Happy World Book Day

[bluesqueak]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "heiditandy" <heidit at n...> 
wrote:
> Ali asked:
> > >Are teenagers still allowed to like Harry?

Heidi replied:
> Some of the people, though, who were 13 and 14 when GoF was 
> released are now focusing on college applications or their 
> freshman year - and already, the kids in the UK who were 10 when 
> PS was first released are now in their last years of school, or 
> have already left. They aren't kids anymore, and if WB and the 
> publishers don't wake up to the fact that the original fans of the 
> books have grown up - and will all be full fledged adults by the 
> time Book 7 comes out - then *that* will cause a problem, IMHO, 
> for the sales of the books. 
> heidi

Scholastic may not have noticed, but Bloomsbury almost certainly has.

No. 1 seller on www.amazon.co.uk/  ? Harry Potter and the Order of 
the Phoenix.

No. 2 seller on www.amazon.co.uk/  ? Harry Potter and the Order of 
the Phoenix - only this time it's the snazzy black and white 'adult 
cover' edition that Bloomsbury started bringing out after GoF. 

Same text, just a cover that doesn't announce loudly to your fellow 
teenagers/college students/commuters that you're reading 
a 'children's book'. 

If there's one thing a marketing person *really* understands, it's 
sales. The no. 2 sales position for the 'adult cover' at 
Amazon.co.uk shouts loud and clear that there is an adult audience 
for HP that *prefers* the books they're reading to be seen as adult 
books.

I expect that marketing is going to start emphasising something like 
the 'increasing depth' of the later books. Or possibly they will be 
having a double campaign, one more aimed at the children, one at the 
adults.

In that vein, it's interesting that part of the HP contribution to 
Comic Relief was *not* another schoolbook. No, it's a chance to win 
a light blue Ford Anglia car. Roadworthy, with MOT. 

So only those 18+ can enter the contest ;-)

Pip