I was a huge Potterhead back in the day (well…I still am, just not as obsessed). I know the books are great and all, I know how addictive her writing style is, that she can create such vivid and engaging characters and places, and the stories keep you hungry for more…but IMO that still does not completely explain the insane hype that generated. I don’t think there has ever been this level of mania and craze for a book – a children’s/YA book for that matter. So I am wondering, what are some of the factor that led to the hype? I’ve heard things like the rise in Internet (and internet fandom), JKR’s rags-to-riches story, etc all contributed. So for those who have been there, what was the mania like at that point, and what factors (aside from the quality of the books themselves) that lead to it?
An overabundance of people aged 6-18 in the late 1990’s into the 2000’s who actually liked reading.q
I was in high school and all of my friends were telling me to read it. The books did nothing for me personally but the word-of-mouth was pretty strong.
In 3rd-ish grade one of my classmates said “My mom won’t let me read Harry Potter because it’s witchcraft!”
And my kid-self thought “…wait that’s the point though? It’s a story book. So the story is witchcraft. The book ITSSELF isn’t witchcraft and it doesn’t teach you witchcraft does it??”
So I checked it out from the library and wham-bam-thank-you-maam I loved the books.
I remember thinking this was so bizarre because I went to a Catholic elementary school and we read it in class. But that was in Alberta and catholic schools are basically the same as public schools so a lot of parents will just put their kids in them if they’re better then the public school in the area
The documentary Jesus Camp had an individual who implored her younger congregants to avoid the Harry Potter novels because of those claims of witchcraft.
I had a coworker who was complaining that his 4th grace niece had to read it for class and I said “yeah, that’s a pretty long book to assign” and his response was “Long? I’m mad because it teaches the black arts!” I learned a lot about him that day.
I had a kind of opposite experience where I was really into them around 3rd/4th grade…then my family transferred me from public school to a private religious school where the teachers were actively campaigning against the books (because GASP witchcraft), so I ended up never finishing the series past the fourth book.
I actually feel very robbed bc I was at just the right age to be growing up with them and didn’t get to have that experience due to religious bullshit :(
One factor to consider is the state of the YA genre c. 2000. Nowadays, kids ages 13-17 have TONS of books they can read that are targeted to their demographic, especially in the fantasy and paranormal category. But when Harry Potter was popular, young adult wasn’t established as it is now. In short, there were fewer options.
Presumably Scholastic publishing the books in the US also helped a lot as Scholastic basically had (and still has to an extent) a monopoly on book sales at schools.
HP single-handedly created the YA genre if I am not mistaken. Obviously there were books for teens (which is what YA is), but YA as a separate literature/marketing category did not exist. Now YA is the most lucrative genre. And pretty much all the successful YA books (Twilight, Hunger Games etc) followed the same style as HP: being a series instead of a single book, online fandom culture, big budget movies etc.
Yeah, this isn’t really accurate. There were very popular YA series around at the time - Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High strike me as two.
I loved Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High. I read all the books, watched the movies, and tv shows.
I would agree with this. Not to say that they were the first but they definitely created the demand. I used to work with children books and HP was originally categorized with children’s chapter books but eventually had to be broken out into “teen” books until bookstores started all having YA depts to fully bridge the gap.
The first Harry Potter book got a ton of media coverage. A lot of it had to do with the surprise that literature was still capable of getting young people excited about reading. The Internet was relatively new, at that point, and cable TV was still a really big deal.
This. That plus the spin that the publisher put out that “these books were getting kids who didn’t read to read for the first time”. Well, ultimately it did but it was because of the artificial hype than anything specific about the books themselves. Parent heard that these books were very popular, non bookish kids liked them - even if that wasn’t true - and bought them.
My memory may be betraying me - I was a kid when they came out - but my memory is off reading the first one shortly after it came out with no context that it was the new big thing and then a few months later it being this big sensation. My understanding is it became a big deal by word of mouth first and then the publishers caught up and magnified that
The publishers knew it was a big deal. The CEO at Scholastic had to approve the deal because the advance - which by today’s standards is modest - was considered massive at the time.
No one could have predicted what it would become though. Same with Hunger Games. Also Scholastic. She was an in house author but the building shook when that book came in.
I remember in Germany the hype really started with the first movie. We had the first book in our school library and I remember an acquaintance told me the book is great and my 18 year old self was like “but isn’t that for children…? Meh” then I watched the movie and was hooked, along with everyone else.
I worked at Barnes and Noble before the 4th book came out and it was such a fun time. We did readings and the kids were just out of their minds over Harry Potter, even correcting us when we mispronounced words or names. E.g. it’s how I learned how to say Hermione. “It’s HER-MY-OH-KNEE!” out of the mouth of babes.
yeah i think it’s also because back then, we didn’t have booktoks and bookstagrams and blogs and goodreads and amazons and all the other avenues where tons and tons of books are advertised and talked about all day every day.
back then you either heard about books from your friends or the media, or you went to the library and explored for yourself.
when a book series got attention it got a lot of it because everyone’s attention wasn’t divided in all these different places, we all watched the same channels and read the same magazines.
