Bloomsbury and Harry

The publishing house might well raise a goblet of fire to Harry Potter, who has altered the fortunes of the company, writes MUKUND PADMANABHAN.

BLOOMSBURY had a winner last year with Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin but its real triumph was - and will continue to be - the Harry Potter series. From all accounts, J. K. Rowling has altered the fortunes of this London publishing house, which has gone firmly into the black and leapt high and way on the London Stock Exchange.

It was in 1996 that Bloomsbury agreed to publish Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, ending a stream of rejections from some of England's biggest publishing houses. Rowling was paid œ2,000 as advance, possibly one of the best deals cut in the history of publishing.

Rowling may well have settled for even less. As she has said more than once, all she ever wanted was for somebody to publish the novel so that she could go to the bookshops and look at it. For Bloomsbury, it was the beginning of a great new relationship. Of course nobody in the publishing house then had anticipated that Harry would turn the company around. Or, for that matter, that he would capture the imagination of the reading world.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was launched in June 1997 to fairly good advance reviews. Exactly one month later, the first big event in the Potter publishing story occurred. Having sewn up the rights for Britain (and parts of the Commonwealth), Rowling's agent Christopher Little shifted his attention to flogging the U.S. rights. Evidently, word had spread about the merit of the novel within the publishing industry. At an auction in Italy, Arthur Levine, the editorial director of Scholastics took what he described as a "huge risk" and paid an unprecedented six figure sum for the U.S. rights.

It was not until the autumn of next year that Scholastics published Harry but news of this advance had an extraordinary impact in Britain. It resulted in a spate of articles in the press about Rowling, the bulk of them of a very personal nature. Single mother, lived off the dole, struggled for a living, wrote parts of Harry in cafes and so on - stories that got her name known and made her a recognisable figure. "She went from the books pages to the news pages," says Rosamund de la Hey, head of Children's Sales and Marketing at Bloomsbury. "In marketing terms, that helped a lot."

Winning the Smarties Prize in October 1997 generated a new slew of publicity. From here on, sales were vertical and there was no looking back. In July 1988, Bloomsbury launched the hardback of the second book in Rowling's ongoing series: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. HP2 did something that no other children's novel had done before - it became the No. 1 seller, outperforming traditional adult bestsellers such as Grisham and Ludlum.

While this delighted the folks at Bloomsbury, they were distressed by the omission of HP2 from the bestseller charts - those who compiled such lists were reluctant to place a children's novel alongside those intended for adults. Bloomsbury's response was to publish adult editions of Harry. The Philosopher's Stone was released with a relatively stark and sombre jacket in September 1998. There was an additional reason for this decision. The sales pattern indicated that Rowling enjoyed tremendous crossover appeal. Adults were buying and reading the Harry novels in droves.

In the autumn of 1998, Rowling toured the U.S. to coincide with the launch of U.S. version of The Philosopher - titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In Britain, Bloomsbury began launching Rowling with more fanfare. In January 1999, to coincide with the paperback edition of The Chamber of Secrets, the publisher hired a steam train at Kings Cross and invited children from two local schools for a party. When the fourth novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released last year, a red- painted steam train (to resemble Hogwarts Express) was taken around the country, stopping in as many as seven places. "It was fantastic," says Bloomsbury publicist de la Hey.

The bad news for Rowling fans is that they may have to wait quite a while before her fifth book - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (a working title). The launch has been provisionally set for the end of this year but de la Hey thinks it might well be in early or mid-2002. The good news however is that the publisher will launch two small-sized books by Rowling next month. One of them is titled Quidditch Through the Ages, a guide to the game played by young wizards on broomsticks. The other is called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a primer on everything from Boggarts to Blast-Ended Skrewts. Both books find a mention in the Harry novels as a part of the Hogwarts' curriculum. Both are 42 pages long, priced at œ2.50 and written for charity. At least œ2 from each will go to Comic Relief, a non-governmental organisation which supports developmental programmes in Africa and the United Kingdom.

Bloomsbury may as well raise a Goblet of Fire to Rowling. Although the publisher has had other successes - to name one, the deal with Microsoft for a print version of Encarta - it is the Harry series that has really weaved the magic for the company. Profits have leapt by 66 per cent over last year and the price of Bloomsbury shares have grown more than eightfold over the last couple of years. Last year, the company, which is increasingly becoming known as Harry Potter's publisher, paid œ16 million to acquire A&C Black, an old and venerable publishing house which puts out the Who's Who and a number of other reference works.

But as de la Hey points out, Rowling's impact goes well beyond Bloomsbury. She has had a huge influence on children's publishing as a whole. "Children's books have benefitted and are taken much more seriously by publishers. Suddenly, the cash stills have started ringing. Harry has altered the rules of the trade."

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