series' top seller, and the number in print decreases for each succeeding title even as the initial print runs have increased. Rather than signalling a tail-off in interest, Scholastic says the numbers reflect the amount of time each book has been available and the high number of young readers growing into the series.
Pre-orders for The Half-Blood Prince were at a record pace at Barnes & Noble stores and its website, with more than 750,000 books sold as of last week, which the retailer said was far ahead of the pace for the last book. As of last Friday there were 634,000 books pre-ordered through Amazon.com, but the online bookseller said it did not have comparable data for the last book.
Both retailers were likely aided by the deeply discounted $17.99 sale price against a list price of $29.99, helping to make The Half-Blood Prince their top seller almost continuously since pre-orders were accepted in December.
"We're just starting to see things take off from a customer-anticipation standpoint,'' said Amazon.com spokeswoman Kristin Mariani. "If you're a fan of the series and you've read all five books, you have to see what happens next.''
To help build anticipation and boost marketing - stores are banned from selling the books before midnight July 16 and won't receive the books until a day or two before. Most orders through Amazon.com will be delivered on July 16, Mariani said.