Yeah I think it happened at the exact magic moment where the internet had the ability to reach almost everybody, but everybody hadn’t figured out that they could use the internet to reach pretty much any crazy thing they wanted yet, so for a hot minute (or more like a decade from 1997 to about 2007) it was this very powerful engine that was able to turn everyone’s attention to the exact same things.
Yeah, the thing is, if you actually look at the Harry Potter Series, they’re actually kinda bad; at minimum, no better than any other book series of the time.
What book series from that time do you think is at HP level? Honestly, as far as children’s fantasy books go, I think the Hobbit and Narnia are the only ones from before HP that are even close.
For me it was the world building. The thought of a secret magical world that exists along side with ours in modern time sounded amazing.
The books also came out when I was around the same age as the characters, going to school, worrying about exams, holidays, crushes, etc. As the books were released it felt like I was growing up along with the characters as well. The books really helped me get through times and the releases gave me something to look forward to.
I’m very introverted and usually avoid people, but during the book and movie releases, I felt quite connected to people however brief that was. I think it’s the same for most fandoms.
For me it was the world building. The thought of a secret magical world that exists along side with ours in modern time sounded amazing.
But the World Building is no better than any books of the era. Indeed, there were plenty of other books that were far better world building around that same time. Like Wheel of Time has a far deeper, richer magic systems. His Dark Material is similar vibes and a far better magical systems. Others include The Magicians.
To each their own on what satisfies their imagination. If you happen to find another series that you like better, good on you. Doesn’t make one better than the other.
The books you are comparing it to are all written for adults or at least much older. Harry Potter was leaps and bounds better than the other children’s books at the times
Same
I think this is it. It wasn’t just a story to escape into, it was an entire world. Harry Potter fans can talk about cities and sports and schools and historical events that simply do not even exist. It’s crazy.
I also think that the three primary characters are different enough that most people can identify with at least one of them.
All I can say is I saw the author on Oprah (2010) and the book sounded interesting so I purchased it and started to read it to my sons (7 and 12). My 12 year old never really read with out being prompted until we started to read this book before bed. He became impatient and started to read the book on his own and then read every other book as soon as I could get them for him.
These are just really great books that people feel connected to, but I agree with others that having access to others online who were excited about the books probably had a major impact on the depth and longevity of the fandom. People need to feel connected to others and sharing a love for the books and movies connected people.
I think it was the idea of being a school you actually wanted to go to, rather than the boring place you were actually trapped in while reading it.
In England, the chattering classes’ obsession with the boarding schools they did not attend, runs very deep. You can see this in lots of media, arguably in Saltburn, Never Let Me Go too
Of course, many of the characters are bored at their magical school.
I can somehow understand purebloods, but I don’t understand how muggleborns are so disinterested in learning magic. You are accepted to a wizardry school just after learning there is magic, and you spend your whole time there sitting in your common room gossiping while drinking pumpkin juice, really?
The wonder probably wore off after the first year.
One can think of it by analogy to STEM subjects.
Lots of people love jet planes and robots and rockets and fancy chemical reactions.
Lots fewer people love figuring out why their computational fluid dynamics simulation doesn’t converge, how to program a visual learning system to tell a ripe apple from an unripe one, how thick the combustion chamber wall needs to be, or fucking titration.
Similarly, there’s probably lots of people who love the idea of magic and even the practical parts of it, but writing essays about the uses of dragon blood, not so much.
I’m sorry but, I have never been as excited about ML as I am at the thought of being capable of literal magic. You give me Harry Potter world magic, a wand, and a room of requirement and I’ll be damned if anyone sees me for years.
In reality we don’t really see much of what goes on outside of the trio, and we know Hermione sure as shit wasn’t just sitting around gossiping and sipping pumpkin juice.
Snape’s not a great example, but he was spending his free time (at least part of it) developing better ways to brew potions and inventing spells.
From what we know of Lily she was pretty similar to Hermione in that she was really engaged with all the magic stuff.
Maybe the good students just weren’t the interesting ones because, no matter how cool the magic, doing it in the confines of the classroom or workshopping new spells in their free time doesn’t sell the action and the drama.
This happens in real life. Not every subject is that interesting. People will break their backs to get accepted to their dream school but eventually they’ll get bored of it and slack off.
I would have absolutely been in constant trouble for not doing the homework, magic school or not.
Kind of a theory I’ve been workshopping, but in my opinion one of the reasons no subsequent YA series has managed to replicate Pottermania is that Harry Potter itself led to a fracturing of the market. That, combined with some of its most popular successors/competitors failing to have competent movie adaptations (cough Percy Jackson cough) led to it being such a singular pop culture moment.
Sorry… but I don’t think JKR’s rag to riches story made one fucking difference to kids picking up the books.
I genuinely think it was the books themselves, the topic, setting, characters, writing quality, world building, etc.
