For this alone, J. K. Rowling goes to heaven

[dianeduane]

In my book, anyway.

More than half of kids ages 5-17 say they did not read books for fun before the Harry Potter series came along, according to the report, which surveyed 500 children and 500 parents nationwide. Among parents, 76 percent say reading the series has helped their child perform better in school, while 65 percent of children agree.

And there's a happy thought in the last paragraph of the article:

So, what will happen after the seventh and final Harry Potter book comes out? Half of the readers surveyed say they will look for a new series (wannabe-bestselling authors take note!) and 27 percent say they will read whatever Rowling publishes next.

Comments

[aqeldroma.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic news for your series!

[chattycheese.livejournal.com]

And they want to ban Harry Potter. Heh.

Yay for that last bit, that's got to be fantastic for the YW books. That's how I got hooked, from the "If You Like HP" wall at my local Borders.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Indeed. For whatever the critical arguments may be about her writing ability, she has managed to turn children on to fiction.

[patgund.livejournal.com]

(chuckle) And before hand - I've been known to give full sets of the YW books to friends, family, and anyone else who stays still long enough. My 16-year old quasi-kinda-almost stepdaughter (my daughter's half-sister, she calls me her stepfather, I gave up trying to figure it out), has actually gotten two sets - when she was 13 I gave her a set that was later destroyed by her stepmother because she "didn't like that kind of stuff". So, for her 16th birthday, she got a new set. And one of the t-shirts with the oath on it....... :-)

Book pusher? Me? Nahh........

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

My husband is a primary school music teacher (and a church organist). He said that when Goblet of Fire was new, he came into the school lobby one day, where kids wait to be picked up, and on the long bench against the wall, pretty much every kid was reading GoF. Which he thought was a huge book for a kid that age to digest.

*prepares to pimp YW far and wide*

[keristor.livejournal.com]

So do we know anyone who writes books about young people and magic? *g* I agree, if she has made reading an 'in' thing for children (and adults, I know adults who have picked up the HP books who previously didn't read fiction) then I don't grudge her a penny she's made from the books.

Incidentally, have you noticed any change in sales of the YW books since the HP ones came out? Are publishers now more interested in them?

[xipuloxx.livejournal.com]

While that's certainly good news, is it just me or does the article not make any sense?

Firstly, it says "more than half of kids..." but doesn't actually indicate whether that percentage has changed. I suspect it means more than of the kids who NOW read books for fun...or maybe it just means who now read HP. Or does it mean that virtually all kids now read for fun, but more than half of them used not to?

Secondly, it says "did not read books for fun before the Harry Potter series came along" ... but it started about 8 years ago IIRC, so even if they mean "before it hit big" that's still about 6 years ago. Anyone who's 5-7 years old wouldn't have been reading books then anyway! Really, only kids of at least 10 years old are old enough to have been reading books for fun before the Harry Potter books became famous, and would likely have been too young for Harry Potter then. Or does it actually mean "before they DISCOVERED Harry Potter"?

I mean, I'm as pleased as the next person if it's true that HP is getting kids reading, but what, exactly, has it done? This article is completely unhelpful. I'd like to know what percentage of kids have been turned on to reading by Harry Potter.

Btw, are the Young Wizard books published in the UK? I've never seen them, but then I don't usually look in the childrens' section of bookshops.

[amberdulen.livejournal.com]

Then again, the Harry Potter books came along in the late nineties...so half of kids 5-17 weren't reading anything yet anyway.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Btw, are the Young Wizard books published in the UK? I've never seen them, but then I don't usually look in the childrens' section of bookshops.

There were UK editions (Corgi paperbacks) of the first four in the early '90's, but these are unfortunately long out of print: they were not pushed by the publisher in any significant way, and so didn't do well. Those initial low sales figures have in turn kept the series from coming back into print in the UK: every major British publisher with a YA line has been offered them, and has turned them down. The publishers' well-meaning excuses for not buying the books (because a lot of publishers seem more intent on not hurting your or your agent's feelings than on telling you the truth, which is that the old UK sales figures have scared them off) have included "They're too American" (and its corollary "They're not British enough"), "they're too complex", "they're not complex enough", "there are too many of them" (WTF?), "we only want to buy a finished series" (ditto), and my favorite, "We already have some books like those." (O RLY? YAH RLY.) (eyeroll)

My long-suffering UK agent has been waiting for all the pertinent editors to retire / die / change houses, and will probably start offering the books around the UK market again some time next year. However, I'm not getting my hopes up. That said, my own suspicion is that the instant we announce the movie version of So You Want to Be a Wizard, all the excuses above will suddenly melt away like snow in spring. At which point I will look to see if the publishers who line up for a crack at the books are any of those who bounced the series with the excuses above...and will instruct my agent to require an advance price that will stick it to them very hard and deep. In the nicest possible way, of course. :)

Oooh, that sounded downright spiteful. My blood sugar must be low.

[clarkesworld.livejournal.com]

Good news yes, but call me skeptical since the survey was funded by Scholastic. It also fails to prove some of its points, like the children doing better in school. It's an opinion survey done with parents in malls, not a factual study done with schools and hard data.

The interesting thing I took from the data was this:
"Kids indicate they have trouble finding books they like and kids’ reading drops off sharply after age 8. However, on average, Harry Potter readers start reading the series at age 9 and they continue as they mature."

