Potter is too be a Thanksgiving release, LOTR Christmas, about a month later.
The second I see a “Harry Potter Online Deathmatch” game, though, I’m officially declaring it “stupid” 
Harry Potter has 60 million sold, divided by four separate individual books. Average = 15 million sold of “Philosopher’s Stone”, and of “Prisoner of Azkaban” etc
Lord of the Rings is one book. 50 million divided by 1 = 50 million.
LotR wins.
I’m with those who have classified the Potter books as a “gateway” to the Tolkien books and those of similar ilk. I own and reread occasionally the Potter series and find it easygoing but highly imaginative writing. LOTR (which I also own) is a much more serious read, and requires a somewhat more sophisticated audience. I’m not sure why one has to be “better” than the others. Frankly, the Harry Potter series is the best bit of children’s writing I’ve seen for years and years, and anything that makes kids that keen to read is okay by me.
Incidentally, since the Harry Potter series is supposedly only seven books long (one for each year at Hogwarts), does that mean we can consider it “one long book”, as LOTR is one book in three volumes?
For Potter fans who can’t wait for the next book, apparently Rowling is soon releasing two short books (“Quidditch Through the Ages” and another “textbook” whose name I forget), profits to benefit Comic Relief.
Tzel: OOC, which books do you have to read now?
Quad: I agree with you about HP as being a gateway book of sorts, though I do have worries about the series in general. While it’s true that Rowling put years of thought into the books, the five years figure applied only to the first three books. Those three she’s been working on and refining for ages, while all the rest are being written under deadlines and that almost can’t be a good thing.
And, no, I have no cites for any of this.
Gee, looks like three books on my shelf. But if you insist on getting into per-book sales, it looks like Harry Potter has still (OP alert!) been more successful than Tolkien. My paperbacks (71st printing, 1983) each say “Over 8 Million Copies Sold” on the cover. That’s 8 million in the first eighteen years after publication. 24 million for the whole series in the first eighteen years after publication. I guarantee that the total number of copies in print has not more than doubled in the last eighteen years. Which means that 50 million figure I pointed to above is, just as it states, the total for all of Tolkien’s books, including The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. Ipso facto, Harry Potter wins the battle of sales figures.
John gets up and stands in front of his chair. He looks around the circle.
JOHN: Hi, my name is John, and love fantasy fiction.
EVERYBODY: Hi, John.
JOHN: It all started with Harry Potter. It was just so much fun. So what if that one blubbery ghost in the bathroom got really old really fast, and so what if Harry needs to get over his insecurities and tell the grownups when things start going wrong; I liked it anyway. The owls are so cool, and Snape is just such a great bad guy. You know?
EVERBODY: (murmurs in assent)
JOHN: So I finished all of them, and I found myself missing the experience. I read them again, but it just wasn’t the same. So I had to go look for another author, to try to recapture the rush.
Many in the crowd nod their heads.
JOHN: So I went down to the library and asked the nice lady there, and she recommended the Narnia books. I had already read those, so she suggested Ursula K. LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea. I liked it a lot, but what the hell was up with the ending? Anyway, after that, I read Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books, then I went through all of Piers Anthony’s Xanth stories. I tried Mercedes Lackey, but it didn’t really do it for me. Then somebody saw me on the bus, reading one of Terry Brooks’s Shannara novels, and said, “Oh, man, he’s such a ripoff artist.” I asked, what do you mean? And they said, “Go back and read the original. Go read Tolkein.” So I did.
John pauses to rub his eye. Someone hands him a Kleenex.
JOHN: So I talked to my friend who’s been giving me all these books. He gave me The Hobbit. I read it in one day, and went immediately from that to The Fellowship of the Ring. By this time, obviously, I was hooked. I couldn’t put them down. I couldn’t get enough dragons and magic and elves and talking trees. I finished The Return of the King and went straight into The Silmarillion, but that was a way heavy trip, man.
John is slowly shredding the Kleenex as he talks.
JOHN: So I went back to my supplier, and he gave me a bunch of Michael Moorcock. And you know, from there, it’s a small step to Stephen R. Donaldson, and the Thomas Covenant books. I swear, after what happened to Saltheart Foamfollower, I just… I just wanted to die. But I couldn’t stop. I had to have the next trilogy too…
John is weeping. The person next to him takes his hand.
JOHN: So I finished that, and I was desperate. I was at Costco, and I saw a big stack of books by this guy named Tim LaHaye. I picked it up, and I… I…
John dissolves into tears, and sinks into his chair, holding his face in his hands. The people on both sides of him put their arms around him.
EVERYBODY: Thank you, John.
Hmmmm, my memory tells me that somewhere in Tolkien’s voluminous writings on and about the Lord of the Rings he explicitly stated that he had written it for his children. That he had, in fact, begun it in serial form.
**
Tolkein’s greatness isn’t threatened by Rowling’s. Her books are compelling and well written. In the future, other fantasy books will be as well. Get over it. **
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Harry Potter is not a fad. The series will become and remain a staple of the fantasy diet. But no, there is no threat to Tolkien. If anything, the Potter series will provide a new perspective from which to view LOTR. They will complement each other well.
As for which is bigger; it depends on how you define bigger – if bigger means which one is more deeply buried in the collective psyche, it’s definitely, for now (and probably forever, precisely because of the intensive and wondrous detail) Tolkien. How many people do you know who don’t know that Frodo is a hobbit, that Gandalf is a wizard, or that Sauron is another word for evil? How many could hear, “One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them…” and not know that it is a LOTR reference? I don’t think Harry Potter has been around long enough to command the same degree of familiarity. Yet.
I just wanted to say HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! <wipes eyes>. Highly amusing, C.