Possible Theory on the Release of Book 6
davewitley
dfrankiswork at netscape.net
Wed Feb 18 11:43:08 UTC 2004
Amber wrote:
> Sept 2002--After 27 months, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
> releases to paperback.
> Jan 2003--The long-awaited announcement comes...Harry Potter and
the
> Order of the Phoenix has a release date.
As I understand it, the theory is that the announcement of the
release date of the new book is a few months after the publication
(in the USA only) of the paperback.
> From the Letter Box Project, JKR has said that the writing for
book 6
> is "flowing like a mountain stream." Given the 5-6 month proofing
> and printing period for the millions of copies needed, I'd say we
are
> looking at a Summer 2005 release! This is just theory and
> speculation. It is not meant to deceive or anything...
I agree that the summer 2005 date is the most plausible (by the
reasoning that Annemehr has already explained; JKR has said she
expects Book 6 to be shorter than GOF and OOP, FWIW), but I don't
believe in the theory. First, GOF came out in paperback in the UK
about a year after publication (fairly normal for the UK, I think)
and I heard of no particular difficulty about that.
Second, and more important, I thought it was pretty clear towards
the end that the publication of OOP was driven purely by JKR's own
timetable, which in turn was largely a matter of carrying on until
finished. IIRC, Bloomsbury had a false alarm when they announced
that the release date would be publicised within a day or so, and
then it wasn't. Everybody, including the alleged uber-Slytherins at
Bloomsbury, Scholastic and WB, was reduced simply to waiting until
JKR was satisfied that she has finished, and she would give no
guarantees and set no deadlines.
In general, businesses like cash sooner rather than later; they and
their shareholders like certainty, and they like to support their
share price by announcing future expectations of revenue. All these
factors mean that Bloomsbury and Scholastic (WB have no say in this)
want Book 6 to be published as soon as possible, and they want to be
able to tell the public the release date as soon as they know it
themselves.
Publication of the paperback version of a book *is* something that
is probably dictated by considerations of maximum discounted
cashflow: too early and hardback sales suffer; too late and the
public loses interest (and, probably more important, the revenue
stream is deferred). Just possibly, if Book 6 came along soon
enough, they might reconsider the OOP paperback date, but not, I
think, the other way around.
So I think that at the moment Bloomsbury and Scholastic have little
better idea than we have (they probably do know how much progress
she has made, though), and when they do, they will tell us, and get
the thing out as soon as possible after that.
David
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