I could have and now wish more than anything that I had paid off my student loans. I could have put myself on a strict budget — one that assumed I was never going to get big payouts as a writer again. I could have saved a down payment for a house.
And I could have put money aside each year for retirement. As the royalty statements came in, and a foreign book contract was dropped due to low sales, my worry began to grow. One sent me on tour, which is about as luxe as it can get for an author, but very few people showed up at the events, and that was that.
Fast-forward to my third book deal, for a contemporary novel. Bloom Discovery Award , garnered several starred reviews, had multiple books on important lists, and worked hard on author-branding and social media.
What other job would lower your salary after getting such great performance reviews? But no one tells you your numbers, so I really had no idea where I stood. Never mind that the book was critically praised and had made some of those nice lists. It is a business, after all. Which is fair… to a point. In reality, they were paying me less than half the salary of a local public-school teacher. I do more marketing than most marketing professionals, including loads of promotional work such as interviews, guest posts, and podcast appearances.
My publishers have never made so much as a bookmark for me though twice they agreed to design them if I paid for the printing. If I wanted to go to a book festival or important industry conference out of town, I had to pay, unless the festival organizer covered the costs, which they rarely do.
I have a book coming out next year that is getting more marketing attention already, but I know better than to get my hopes up. None of the people in the room so to speak warned that the next time around the advance might be lower. At the end of the day, I decided that this book deal was better than no book deal. We signed the papers, and made a wish. In retrospect, I should have taken that two-book deal. The smaller the advances got, the more strain I began to experience.
While no amount of mentorship could have determined the outcome of my book sales, it would have helped me make more informed decisions about the books I did sell, and how I spent the money I earned. Added to the financial despair was shame, depression, and fear.
All I could think was that I had wasted the one opportunity the universe had given me to write my way out. This, as an author published by Big Five publishers, with multiple books out, still more under contract, a PEN award, and critical acclaim. I pivoted, creating new projects that challenged me to no end and were way outside my comfort zone. While I was genuinely excited by them, I was also fighting with everything in me to stay in the game, to not let my dream of being a lifelong professional writer slip through my grasp after a brief flirtation with the big time.
Of course, I also needed to keep money coming in while trying very hard to write things I cared about, and improve my craft with each project. Perhaps I put on too good a face. So prolific! So productive! The level of work was the same regardless of the advance, maybe even higher. With dazzling illustrations from Jim Kay, this new fully illustrated edition of the complete and unabridged text of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is sure to delight fans and first-time readers alike.
Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin! Harry Potter: Exploring Hogwarts pairs striking full-color illustrations of Hogwarts with interactive elements that reveal key movie scenes, concept art, and behind-the-scenes info on the most memorable locations within Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The first in a series of large-scale interactive books that explore the iconic locations from the films of the Wizarding World, Harry Potter: Exploring Hogwarts is the perfect book for readers of all ages to connect with and rediscover the magic of Hogwarts. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go.
Sirius Black, escaped mass-murderer and follower of Lord Voldemort, is on the run - and they say he is coming after Harry. In his first ever Divination class, Professor Trelawney sees an omen of death in Harry's tea leaves It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted.
As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places. Rowling has expanded the Harry Potter universe with several short books produced for various charities.
Proceeds from the sale of these two books benefited the charity Comic Relief. The book was published internationally on 4 December In , Rowling launched a new website announcing an upcoming project called Pottermore. The main purpose of the website was to allow the user to journey though the story with access to content not revealed by JK Rowling previously, with over 18, words of additional content.
In September , the website was completely overhauled and most of the features were removed. The site has been redesigned and it mainly focuses on the information already available, rather than exploration. The Harry Potter novels are mainly directed at a young adult audience as opposed to an audience of middle grade readers, children, or adults.
The novels fall within the genre of fantasy literature, and qualify as a type of fantasy called 'urban fantasy', 'contemporary fantasy', or 'low fantasy'. They are mainly dramas, and maintain a fairly serious and dark tone throughout, though they do contain some notable instances of tragicomedy and black humour. In many respects, they are also examples of the bildungsroman , or coming of age novel, [37] and contain elements of mystery, adventure, horror, thriller, and romance.
