Right place right time, combined with JKR's style. While she's far from an exceptional writer, she's not bad, either, and she had a strong narrative voice for the books that was playful but not too condescending towards kids. YA was pretty dry at the time and you had your choice between much more mature books or stuff that was too "kiddy" I think, and she struck the perfect balance of mature and not too serious.
She also spent a lot of time on the worldbuilding which, while basic, had a lot of cool little things for kids to imagine and wonder about. It was the perfect self-insert story which is what kids like.
>perfect self insert
Your last paragraph is so true, this was a big part of the appeal for me psychologically. Reading these books aged 10-11 it’s very easy to imagine the world she paints in those first few books and see yourself getting a letter one summer and going there. This is why the first book is arguably the best, it pulls this off very effectively the first time, from nothing. It only takes her a few pages to have you on board and she steadily opens up the wizard ing world over the course of the first act.
The whole introduction to wizarding and Hogwarts, from the acceptance letter to the sorting hall of the castle is just perfect. I used to have dreams about it as a kid.
The “you’re a wizard, Harry”, diagon alley, platform 9 3/4 and the train, the boats over the lake! You may hear people nitpick Harry Potter today but I never see anyone go after this, the best part of the books, the hook that captivated a generation of readers for a decade.
Just from outside observation of the fan community (I've never read the books or watched the films), it's like J.K. Rowling had optimised it in a lab to be the most fertile soil possible for a fandom to be created out of nothing. The students being from our real world, as you say, means the fantasy of you and your friends going to Hogwarts is tantalisingly solid. The OC fan-fiction almost writes itself, you just need to imagine stepping off that train.
Of particular genius is the houses; not only is it something tactile to colour your own identity in this fantasy world, as well as an ice-breaker/argument starter with other fans ("Which house would you join?"), the houses themselves strongly overlap with popular character archetypes in other media, especially those aimed at kids. Is your favourite character in any show or book the 'smart one'? Ravenclaw is a whole house of characters like that. Prefer brooding edgelords? Slytherin's perfect for you. By making your decision, you're already just a little bit emotionally committed to this world.
The houses did work. People get off on nitpicking and plotholing HP and Rowling now but she really did achieve something with those books, they were exciting, new yet relateable.
I picked Hufflepuff as a kid almost 20 years ago, had a hat and everything, I ended up becoming a stoner haha
It's not just the houses, either.
Whats your pateronus? What wand would you have? What broom would you fly, what per would you own?
She added a million different ways that her readers could express themselves
This is probably coming a bit late in the conversation.
Just a note on the cultural side of things. Houses are common in the school system in the UK. So this not a major brilliant idea JR pulled out of her hat. Rather it is a nice inspired addition that made Hogwarts even more convincing and relatable to British young kids.
Check out Wikipedia it’s pretty interesting! (I’m Not from the uk btw so I used to think like you)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_system?wprov=sfti1
Yep, I've gone back to read the sorcerors stone specifically to understand how she built in the backstory. Really good stuff, and not confusing or convoluted.
"Perfect self-insert story" is exactly the lightning in a bottle it captured IMO. Mistreated kid gets whisked away to a magical castle where now he's a wealthy and talented celebrity and hero? Sign me up! Also, just the idea of exploring Hogwarts sounds like a blast, and the setting is given so much color and so many fun details.
Honestly, the later books lost me (even as a kid) once the plot holes and questionable stuff really started to make themselves plain, but I totally get why 1-4 were a phenomenon despite the fact that they also had issues.
The funny thing is that the translations of the books (at least the Greek ones) are very much children-oriented, even when JKR's originals went the YA route after the second one.
Well they're still children's books, which is why a lot of people just... move on from them. It's just that she managed to write in a tone that let tweens/early teens not feel 5-8 years old.
People also aren't mentioning the fact that the books matured gradually as the characters and the original target audience aged. That was an impressive writing skill.
It's a cool trick but I dunno about impressive. Coming of age stories do that regularly, with Joyce having the most extreme example nearly 100 years earlier.
I'd definitely consider the 4th-7th books YA at least. The 6th book in particular is almost *too* YA with all of the "snogging" that constantly occurs.
Yeah that's why I said a lot and not all or even most. Even the threads in other subs you get people who just clearly won't move on even if they're 30+ now.
