Boy wizard is back

The clamorous countdown begins. Potter magic will strike again after seven days as the mania for the soon-to-be-released sixth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, sweeps bookstores.

THE new Harry Potter adventure by J. K. Rowling is sure to be another mammoth bestseller. But the first Potter manuscript was destined for oblivion - until the publisher’s young daughter read it. It was an eight-year-old girl, not an 11-year-old boy wizard, who rescued Rowling from life on £370-a-week benefits as a divorced single mother, The Independent has revealed.

The eagerly anticipated launch next week of her latest book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will propel Rowling’s wealth further beyond the £ 3562 million she has already amassed from the record-breaking series. Yet, as Nigel Newton, chairman of Bloomsbury Publishing reveals today, the first Harry Potter manuscript was rejected by all of his major rivals.

And it was only the pester-power of his daughter, Alice, who read a chapter and demanded more, that finally convinced the publisher he had a winner on his hands.

The story he tells in a rare personal interview is almost as unlikely as one of Rowling’s muggles-and-magic plots. Bloomsbury, the offbeat company named after the 1920s London literary set, was just about the last chance for Rowling to get the original Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone into print.

Her agent, Christopher Little, called at Bloomsbury Publishing’s cramped offices in Soho Square and gave Newton a sample to read. He took it home but, instead of settling down with it himself, handed it to Alice, then eight years’ old.

"She came down from her room an hour later glowing," Newton recalls, saying, ‘Dad, this is so much better than anything else.’ She nagged and nagged me in the following months, wanting to see what came next." Newton made out a cheque to Joanne Kathleen Rowling for just £32,500, which has since proved one of the wisest investments in publishing history.

He had signed up a writer who was to go on to outsell Jackie Collins’ steamy blockbusters 10 times in a year. The first Potter book is also on its way to becoming the world’s best-selling novel of all time. "It was very fortunate for us," said Newton. "We’d only just started to publish children’s books in June 1994. And we hit it lucky." He told The Independent that "eight others turned J. K. Rowling down; ie, the whole lot".

The not-knowing-what-comes-next factor has created 260 million sales for successive books. Christopher Little is reported to have earned almost £ 319 million in 2002. Daniel Radcliffe, who stars as Harry Potter in the films, became, at 14, the world’s youngest millionaire. But Rowling became a dollar billionaire. Forbes magazine estimated her wealth last year at £ 3562 million , reporting that she is "one of only five self-made female billionaires and the first billion-dollar author".

Bloomsbury has since invested in other children’s books, including a new release of The Popcorn Pirates from Alexander McCall Smith. He admits, though, that the Potter phenomenon is likely to be "a total one-off. There has never been anything like it." It is appropriate that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is to be launched at a glittering ceremony at midnight on July 16 in Edinburgh where Rowling wrote the original.

She completed her first book, Rabbit, at the age of six, and had discarded two adult fiction novels before Harry Potter "simply fell into my head" during a tedious train journey from Manchester in 1990. She had returned to the Scottish capital after living in Portugal, where she had her first child. Harry Potter was penned in a nearby cafe as her daughter, Jessica, slept.

Now aged 40 and remarried, she remains resolutely unfazed by her own amazing story, admitting: "The rewards were disproportionate, but I could see how I got there, so that made it easier to rationalise."

Just over a year after its predecessor, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was released, J. K. Rowling had announced that the title of the sixth Harry Potter book would be Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Rumoured titles had hit the Internet many months prior to June 2004.

The cover of the Half-Blood Prince de luxe edition was released on May 11 this year. For the first time, the de luxe edition has its own unique cover, which also was drawn by Mary GrandPre. The de luxe edition does not contain any additional or deleted portions of the book. Instead, it includes a 32-page insert featuring near scale reproductions of Mary GrandPre’s interior art, as well as never-before-seen full-colour frontispiece art on special paper.

Like the regular edition, the deluxe edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be released on July 16. The de luxe edition will have 704 pages and the print run will be 100,000 copies. Just a week to go before the rush to bookshops to find out if Harry’s got a new badge for his blazer or something.

Harry Potter’s exploits have sold more copies than any other book, after the Bible and the thoughts of Chairman Mao. Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix made J.K Rowling an estimated £ 330 million.

— Compiled by KVS