Sounds like a marketing problem.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It's not really a marketing problem, it's a problem that (in the UK at least) reading has traditionally been seen as "uncool" or worse. Comics like the Beano showed any kid (especially boys) who read, liked classical music, wore glasses, etc., as fair game for the Real Kids(tm) to beat up, steal and/or destroy their books, etc. (Remember Nita in the first book? She was one of those 'softies'.)

The big change came with the HP movies. Movies are cool, even if they are about a scrawny kid with glasses and a swot like Hermione, and so the book of the film (yes, it was actually the other way round but a lot of kids saw the movie first) became cool as well.

Yes, it's an opinion survey and uses a distressingly small sample size, but I've seen the same comments elsewhere and from what friends with children tell me it seems qualitatively correct at least. (Remember that 93.84% of statistics are made up on the spot!)

[clarkesworld.livejournal.com]

I didn't even want to get started on the sample size. :)

Good old peer pressure. Applies here too. I work in a school and have actually spoken to students about the whole Potter effect. It's an even more insignificant sample size and these (wealthy/private school)kids didn't answer anything like this survey. They were less likely to read outside of Potter for fun and weren't interested in recommendations. Effectively, they read it because it was fashionable and that is incredibly important to this lot.

Still, if there are some kids looking to go beyond Potter (which is highly likely), it's a marketing issue if they aren't finding anything to fill in the gaps between books. The survey does seem to indicate a certain ignorance of what's out there.

[replica.livejournal.com]

Actually, I find that kind of depressing. But I can't seem to elaborate coherently on that, so I won't.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's the ones from the state schools who are more likely to benefit, both because they are the ones less likely to have been exposed to reading in the home and because they are marginally less fashion-driven (they are more likely to read a book because a friend lends it to them than to buy it just to have it on the shelf for its prestige value). Yes, there is a big lack of knowledge of siimilar books, and that is something the librarians are generally trying to correct (when a kid brings an HP book back they can say "This is like it"). They are of course hampered, as D. said, by stupid publishers who refuse some of the best material because of various biases, and school and state libraries often can't get the budget to buy from the US (even when the books are cheaper there!).

Bureaucracy (noun): government by desks...

[ca-bookwyrm.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the survey, but I did see a nice trend in the up-turn of kids reading. I used to work in a library (in the States) and every time we'd put up a new "If you like HP, try this!" display, they flocked to it. It was great. Staff members who had been working there pre-Potter did say that the numbers seemed to have increased. Of course, we never did a survey, but all our circ numbers were up...

[lord-maahes.livejournal.com]

I know that the Harry Potter books were a boon to the younger children who had to do Accelerated Reader in my school district. Our libraries were perpetually dry, otherwise. Especially in highschool, when if you didn't want to read the classics or Stephen King or Dean Koontz, you were out of luck. -.- Small budget for a school and used mostly for sports.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Although along with this comes the curse of the "If You Like Harry Potter" promotions. I've seen more books lumped under the Harry Potter Substitute Genre: your own Young Wizards, Narnia, His Dark Materials, anything by Tamora Pierce, Eva Ibbotson's books, Discworld, Eragon, the Pern series (really) and once, memorably, The Lord of the Rings. It seems that the only criteria for these books to be "like Harry Potter" is that they either have Magic Stuff in them or are about kids having adventures. And of course there's the unspoken label that they're just almost as good as Harry.

I don't know why that bugs me so much. Maybe because I think that while Harry Potter is good, it is eclipsing a lot of other really good writing out there, just because somebody was clever at marketing.

[xipuloxx.livejournal.com]

the instant we announce the movie version of So You Want to Be a Wizard

Ooh, that sounds exciting! Is this a realistic possibility, or just a "maybe it'll happen one day" thing? I've never read the books (as I said, I've never seen them) but would certainly be interested in seeing a movie of them (and indeed may just buy the American editions anyway).

[ruisseau.livejournal.com]

I work in a bookshop and I like to say, "I know this is heresy, but this is better than Harry Potter."

Then I hand them YW, HDM, or DW with a big grin. :)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*gasp* BLASPHEMER! STONE HER!!!

It's just such an apples to oranges situation, too. How do you compare Young Wizards or Discworld to Harry Potter? They have a few common narrative elements, and the semantics tend to coincide, but the styles are so very, very different that renaming the fantasy (or fantasy parody) genre "Like Harry Potter" is pretty ridiculous.

However, I have no qualms about saying that Granny Weatherwax could beat any of the Harry Potter characters in witchcraft any day of the week. If SHE were in the HP universe, she would have knocked Voldemort down before he even knew he was going to get started. ;)

[dduane.livejournal.com]

It's a realistic possibility, for a number of reasons. At any rate, I'm working on the screenplay now. Once it's done, we go shopping. Dreamworks evinced some interest a few years ago when I was first testing the waters with various producers out in LA: we'll see if they're still interested. And others, of course. But now that I've had a miniseries come out (and be successful), the odds are more in my favor.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Love the idea of your young wizard series being made into a movie! Apart from anything else it will make finding the books in th uk easier!

I have noticed the sales of childrens books in bookstores must be increasing mainly because their shelf space is getting larger.

More worryingly though the corresponding shelf space dedicated to science fiction and fantasy for adults is getting smaller!

[wetdryvac.livejournal.com]

That would be fantastic - especially where you've got a direct hand in the screenplay. Luck and skill to you!