Can you elaborate on how the translation is more childish than the English? I'm learning Greek right now, and had considered picking up the Harry Potter series as something easy to read that I'm fairly familiar with already.
Totally agree. I was 11 and in the UK when Philosopher’s Stone came out, so was the prime demographic. At that point, for fantasy, there were Tamora Pierce’s series, TA Barron’s Merlin books, and Redwall, and most everything else I remember was sci-fi or horror (animorphs/goosebumps). Nothing really combined present-day POV/characters with speculative elements.
It was easy to get immersed in. For all her faults, JK painted some vivid, concise settings.
And I also think she managed to do something smart, market-wise (even though it sucks this worked or needed to be done). She chose a gender-neutral pseudonym and made the main character a boy in a bad situation. In ‘97, we (girls) were always consuming media with boys as the main characters, but boys were rarely doing the same (at least, not in my experience). So JK’s choice opened up her market to all YA genders. Goosebumps did that, as well, but ofc had a very different tone. JK tapped into a need to be seen and to be heroic that we all felt.
>While she's far from an exceptional writer, she's not bad, either,
Except she is an exceptional writer. She literally wrote the books that defined an entire generation.
I love it when people try and downplay her accomplishments. Like sure, of you try and compare her to Narnia or the Lord of the rings, the two works that always seem to come up when people dunk on her, it may not seem the best, but come on
Mcdonalds is delicious, and the MCU is peek cinema, actually, especially the first 10 years, and it's still great today.
Not everything has to be some profound, life-changing piece of work or art to be exceptional.
Another is the books were very different from everything at the time. The idea of a fantasy book series taking place in school, the kid not having a nice family, being long, and lasting for multiple books was considered something kids wouldn't want to read, which is why it was rejected several times.
There was also the internet factor. HP was published around the time that regular use of the internet was becoming more common, which resulted in lots of fan communities springing up. That crossed with the number of world building questions to ask plus the amount of mystery in the later books led to a huge volume of fan discussion, speculation and fiction which also served to boost the series’ popularity.
For sure, I remember that the internet both was how I got the book (lol early Amazon) and how I stayed involved, joining an HP community my friends at school pushed me to on one of those shitty proto-social media sites.
I always credit JK with having created a book series that effectively grew up with its fans. Stone, Chamber, Prisoner, Goblet, all follow a pretty structured horror buildup, up to straight up moidah in Goblet. After that it starts to wrestle complicated concepts like 'victimless crimes,' kids stepping in where they shouldn't and the nature of our feelings as humans and our responsibility to them vs others.
Those books grew up with me. I never finished the series, but I remember Deathly starting pretty wildly vicious too so I recall feeling that this must have been the final book as it even *began* with a sense of finality.
At least for my age, I think you nailed it on the fact that there weren't a ton of great books out there that scratched the same itch. I was 4 when the first book came out and I don't know, was maybe 6 or so when I started reading them. The only other books I remember reading at the time were Redwall. Then Eragon when I was closer to 10 or so. Most of the books we read in school were dry. I think the only ones I truly remember are Hatchet, The Giver, and Running Out of Time. I was never an HP superfan, but being both fantastical and set in the present day was unique, and really struck a chord.
Because my standards for an exceptional writer are Woolf, Nabokov, Pynchon, Joyce, Emily Bronte or Saint-Exupery. She's nowhere close to that level of prose or depth even with the writers who wrote for children.
No, because it's a children's book that isn't aiming to be anything more than that (as opposed to, say Saint-Exupery whose children's book is one of the peaks of 20th century literature). That's fine, really, but "I wasn't trying to be deep" doesn't make you an exceptional writer, either. She's fine. She's not peak of the artform, and doesn't have to be.
Bad take; unless by ‘fantasy novels’ you mean the hardcore nerd-level series where the writing isn’t that great so they try to compensate with an absurd amount of complexity.
Hi, I didn’t mean to insult your sensibilities. The Harry Potter books excel at story and character. Although an expansive world just hidden underneath our own is developed, it is with much less forethought than the characters themselves. There is clearly a lot of planning in the horcrux storyline seeded from book 1, or snapes allegiances and betrayals, or really any of the characters story arcs. The journey has appropriate set ups and pay offs. But the world building just doesn’t.
