Friday, May 11, 2007

Harry Potter "Off-Shoots," 190 and counting

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published an interesting article on Harry Potter "offshoots" or books related to Harry Potter. The article explores the phenomenon of non-fiction books that discuss HP (190 currently in print, according to R.R. Bowker) and speculates that there will continue to be a rise of such books published until the final installment of the series, and then a dip. Pretty easy to predict that, I'd say! Still, a nice article, especially since they interviewed John Granger for it and highlighted his current book and his book in progress. Way to go for John! He's quite understandably got the link to the article up on his hogwartsprofessor website.

2 comments:

Erin said...

190??????? Goodness! I thought maybe a couple dozen... You know, it's amazing to think of all the jobs Rowling has provided for people: writers, actors, set and costume designers, producers of jelly beans... :-P I bet a lot of people would be doing something vastly different right now if it weren't for Harry.

Beth said...

Ha! Good point! Right down to the producers of jelly beans! :-)

I was thinking the other day how worried Scholastic and Bloomsbury must be feeling, knowing their publishing phenomenon is about to come to an end. I don't know about Bloomsbury, but last I heard Scholastic was still struggling financially even *with* HP -- something I simply cannot figure.

I was a bit staggered by the 190 figure myself. :-)