Harry Potter's magic

Harry Potter's magic

Very few commercial successes, especially of foreign
entertainment products, are applauded as wholeheartedly as the
sales of Harry Potter have been. The fact that JK Rowling is
getting incredibly rich is lot less important than the fact she
is making children here excited about reading.

"Before Harry Potter most Indonesian children usually only
read Japanese comics, and if they did read children's novels they
were mostly short novels and never thick ones like this one,"
said Listiana Srisanti, Harry Potter translator and editorial and
production manager for fiction at Gramedia Pustaka Utama.

The impact of the Harry Potter novels is highlighted by their
incredible sales. The first printing of the first two novels grew
from 15,000 to 30,000, and then increased from 80,000 to 100,000
copies for the third and fourth novels. One hundred and forty
thousand copies of the fourth book have been printed and all four
copies have sold at least 100,000 copies.

To get an idea of the scale of this success, Gramedia Pustaka
Utama's next bestseller among children's books is the Princess
Diaries series, of which 20,000 have been printed. The average
print run for children's books is between 3,000 and 5,000.

The size of the first printing of Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix has not yet been decided by Gramedia Pustaka Utama
but based on the anticipation of its publication, Rowling and
Listiana will continue to reach and entertain record setting
numbers of readers.

-- Jock Paul