I don’t think there were guiding principles to how magic works in her world. Introducing apparition and floo powder requires esoteric rules for why one would exist when the other does too. Also, many say the time turner was a plot hole but I think it’s more than that; I think there wasn’t consideration to whether magic in the HP universe should easily be able to manipulate time. Aurors and the order of the phoenix fight death eaters using the same spells Harry learned as a first year student - this took be out of the book while I was reading and left me wondering what Harry aspires for in becoming an Auror if he’s already just as good as them.
I’m not trying to nitpick rules like some “hardcore nerd” - these decisions impact the plot in ways that are disappointing for some readers and requires JKR to explain away issues that arise. Again, the time turner is one the the best known examples. But it also causes interesting plot threads to be dropped. In the final book, conflict escalates to international war involving giants, centaurs and werewolves. When I read book 7 I was excited to see Hagrid and death eaters compete for vying alliances but this all occurs off-screen (off page?). Centaurs introduced in the first book are barely brought back. I cannot say for certain this is due to lack of world building vs plot efficiency, but that was always my impression.
>Centaurs introduced in the first book are barely brought back.
Centaurs are seen throughout the series. They are the ones who ran off with Umbridge, sure. One even becomes a Hogwarts teacher... They live in the forest so we're not going to see them all the time.
No, I read the first book at six years old and I distinctly remember thinking that it was odd that the wizards didn't have guns and that their entire civilization agreed to maintain not just total anonymity, but such an incredible degree of segregation that (when the second book rolled around a few year slater) Rons dad was so bad at muggle culture despite 1) working with muggle technology for a living, and 2) *living in England and having business in London*. The place isn't exactly void and empty.
The worldbuilding is fun but it's shock full of holes.
You can see the obvious answer to the question "how do you kill a modern wizard" in other media like Fate, where the answer is in fact "shoot them with a gun" lol. And Fate wizards are much more powerful in general, even.
No. It's pretty shallow world building compared to other basic, popular fantasy series. No need for ultra nerd levels like Anathem or anything like that. Just generic YA fantasy.
I can’t believe more people aren’t saying this. I quit reading after the fifth book came out. Ate through that shit in like two days and abruptly realized that this was not a good book at all.
And frankly, the writing in the series is what makes it bad. Lot of the folks downvoting must have missed everything that was out at the time, because I recall moving on to a couple of series from Darren Shan and being relieved that it was far less dumb.
Books that aren’t really that great are always going to be popular. They’re more accessible, the reader doesn’t get frustrated and there’s few hard moments or questions. That’s why adults were carrying around Twilight books for a while. They want something easy.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. Dan Brown’s book come to mind; most people don’t read high minded philosophical novels, they read simple, easy and fun things that they can enjoy without much effort. A less toxic version of the trait that probably supports populist politicians. Writing ‘bad’ is not a bad way to make something that can appeal to a larger audience.
>Right place right time
This abject nonsense is repeated so many times in the top answers.
Why do you kids believe it's credible that in 1997 there were millions of people just hanging out waiting for a whimsical Britishy book about a boy with a silly name who goes to a magic school with a sillier one?
Because I was there, and nobody was waiting for that.
If it hadn't come out then, and instead came out now, it wouldn't sell a single book less.
It succeeded in spite of it's intense "wrong place, wrong time" - ness, and any narrative trying to pretend otherwise is a bizarre attempt to downplay some incredibly, unusually good storytelling.
All great successes are right place, right time, though. Countless genius works have gone unnoticed because they never had the chance to shine, countless mediocre works have succeeded because they got lucky. Worldwilde levels of fame and success aren't some direct conversion of skill/work -> success.
1. Dark compared to what? Have you read old fairy tales meant for kids? Many of the old stories involve kids being eaten or taken due to reason. In "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats", six of the kids (goatlings) get eaten by a wolf who pretends to be their mother. Later, the mother cuts open the belly of the wolf, releases her kids, puts rocks inside of his belly, and said wolf drowns in a lake. And this is not the darkest by far.
2. It's simply good - decent writing, interesting, okay pace
3. Attractive to the target audience - kids go on an adventure into a wonderful new world (if you don't think about some of the nuances of the world), cause a lot of mischief at a school...
4. Right place right time
5. The kids are shown doing fun, wonderful things in a magical world that real kids can relate to wanting. I mean, who wouldn't want a flying broom?
