Do we want Harry Potter back for good?

Jean Hannah Edelstein

July 11, 2007 9:35 AM

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/07/do_we_want_harry_potter_back_f.html

Magic at the tills ... Harry Potter books go on sale at Waterstone's. Photograph: Kim Myun Jung Kim/PA

"There has never been a place like Hogwarts. There has never been a writer like JK Rowling. And there has never, ever been a character like Harry Potter. Millions, perhaps billions of us love reading his adventures, and we never want them to end."

This would be a rather sweet plea if it was drafted by the 8-11 year-olds who were originally the target demographic for the Harry Potter series. But that tell-tale "W" at the bottom of the website that touts itself as the epicentre of "the international campaign to SAVE HARRY!" betrays the truth: this crusade is brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood bookselling behemoth, Waterstone's.

Are they really trying to save Harry, or are they trying to save themselves? With the impending publication of the final book in the epic Harry Potter series, Waterstone's aims to gather 1,000,000 signatures from ardent fans, petitioning JK Rowling not to quit after book seven. According to Wayne Winston, the head of children's books by Waterstone's quoted in the Telegraph: "We're not asking J K Rowling to start work on another novel tomorrow, we're just asking that she doesn't rule it out. Of course she wants a break but when she wakes up one day in the future with a fantastic new idea half-formed in her mind, hopefully she'll run with it and not deny her muse."

Despite the vague press release that she issued indicating that she'd never say never to resurrecting her hero, I don't imagine that JK Rowling will be particularly bowled over by a million signatures. The fact that she's a billionaire has probably clued her in to the fact that her books are quite popular.

But for Waterstone's, the end of Harry means the end of the guaranteed massive volumes of sales that they've made every time a new book in the series has been released. With no clear successor to the series on the horizon, I imagine that the company's strategy meetings are less than jolly these days as they scramble desperately to identify the next pot of mass market publishing gold.

Independent booksellers, on the other hand, will not be signing the petition. Although making the statement in polite bookish society that you're not keen on the Potter is tantamount to saying that you enjoy kicking adorable puppies, independent booksellers can't compete with the deep discounts that large retailers can sell the books at. Indeed, 25% of them won't be stocking book seven because they cannot afford it. The prospect of a publishing market that is not dominated by a single author and title each year or two must be extraordinarily appetising for them.

And it should be exciting for readers, too. Remember how upset everyone was when Take That broke up? Oh, that was a tragic day for the nation. How the youth of Britain wept and moaned and tore their hair! And yet, although I have come across one or two people who still reflect fondly on days of yore when they kissed a photo of Howard Donald before falling asleep at night, it appears to me that Britain did eventually bounce back from that terrible rent in its cultural fabric. Some people have even occasionally deigned to listen to other sorts of music.

So what if Harry's graduated from Hogwarts? There are so many millions of other lovely books to read. Rather than crying apocalypse and bullying JK Rowling to carry on doing something that she no longer seems to especially relish, perhaps Waterstone's could try to redirect some of the enthusiasm of its millions of petition-signatories? Instead of "Save Harry!" a slogan such as "Remember Take That? We Got Over It!" could be just the ticket to launch an inspiring movement for a long-overdue diversification of literary consumption.