I’ve read an interview in which she told the interviewer that if the HP action figures were not good, the interviewer should tell kids that she said not to buy them.
I think it’s good she has all that money. She struggled as a single mother and now she doesn’t have to struggle anymore, except in doing what she does best–write. 
I bet most writers on this board would like to be able to do that too! YMMV, of course.
I really should get started on reading the books. EHhehehe…
I’ve wondered before if Rowling is familiar with the not terribly well thought out ad for theNimbus 2000 toy; it looks more like the Nambla 2000.
Nice call, Sampiro. I especially like that kick with the right foot. Very je ne sais quoi.
Two things here… First, I don’t think that Rowling’s writing teaches children not to think critically. I think it encourages them to read. I think it encourages them to embrace a world and characters they enjoy, and to expand their horizons a bit. Lissa’s earlier post about Harry Potter as an excellent starting point is spot-on. My 7-year-old daughter wasn’t all that interested in reading for a while, but she was inspired to start reading for herself by Harry Potter, and she’s read the first 3 books of the series on her own. That was last year. Now, she’s also read most of the “Unfortunate Events” series and she’s slowly working her way through “The Lord of the Rings.” She’s a smart girl, no question, and her reading ability is particuarly strong. My wife and I both believe that we have Harry Potter to thank, though, for helpinh her see that reding could be fun. My wife is a teacher, and she knows of many such children… of many different ages and abilities.
Second, and more importantly, your comments here are pretty typical of elitist literary thinking – that which suggests all children should read grammatically and editorially perfect work, all the time. I disagree strongly with this. While I don’t think that the Harry Potter books are the pinnacle of kids’ literature, they are worthy books, and far superior to much of the most popular books out there. I can’t tell from your post whether you’ve read other modern childrens’ books, but I have, because I like to know what my kids are reading. Compared to Christopher Pike, or R.L. Stine, or the “Sweet Valley High” books, or “Magic Tree House,” Rowling’s work is genius. There are more literary childrens’ books out there, to be sure, but I would rather encourage my kids to read something at least somewhat well-written than the grist that’s cramming the shelves at our local Barnes & Noble. You want to talk about “sub-par” and “unpublishable?” Try some of the other crap being pushed on kids these days… Rowling’s work is gold in comparison.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that editorial worth and grammatical skill is not all that makes a good book… but even if it were, the Harry Potter books are far from the worst of what’s out there. I realize that Rowling’s a nice big target these days, but remember that she’s also a relatively new writer… she’ll get better with time, like any writer. Also remember that her books are meant to be read for pleasure… which is exactly what they’ve done for an awful lot of kids.
I think it would be great if all kids read Susan Cooper’s “Dark is Rising” series, or Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline” (which both of my daughters love)… however, I hardly look down my nose at kids reading Harry Potter. When I consider that many of those kids wouldn’t be reading anything they weren’t forced to read, and quite a few of them will go on to read other books, I can’t help but think that Rowling is doing something very right with her books, and that it is something quite substantial.
My nephew is a high school graduate with a learning disability that makes reading a loathesome activity to me. He and his friends are big movie-goers, though, and he wants more Harry Potter than the cinema can provide. When he asked for the HP books for Christmas, I literally leapt out of my chair to order them for him. If he likes them, I’m definitely giving him A Wizard of Earthsea next year.
a loathesome activity to me
…to him (speaking of poor editing).
Thanks for your well-considered response.
Producing art is an inherently elitist pursuit. One picks a few individuals out of millions to amplify the experiences of a whole group or society. That’s not to say that an artist’s audience needs be elitist – quite the contrary.
It’s not that the overall style/plot/popular faddishness of Harry Potter that leads children to read is a bad thing: it’s that, for example, with little effort (I mentioned 90 days worth of an editor’s time, at considerably less than $77 million a year) the books could be made better. Either ego, ignorance, or cost has led to publishing inferior books.
The “be thankful for what you’ve got” argument is exactly backwards. I’m not thankful that Harry Potter has shoved dozens of more deserving authors off the shelves. I’m perturbed that anything more intellectual than The Goosebumps and The Animorphs (let alone various superheroes) is seen as being an artistic breakthrough.