Around when the fourth was released my mom got me into the books.
Sometime back in ~2000-2001 I think, same time that the first movie was coming out.
The release of the fifth book was massive. And honestly the reason I got fluent in English, as I couldn't wait for an entire year for the book to be translated to my native tongue. First book I read in English from start to beginning.
This was in small Finnish towns.
I mean...I have read a lot less darker books in my time that were meant for kids (Artemis Fowl deals with death but not quite as seriously as Harry Potter, and the The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel rarely got too dark or too into death and the like).
Young reader books in my time (the 80s) were things like the hidden door which was the equivalent to Escape to Witch Mountain or the sequel to E.T. the Green Planet or the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books.
Then again in the 80s even comic books were more mild than now days.
Young reader books in the 80’s were pretty much before YA as a category even existed. So, any kids book had to be family friendly/appropriate for all ages. Now, MG books (middle grade books, including the entire Artemis Fowl series) are still about the same level of darkness as Escape to Witch Mountain, but YA books (particular the older end of YA books) are free to have a whole lot more darkness. Harry Potter changed age categories with its original readership from MG to YA to Upper YA, and the darkness in the last HP book is very much in line with what you see in a lot of YA that’s aimed at older teens.
>Have you read old fairy tales meant for kids?
Most people would immediately assume based on context that they are comparing against contemporary books of the time, not against ancient folk fables.
Can we really say they're comparing to contemporary books of the time when in the same sentence they make a comment about nowadays children's books being more censored (and are they?).
Really depends on where you live. In ultra-conservative America? Absolutely. The only books they want you reading are "good" "christian" books, and not anything that might teach their kids any of that "sinful" librul snowflake nonsense such as critical thinking or freedom of expression.
I think it was Roald Dahl who said something to the effect that children’s stories can be written darker than adult stories because kids always have faith that things will work out in the ene.
Yeah, fairy tales are dark but at that point, Disney had pretty much watered them down so much that most kids are more familiar with those versions than the actual versions. Even books copying the fairy tales not made by Disney were copying their formula.
> Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights.
-- J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy ([relevant video](https://youtu.be/4As0e4de-rI?t=2923))
Look at [XKCD 1472](https://xkcd.com/1472/), or perhaps at the [overview of Myst island](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dni/images/5/58/Mystisland.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20200815014117). Those places look fun to explore because they have a high density of unique points of interest. When there's only one of everything, learning more about them feels rewarding.
Harry Potter's initial appeal was similar - it's very emotionally immersive. That's different from the usual way "immersive" is used in sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, which implies a degree of plausibility (or tax policies, according to GRRM). The Wizarding world feels very snug, inviting and simple (at least in the first 3-4 books), woven together by a steady stream of lore. It's very clearly defined - four houses coded in primary colors, one book for each of Harry's school years etc. It's very easy to ponder how you would fare as a student there - which house would you get sorted in? Who would you be friends with? What would the Mirror of Erised show you? What would be your boggart or patronus?
It also grew up along with its characters. In the later books the naive aspects faded away, since they were no longer needed. At that point, the series' appeal has shifted to the subversion of previously established notions, as well as to going to unexpectedly dark places. Also, the steady stream of lore continued throughout.
Strong story, simple storytelling, good marketing.
Can someone show examples of books that are allegedly as good, but never sold well? Because all examples I have seen thus far are self-explaining why they won't sell.
In terms of literature a good book may be terrible in terms of marketing.
This aspect seems to be misunderstood on routine by many writers. The writing style and the book itself may be exceptional, but it just lacks strong plot, branding and distinguishability, simple archetypes, monomyth and shared values. As far as I see, most books fall in this category.
Books that win literature awards do not usually equal with books that well well on the generic market.
Exactly.
Look at the biggest selling books of the 21st century:
* Harry Potter.
* Twilight.
* 50 Shades of Grey.
You'd have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to say that they are "good" books, but they were popular.
It doesn't take much to call HP and even Twilight "good" maybe not great or legendary or whatever you want to say but they are well executed strong stories with compelling characters that captivated lots of readers
50 shades comes with the sex/porn aspect as well which means you can assign less weight to how well it sold I think.
It means they think there can't possibly be two separate people who disagree with them so it's obviously one person logging in on multiple accounts to say that the books weren't bad
Unlike 99% of middle grade fiction (the first three books) it doesn't talk down to the reader. Most fiction aimed at kids that age is clearly an adult talking to children rather than just telling the story.