The books are also, in the words of Stephen King, 'shrewd mystery tales', [38] and each book is constructed in the manner of a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery adventure. The stories are told from a third person limited point of view with very few exceptions such as the opening chapters of Philosopher's Stone , Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows and the first two chapters of Half-Blood Prince.
Clare's and the Naughtiest Girl series, and Frank Richards's Billy Bunter novels: the Harry Potter books are predominantly set in Hogwarts, a fictional British boarding school for wizards, where the curriculum includes the use of magic. The Harry Potter stories feature much medieval imagery and motifs drawn from the King Arthur stories. Hogwarts resembles a medieval university-cum-castle with several professors who belonging to an Order of Merlin; Old Professor Binns still lectures about the International Warlock Convention of ; and a real historical person, a 14th century scribe Sir Nicolas Flamel, is described as a holder of the Philosopher's Stone.
Many of the motifs of the Potter stories such as the hero's quest invoking objects that confer invisibility, magical animals and trees, a forest full of danger and the recognition of a character based upon scars are drawn from medieval French Arthurian romances. Arnden and Lorenz wrote about the similarity between the Arthurian romances, where Camelot is a place of wonder and safety, and from the heroic knights must venture forth facing various perils, usually in an enchanted forest; and Hogwarts, likewise a wondrous safe place, where Harry Potter and friends must periodically venture forth from to the magical forest that surrounds Hogwarts.
Like an Arthurian knight, Harry receives advice and encouragement from his mentor, Albus Dumbldore, who resembles both Merlin and King Arthur, but must vanquish his foes alone. Both Percival and Potter are however outsiders in the places that they belong, unfamiliar with the rules of knighthood and magic, but both show extraordinary natural abilities with Percival proving himself an exceptional fighter while Potter is an excellent player of Quidditch. Each of the seven books is set over the course of one school year.
Harry struggles with the problems he encounters, and dealing with them often involves the need to violate some school rules. If students are caught breaking rules, they are often disciplined by Hogwarts professors. The stories reach their climax in the summer term, near or just after final exams, when events escalate far beyond in-school squabbles and struggles, and Harry must confront either Voldemort or one of his followers, the Death Eaters, with the stakes a matter of life and death — a point underlined, as the series progresses, by characters being killed in each of the final four books.
According to Rowling, a major theme in the series is death: 'My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it. Rowling stated that ' Harry Potter books have always, in fact, dealt explicitly with religious themes and questions' and that she did not reveal its Christian parallels in the beginning because doing so would have 'give[n] too much away to fans who might then see the parallels.
Hermione Granger teaches Harry Potter that the meaning of these verses from the Christian Bible are 'living beyond death. Living after death', which Rowling states is 'one of the central foundations of resurrection theology' and that these bible verses 'epitomize the whole series'. In the seventh novel, Harry speaks with and questions the deceased Dumbledore much like a person of faith would talk to and question God.
Academics and journalists have developed many other interpretations of themes in the books, some more complex than others, and some including political subtexts. Themes such as normality, oppression, survival, and overcoming imposing odds have all been considered as prevalent throughout the series. Rowling has also been praised for her nuanced depiction of the ways in which death and violence affects youth, and humanity as a whole.
Rowling said that, to her, the moral significance of the tales seems 'blindingly obvious'. The key for her was the choice between what is right and what is easy, 'because that In , Rowling was on a crowded train from Manchester to London when the idea for Harry suddenly 'fell into her head'.
Rowling gives an account of the experience on her website saying: [55]. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. I simply sat and thought, for four delayed train hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who did not know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Rowling completed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in and the manuscript was sent off to several prospective agents.
She elected to use J. Rowling Joanne Kathleen Rowling , using her grandmother's name as her second name because she has no middle name. The series has been translated into 80 languages, [3] placing Rowling among the most translated authors in history. The first volume has been translated into Latin and even Ancient Greek, [74] making it the longest published work in Ancient Greek since the novels of Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD. Some of the translators hired to work on the books were well-known authors before their work on Harry Potter , such as Viktor Golyshev, who oversaw the Russian translation of the series' fifth book.