There are dozens of children’s authors producing better stuff than Rowling. Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” series was a good example. Or you could take “Wizard Hall”, an earlier book with a plot perhaps suspiciously close to Harry Potter. Our local children’s bookstore recommended “Lizard Music”, “speak”, “The Giver”, and “Holes” – all of which are recent, well-written, and thought-provoking. Even series such as Artemis Fowl, and Pullman’s Golden compass stuff – which I’m not particularly excited about, myself – at least are competently written.
Rowlings is not becoming a better writer, and that’s part of what’s frightening. She’s using the same weak, inaccurate vocabulary as in the beginning. Her plots are a muddle of contradictions. (Let’s leave out of this discussion that the morals displayed by her characters are reprehensible.) In her last book she made the classic amateurish mistake of assuming that if she wrote at greater length, it would somehow make the characters more real, the plot less addled, the details more convincing – who knows which? In fact the characters became blurred, the plot the worst mess of all the books, and the details ever more obviously casually thrown in at whim.
By the way, both my father and step-mother were children’s librarians – neither is particularly fond of Harry Potter, and neither thinks the “at least it gets them to read” argument is valid. Although they wouldn’t agree with this either, I feel that today sensationalism, mass media appeal, and following fads are most likely to get children to read. It doesn’t have to be Rowling. Pick at random from Susan Cooper, Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis, Lois Lowry, Laurie Halse Anderson, Walter R. Brooks, etc. . . . . Not to mention a couple of my favorites from the 1960s whose (award winning) work has gone the way of all flesh because they aren’t writing any more . . . and therefore aren’t some publisher’s meal ticket. We’re being had, and Rowling is having us. To the tune of $77 million.
If J.K. Rowling earned that much in a year, more power to her. She raised herself up from poverty and became rich. Nobody handed money to her on a silver platter.
Wish I could get published.
Good grief, I’d forgotten reading those … excellent books!
From the link by Avalonian:
-David
But, but, but. Is the $77 million necessary? Does she work any harder because of 77, instead of 1? Does 77 encourage other writers more than 1? Does it encourage publishers more than 1?
Funny you should mention the silver platter, because that’s exactly what did happen to her. There’s a difference between taking a risk writing a novel, and getting a reward commensurate with the risk (knowing that one has a 1-in-1000 chance of getting published) and a reward out of all proportion to the risk. Also out of proportion, arguably, to the skill, or the uniqueness of her contribution. Pay the Beatles $77 million for a new album? Yes. Pay Rowling $77 million for one new book? When there are better books one could have for $50,000?
I’d like to be published, too. (Something besides non-fiction.) I’m going to try to sell my second novel. As far as I can tell, I write better than Rowling, and illustrate at least as well as the illustrator they chose for her. However, having Rowling flood bookstore displays for years running, having Rowling in every library in every English speaking country clearly cuts down on my chances of being on display or in a library. I don’t just object to Rowling, in this respect I’d say more power to her as well. The objection is toward the publishing industry which in the last years is more interested than ever in producing cash cows, and less interested than ever in publishing something simply due to artistic worth. (If the “How to Get Published” books are correct.) A publisher who I happened to talk with years ago about the first novel, and who wanted me to send it in, now has a blurb in “Writer’s Market” to the effect they are still interested in my genre, but mostly in authors who want to write a series of chapter books.
Allowing fair-to-good authors to be published and make a fortune means really first class authors (Not saying I’m one!) aren’t given as much of a chance as they should. I’m reminded of an acquaintance in the 1960s who wrote and illustrated young adult books. The writing was first class. The drawings were just fair. His books, while winning an award, finally weren’t selling. The publisher asked if he would stop writing, and illustrate other people’s books. Good grief!