\- I would say that the books are good and quality content spreads much more easily than the bland or bad.
\- They have a very simple, but intriguing premise, so an advertiser or friend can hook you very quickly
\- Books targeting middle/high schoolers tend to be rarer and lower quality, so it is an easier market
\- The movies were quite good, and far more people watch movies than books, so that is likely a large driver of success.
Well on your last point, the movies definitely helped in the long run, but they only got made because the first book was super sucessful.
There was articles back then that Harry Potter was making kids read again, all before the movies.
Regular release schedule. All books written and ready to go. Great movies. Easy to read prose. Fulfills fantasy of both being a wizard and "the cool kid" at high school.
Target demo started YA and because Rowling had regular yearly releases, her books could age with her demo. Other authors can't do that if they don't release regularly.
I constantly see people putting down her writing and world building and saying she’s mid to bad.
They’re wrong, the series has great writing and she gave it an excellent voice that spoke to kids and got an entire generation into reading. Undermining her work and just calling it simple luck is insulting, she made a great, if flawed, world and did a great job making it palatable not only to kids but to adults as well. It also translated well to the big screen which further catapulted its success. I would even say the religious outlash that caused book burnings just made it even more successful.
Everywhere I went growing up, kids would talk about it, parents would talk about, teachers would talk about it. People could be in entirely different walks of life and social circles and they would still talk about it together. They could have never picked up a book before or already have been passionate readers and they all loved it.
YA books came out afterwards that had some of the love and success but she did it in a way that captured the imaginations of more than just the target audience and that is why it is so well loved.
It's ridiculous. They are fantastic books. The writing is beautiful, inspiring, and still holds up when I read it now as 32 year old adult. The world building is amazing. I grew up in this magical world and it's annoying how it's become popular to shit on these stories.
Am 47 and still love to re read them. Lot of people who only know the HP movies probably don’t know that JK Rowling made kids love to read again. By themselves, not because they were told too. Every time a new book came out you better made sure you reserved a copy at your local bookstore otherwise you would miss out! I walked into a lantern on my way back home after picking up book 2 from the book store and read-walking back home 😆.
Your not the only one who grew up with the books into adulthood, and not to say you don't try and think of books in a critical lense, but have you tried, for one moment, sat down and thought at least about the house elves? Or even the last books poor worldbuilding, or considered how bad the prose is? I'm not saying you should hate it, but I don't think, considering the popular opinion is praise for it, that is should be looked at uncritically.
>books came out afterwards that had some of the love and success
It's important to understand that this was a *direct result* of Pottermania: "OK, because of HP I have started reading books for fun again (or for the first time), but I've finished all the HP books, so I'll find something to read next...".
Hunger games, Artemis Fowl, Twilight, Lemony Snicket, and many others were boosted from mild success to million-sellers-with-film-adaptations because the frequent-novel-reading market was suddenly tens of millions of people larger - due entirely to Harry.
My personal theory is that the series became so popular because it is perfectly crafted for fandom. The school houses act like a mini personality test, so your Hogwarts house becomes part of your personality. There is a VAST cast of characters, so plenty of options for people to find characters, couples, and scenarios to write fanfics about. The world building is both familiar and yet complex enough that someone can easily take the world and create their own stories within in. JKR crafted so many objects and food items and things that could be turned into merchandise.
The series was, perhaps accidentally, perhaps on purpose, crafted to become a fandom powerhouse and it worked.
JKR reportedly was writing books for her own kids before they ever became published and became best sellers.
Think of it this way. You are writing stories for your kids, you write the first few for 8-9 yos and then your kids grow a bit past those so you start writing for your kids as they grow and the books grow with them.
I haven't read the books myself, my daughter loves the living heck out of them though, but if they follow a timeline at all like the movies then you can see how the tone is a lot lighter for the first two-three stories before starting to get heavier and darker. I am not certain of course because I wasn't there publishing or writing her books with her, but I would wager that shows the growth in her children as she wrote the material.
I could be wrong and there are certainly Harry Potter experts out there more adept than I so I will defer to them in the end.