It just hit the mark.
Seriously. Everyone in this thread seems to be searching for complex explanations and conspiracies when the simple answer is right there. The HP books are fairly well written and have a broad appeal. They arrived when YA was not a saturated market and they were pretty different from most of what had come before.
Then they kept coming out at a regular schedule with growing complexity and maturity.
I glorified teachers and made the idea of going to school and learning whimsical. One of the biggest things an author can do is get their book in schools, and Harry Potter was loved by teachers and students.
I think another part of it was that the first four books were released in four years, with the movies starting to come out shortly after. In all there were seven books released in 10 years and 8 films in 10 years with a few years of overlapping new books and movies being released. It was a huge hype train that kept picking up momentum.
I think more specifically though, is that at least initially it kept pace age wise with its readers. Not everyone was maybe exactly the main characters age when they started reading it, but about the same amount of time had passed between them and the books became a bit more adult as a lot of the readers also got older, and this was also mirrored with the movies. Its like many of us actually grew up with the characters as they grew up.
Plus all the games and associated merch which came out; for the first book/movie there was a PC game (also released on PlayStation), some board games, some other toys, all of which added to the hype train because kids were surrounded by it. No other children/YA book series had that much merch for it - there are no Percy Jackson board games or 10+ video games for A Series of Unfortunate Events. Harry Potter grew up with the internet and capitalised on all the kids moving from real toys to chunky PCs to gameboys to xboxes etc
I’ve had this same question for a long time and put some thought into it.
Everything you mentioned of course, addicting writing, vivid places, good characters - but the big two for me are (imho) that it’s ‘believable fantasy’ and that she aged it up so well.
Unlike some other notable fantasy, Lord of the Rings, Redwall, Wheel of Time, etc - Harry Potter was set in our world, just hidden out of view. I think kids could much more easily believe that Hogwarts could be out there somewhere, that they could get a letter one day and go to magic school. For all the fantasy elements, it has some realism that feels truly authentic, which is why I think they pull off Harry Potter World in Universal so well too… it feels magical but also like you’re really there.
Then, where kids normally grow out of a series, or are too young for it originally, HP captured them young and the books aged up in maturity to adulthood… and many were doing at a similar age of Harry, Ron and Hermione, making them even more relatable. The grow-up aspect of them made them appealing to all age groups, which I think was the final piece needed to make it such a huge phenomenon.
Like others have said, I’ve seen better writing, better magic systems, better characters, across other books… but I can still always go back and easily drop into the world of HP and Hogwarts… it’s always been a mental break, cozy getaway. Just my humble opinion, but hope this perspective helps.
The reason it’s believable is because a lot of what Americans consider to be world building - houses, house captains, school sports, boarding schools - is just British culture stuff that you don’t recognise.
Are you seriously making the claim that adding details to your fantasy world is not world building because those details are part of IRL culture? And just to turn it into a “stupid Americans not realizing…” post?
Yes, for anyone who read all the Jennings/Chalet School/Mallory Towers books, Harry Potter was following in a very familiar tradition. Even the idea of a magical boarding school wasn’t new. Jill Murphy and Diana Wynne Jones both pre-date HP.
Don’t know if I’ll ever run across a better villain.
What, you’re assuming that to be Voldemort, or Snape? Nooooo. I mean Delores Umbrage.
I got so angry at her, I had to put the book down and take a break on multiple occasions. I haven’t had that happen for any other book.
Well said. Fully agree with these distinctions and comparisons.
Great writing. It’s as simple as that. I know the internet hates J.K. Rowling, but the world of Harry Potter is undeniable.
I was there, standing in line with my tween children at best at midnight waiting for the last few books. When we got it home grandpa read it to the kids over the course of several weeks (they could read themselves but then the fights would have been endless and spoilers, omg). And I would read it after they were in bed, usually finishing in a few days.
I agree, I’ve never seen anything like it as a kid or parent, and I don’t think we ever will again. The internet has caused our culture to fragment and just like no one at the office talks about that amazing sitcom episode the next day there won’t be such a publishing phenomenon again in my opinion.
Why? I think it was legitimately driven by the kids and the awesome story and how that story grew up with the kids. The first couple of books were popular but not that popular. It built up over the years. JKR was not only a reliable writer publishing on schedule, but her world was so intricate, it was like the most delicious candy. The midnight book sales were pure marketing and pure genius. I think the last three got that treatment? But it was authentic, it wasn’t fake or PR feelings. The kids and their parents loved the books.
I can’t think of a single parallel with any other children’s book. Maybe Roald Dahl comes closest as I think hard.
I think your comment best describes what happened. My son was 7 when the first book came out. My husband bought it to read to him but quickly read it himself first ( basically devoured it). I remember being thrilled that we had a book that especially got both boys and girls reading it. It was truly a phenomenon. Early internet for the first books. Now there is so much noise over everything that it’s hard to tell what is being pushed versus what is being driven by word of mouth.