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You Almost Weren't A Wizard, Harry ⚡️
The story of how the popular book series, Harry Potter, came to have a surprising start.
BookPoets
November 02, 2024
If I mention the words Harry Potter, I’m sure many of you book lovers would know exactly who I’m talking about… but do you know that the story came to J.K. Rowling one day while she was looking outside the window of a train? 🚆
Speaking to ITN herself, J.K. Rowling recalls the event as the “purest stroke of inspiration I’ve ever had in my life.” Spending the next 4 hours on the train ride back to London, J.K. Rowling created the magical word of Harry Potter in her head as she was too shy to ask anyone for a pen and paper 🪄 . Mind you, this was in 1990 and would take all the way until June of 1997 before the world first got a taste of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
To say that the journey for Rowling was anything but easy would be an extreme understatement. Facing the death of her mother in 1990 and the end of a relationship, she continued to slowly pave the way for Harry and his two friends on their journey through Hogwarts any chance she could ✍️
Fortunately, the time came when she finished the last sentence to the first novel (of many to come) but the bad luck did not stop there. 12 publishers! That’s how many publishing companies rejected her initial draft. Telling Urbanette, “The first agent I had sent my first three chapters off to had sent my manuscript back so fast that it seemed like they sent it back the same day it arrived.”
*Hence the title of this newsletter post, if she did not have the courage to keep going and continue applying, we almost would never have experienced the lives of Harry, Ron and Hermione 🧙
But bad luck has to end somewhere, right? Well, that’s exactly what happened when Barry Cunningham of Bloomsbury UK read the draft of Harry Potter in 1996 and saw potential. I’ll spare the finer details of their interaction, but I don’t think what was to follow after the release in 1997 was expected by anyone… even J.K. Rowling herself.
The success of Harry Potter:
To date, over 500 MILLION copies of the Harry Potter book series have been sold across the globe and has been translated to more than 80 languages.
According to Newsweek, it is estimated that J.K. Rowling takes home roughly $50-100 million in royalties EVERY YEAR from the Harry Potter franchise (next meal’s on her). 🤑
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the first book that J.K. Rowling published. Of course, she had written other novels beforehand, but this was the first of many novels that she was able to officially get published.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is one pretty great success story 💯
That’s all for this week, folks! Make sure to subscribe for more weekly book-related news and content. I’ll see you all next week 😄