She raised herself up from poverty
Although the exact degree of poverty may well have been exaggerated by marketing. For instance, there’s the well-known story of how she had to write in a cafe, making a coffee last two hours, because she couldn’t afford to heat her apartment - but it’s less known that the cafe belonged to her brother-in-law. With her sister nearby, and (in her own words) “a degree, a profession and friends who were willing to lend me money when I badly needed it”, she was hardly going to end up scavenging for food in dumpsters.
partly_warmer
The $77 million isn’t a payment for one upcoming book, it’s because she is (unwittingly) the originator of a huge franchise, and one of the most popular books of the decade. She didn’t ask for this attention, this amount of remuneration, and would no doubt be much happier without it, and just be earning $50k a year - which I would think is quite respectable for an author.
But she isn’t, she’s the phenomenon of the hour, and that’s the way it is.
As for you attempts at being published, read the article that SoulFrost links to - if anything, it seems to me that ‘chapter books’ based on fantasy aimed at children is doing very very well out of just being on the same shelf, so I say go for it. Now may be the best time to get noticed - because if you write something in that vein after the Potter frenzy has died at last, then you may get utterly ignored.
I have a friend who has recently published her first fantasy trilogy (I wish it wasn’t a trilogy, but oh well) and it’s doing extremely well! Probably because the renewed interest in Fantasy as a popular form of entertainment (from LOTR and Harry Potter) has meant readers are eager to inhale as much as they can.
That’s how it works, that’s how it has always worked, trneds come and go, superstars emerge - however you may feel about their literary worth - and the industry (which is a business, and has to work like one) moves desperately to keep up.
GuanoLad I quite take your points.
And we won’t know how much she was actually payed for books and other services rendered until the end of her lifetime. It’s probably something more like $100 million per book, now. Eventually, it might be $300 million?
I agree with your perceptions of the effect of trends – it’s just that if the public were more demanding we’d have fewer Bee Gees, and more Beatles, if you catch that general drift. More Beethovens.
How did your friend break into publishing? Short stories, first? Did she write the whole trilogy, then sell it?
She didn’t have a book released in 2001, other than those two smaller books. So you’d think maybe this fifth one would be out in 2002. But nope. When is it going to come out, I must know.
But there’s nothing wrong with the Bee Gees, you see? And Beethoven is not infallible. Just because you think particular artists are more superior to others, doesn’t mean your preferences should be the guide to what should be made available.
You may think there are more deserving writers out there, but the facts are they just didn’t set the world alight like Rowling has - she came along at teh right time, with the right story, that has the perfect blend of character and humour, classic and modern, adventure and danger, that just hit everyone between the eyes. Yeah, they could be better, but they could also be soooo much worse. And if they had been worse, they would not be the phenomenon that they have become.
She wrote and rewrote the trilogy several times before she finally got it noticed by a publisher, and then she had to write each book several times over again and again before each was ready to be printed.
She got noticed just on the merits of this story, I think, though she had won an award for a short story (her first published work) in 1999.
Personally, I don’t like the story very much. It’s a bit slow and I don’t like many of the characters, but all power to her - I know that once she gets into her stride she’ll write something really impressively cool, and I look forward to it.
Sorry, I accidentally stuck my name in there a few times. Bad cut and paste.
I’m a :wally
Well, maybe this is just the upbringing of someone with a father who was a teacher, and a grandfather who was a professor, but I was taught: Be critical about art, and don’t try and fool yourself that what you’ve got is good enough.
Some days I look at something of Shakespeare’s, and think: “That guy must be three sheets to the wind to write all that floral rhyming crap into his conversations.” But most days I’ll read even the most flowery vocabulary and think “This guy’s a genius”.
But I’d be artistically dishonest if I pretended that sometimes – some places – Shakespeare’s ornate vocabulary really gets to me. Lying to yourself about your reactions to art is the absolute worst thing to do. It has effects like making everything appear equally good – and bad. But then one consumes lots of dreck – dreck that really doesn’t provide the emotional release your sensitivities crave.
It’s worth remembering too that HP the first book was just a small book which kids found and loved. It became a marketing extravaganza after the marketplace had said they loved it.
partly-warmer, publishers love series and trilogies esp in children’s fantasy. You don’t need to have written the whole series but having a synopsis when you start shopping the book around is a Good Thing.
Guanolad, I’m feeling nosy, who’s your friend? I’m thinking of a couple of writers it could be. Is your friend’s book out yet? If it isn’t then I don’t know him/her.