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Let me just crunch some numbers to illustrate why. J.K. Rowling’s latest offering spelt magical sales for bookstores across the world when it finally hit at the magical time. It’s charming readers in 200 territories, and in 62 languages. Even more fascinating were the opening numbers. In the US, The Half Blood Prince sold 6.9 million copies on the first day itself, averaging better than 250,000 copies sold per hour. Close to three million people bought copies of the book in Britain on day one. It was a similar story across Asia—from Singapore to New Delhi, fans queued up, the parties went on (I attended some of them) and the book flew off the shelves, almost all 10 million of them that publisher Scholastic printed in the first run. That’s not all, The Half Blood Prince also became the latest victim of the piracy game, so we’ll never really now how many of the books are really selling. One of the pirated Harry Potter stories came from Dhaka. Television footage showed vendors hawking Potter ware just the way they would those dusters to wipe your car or the daily newspaper. With the book selling for a mere $6, compared to the original price of $35, there was no dearth of buyers. Those who bought some of the pirated books felt it was worth the price. One of them even argued that unlike a VCD or DVD, he didn’t have to worry about the picture quality. Who is the serious reader lurking behind every Potter book? This may read like fiction, but it’s a fact. A recent survey in Britain of educators and students showed that 84 per cent of the teachers felt the Potter books actually helped improve children’s reading skills. And if you’ve had a tough time pulling your child away from his or her favourite idiot box show, read this very, very carefully: The almost 41 per cent of the children were willing to give their favourite television show a miss to cuddle up to the Harry tales, unravelled in the latest book. Together with that is the constant battle between good and evil, with the good always winning. Given our troubled times, the climate of terror, the blasts happening at regular frequency in the world around us, these are themes that are appealing to more than its fair share of readers around the world. We all want the evil to be defeated, the good to reign, the sacrifices to prevail. In some small way that may explain the universal appeal of the entire Potter series to readers both young and old. Beyond all of that, is the very simple message that comes couched in no numbers, no lessons, no myths: Harry’s got the whole world interested in the written word and reading all over again. In an age when we are constantly on the run, spoilt for choices, courtesy the Internet, television et al, that in itself is a rare feat. And just about enough to hail out those three loud cheers for Harry, Hogwarts, wizards and wizardry — not necessarily in that order. |
IT is the biggest story of our time, one that promises
to stay on the publishing scene for a long time to come. You guessed it,
I’m talking about Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Now,
it is possible that you might not believe in wizards, witches, wizardry
and Hogwarts, but there is absolutely no way of getting away from this
story.
