The Guardian’s Nicholas Clee wonders about the future of the publishing industry after our friend Harry hangs up his robes for good.
Even Bloomsbury has Harry headaches. The huge profits that the novels generate lead the City – in many ways, a stupid organism – to expect the company to make high margins in the Potter-less future. But publishing is publishing: a risky, low-margin business. Harry’s wizardry can alter that law only for the books in which he stars.
However, the series is often only good for its publishers as many booksellers don’t make a dime of the sales of the books.
But booksellers have mixed feelings about Harry. He was one of the factors contributing to the demise of Ottakar’s, which incurred big marketing costs in promoting him before seeing supermarkets and Amazon cream off most of the sales. Waterstone’s, which bought Ottakar’s, has warned that it will not make any money out of The Deathly Hallows. Independent booksellers cannot compete with their loss-leading rivals; a quarter of them have said that they will not stock the book.
Even Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos indicates his company wont be making any money on the forthcoming book, and even Rowling’s publishers admit they are distracted from other parts of their businesses during Potter releases.
Even though the books generate huge sales for all concerned, when you factor in the enormous effort of promotions and marketing and deep-discounts from retailers, Potter fans seem to be the only ones coming out on top.
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