The Turkish translation of books two to seven was undertaken by Sevin Okyay, a popular literary critic and cultural commentator. This led to more and more copies of the English editions being sold to impatient fans in non-English speaking countries; for example, such was the clamour to read the fifth book that its English language edition became the first English-language book ever to top the best-seller list in France. The United States editions were adapted into American English to make them more understandable to a young American audience.
In December , Rowling stated on her web site, ' will be the year when I write the final book in the Harry Potter series. The book itself was finished on 11 January in the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh, where she scrawled a message on the back of a bust of Hermes. It read: 'J. Rowling herself has stated that the last chapter of the final book in fact, the epilogue was completed 'in something like '. On 28 March , the cover art for the Bloomsbury Adult and Child versions and the Scholastic version were released.
In September , Rowling mentioned in an interview that she might go back to make a 'director's cut' of two of the existing Harry Potter books. For cover art, Bloomsbury chose painted art in a classic style of design, with the first cover a watercolour and pencil drawing by illustrator Thomas Taylor showing Harry boarding the Hogwarts Express, and a title in the font Cochin Bold.
These covers were created by first Cliff Wright and then Jason Cockroft. Due to the appeal of the books among an adult audience, Bloomsbury commissioned a second line of editions in an 'adult' style. These initially used black-and-white photographic art for the covers showing objects from the books including a very American Hogwarts Express without depicting people, but later shifted to partial colourisation with a picture of Slytherin's locket on the cover of the final book.
Fans of the series were so eager for the latest instalment that bookstores around the world began holding events to coincide with the midnight release of the books, beginning with the publication of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The events, commonly featuring mock sorting, games, face painting, and other live entertainment have achieved popularity with Potter fans and have been highly successful in attracting fans and selling books with nearly nine million of the The final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows became the fastest selling book in history, moving 11 million units in the first twenty-four hours of release.
The word Muggle has spread beyond its Harry Potter origins, becoming one of few pop culture words to land in the Oxford English Dictionary. Both MuggleCast and PotterCast [98] have reached the top spot of iTunes podcast rankings and have been polled one of the top 50 favourite podcasts. Some lessons identified in the series include diversity, acceptance, political tolerance, and equality. Surveys of over 1, college students in the United States show that those who read the books were significantly different from those who had not.
Readers of the series were found to be more tolerant, more opposed to violence and torture, less authoritarian, and less cynical.
Although it is not known if this is a cause-and-effect relationship, there is a clear correlation, and it seems that Harry Potter's cultural impact may be stronger than just a fandom bond. Many fan fiction and fan art works about Harry Potter have been made. In March , 'Harry Potter' was the most commonly searched fan fiction subject on the internet. The sport Quidditch, played by characters in the Harry Potter series, was created in and is played worldwide.
The popularity of the Harry Potter series has translated into substantial financial success for Rowling, her publishers, and other Harry Potter related license holders. This success has made Rowling the first and thus far only billionaire author. The great demand for Harry Potter books motivated The New York Times to create a separate best-seller list for children's literature in , just before the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
By 24 June , Rowling's novels had been on the list for 79 straight weeks; the first three novels were each on the hardcover best-seller list. Together, Amazon. Early in its history, Harry Potter received positive reviews. On publication, the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , attracted attention from the Scottish newspapers, such as The Scotsman , which said it had 'all the makings of a classic,' [] and The Glasgow Herald , which called it 'Magic stuff.
By the time of the release of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the books began to receive strong criticism from a number of literary scholars. Byatt authored an op-ed article in The New York Times calling Rowling's universe a 'secondary secondary world, made up of intelligently patchworked derivative motifs from all sorts of children's literature Michael Rosen, a novelist and poet, advocated the books were not suited for children, as they would be unable to grasp the complex themes.
Rosen also stated that 'J. Rowling is more of an adult writer. His overall view of the series was negative — 'the Potter saga was essentially patronising, conservative, highly derivative, dispiritingly nostalgic for a bygone Britain,' and he speaks of 'a pedestrian, ungrammatical prose style. Le Guin said, 'I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the 'incredible originality' of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid's fantasy crossed with a 'school novel,' good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.
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