Sorcerer stone v Philosopher Stone WAS: Hermione

[sistermagpie]

> Alla:
> 
> I do understand what you are saying Magpie about wanting to grab right audience and fast, but still I think I have to agree with Miles again :-)
> 
> I mean, the reason why they would want to grab the right audience with changing the word, the underlying assumption is that the audience may not know the definition, right?

Magpie:
Yes--but I'm disagreeing with the idea that assuming a 9-year-old  would automatically look at a book with "Philosopher's Stone" on the cover and say, "I'll check out this book to see if it's about a boy who can do magic" is the same as assuming they're stupid.

Sure it might imply thinking more highly of their intelligence if you assume they'll not only make the connection to alchemy and then make the second connection to wizards and sorcery, but you might lose a lot of intelligent kids who don't make the right connection. Even a kid who knows what the Philosopher Stone is wouldn't necessarily connect it with Wizardry, since that's an artificial connection. Just by title I'd probably assume it was a mystery story.

Yeah, the title is totally more in-your-face, writing MAGIC in big letters on the title, but if HP hadn't been a huge sensation I wouldn't be surprised if that led to more book sales by putting the selling point in the title rather than the Maguffin. 

Peter Benchley wrote a book he was originally going to call something including the word Leviathan. The eventual title probably communicated more to the members of the audience who didn't recognize the word Leviathan, but I don't think it said they thought the audience were stupid just because they went for the more obvious JAWS.

-m