I think it's because they were incredible. I remeber being 15 and reading the first one, I couldn't believe how good it was, I couldn't stop reading. And I was a book-worm, I read so many books before them. They still felt over-the-top amazing. I had to tell everybody about it. And that's how I found about them, because friends who read them also had to everybody about it.
And that was when just the two first were out, they weren't dark at all. They were just *so good.* I don't think there was any other reason for their success other than their quality. They were simply that good.
Yeah the other answers are so bizarrely determined to pretend they weren't that good and it was just "the right time" or "good marketing" or "because of the movies" (LOL) or something.
No, they were so unusually good that they spread like wildfire through word of mouth.
They made me feel warm and at home. Hogwarts was a place where anyone feeling unloved could go to feel like they belong. There were troubles, yes but there is also friendship, light, learning and love. There’s so much wonder in the HP books and I’m still, 20 years on, yet to find a book as compelling as the HP series.
They were. The plot twists, the fantastical world, the humour, the characters that feel like actual people and the allegories of real world issues and politics that are used to teach children and help them empathise.
People are very quick to denigrate the series (in no small part because of JKR trashing her reputation and credibility), but they are wonderful books.
It's very interesting lookin at younger you's perspective compared to today. Like you, I love Harry Potter, but now, as a 23 year old, to compare it to, lets say, Crime and Punishment, HP looks abysmal.
Why on earth would you compare Harry Potter to Crime and Punishment?? 🤣 🙄
I'm 32 and I still think HP is fantastically written. You have to compare it to things within it's genre. It's like comparing Gaurdians of the Galaxy to Citizen Kane.
r/iamverysmart
due to the magnitude of its influence and how much people revere em.
contrary to popular belief, you can compare oranges and apples.
not once did i say i am smart, just a simple comparison.
I loved HP from the age of 9 to, I want to say 16-ish? I didn’t exactly grow up with it, but it was part of how I learned English and developed reading as a hobby. I was obsessed with Pottermore back when it was a web-based game with a community too. But when Pottermore was turned into extra HP lore from Rowling around when I finished high school, I read all the posts and just…didn’t like them. I distinctly remember how much I hated the Ilvermony school in particular. Which got me to start thinking more critically about the HP books and the little things that once bothered me, but I let go because I was young and charmed by the fantasy of it all. Stuff like the house-elves, the house selection process, then the worldbuilding of her wizarding world as a whole (which is quite poor if you really think about it.)
I still like the basis of a magical school, but at the age of 25 I have to say the magic of Hogwarts is gone for me. It’s a very accessible series for sure, with a good, simple writing style and a decent plot. They’re good but not as good as they seemed to me when I was younger.
Lots of people making lots of good points.
I'd like to add that Rowling did an impressive job of following her audience as they grew up, introducing more complex themes and language as her readers grew up with the series
The dark stuff doesn't really start happening until book 3 and 4. But really it was just good marketing, right place, right time, and a simple enough story that could be easily adapted to movies. Americans loved the success story of the single mom who wrote a novel on napkins in a bar in her spare time and became an overnight success. Of course it wasn't really like that. The basic premise also really spoke to children. An unhappy boy in an abusive home who learns he's magic and basically a chosen one and gets to be whisked away to a magic school and save the day? It's the perfect escape fantasy for all the lonely, depressed, friendless kids in the 90s. And there was enough details to be interesting while also having enough gaps to let kids fill in the blanks at play time.
The movies didn't start until around book 3 or 4 I think and that just added to the popularity even more. And they chose a good director to do it (though I've never been happy with the adaptation), Chris Columbus who did Home Alone, along with John Williams composing. It was a good starting point for the movies.
Also there was quite a bit of censorship and attempts at censorship back then. I don't think that's really changed since then. It's always the Evangelicals doing it. They tried to ban Harry Potter too, it was a huge deal. They thought it was like rock music or rap trying to poison children's minds and convert them to satanism. Nothing's changed.
>The dark stuff doesn't really start happening until book 3 and 4
Messages written in blood calling for the extermination of a racial minority and subsequent terror attacks by a giant snake * isn't * dark stuff?
Also a teacher turns out to be the living host of the most evil person in the world who is living on the back of his disfigured head, and tries to kill the 11 year old protagonist at the end of the first book?
Gosh y'all have a low bar for what's considered dark. Cartoons in the 90s weren't all Rugrats and Arthur. And children are regularly exposed to Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. Plus video games were getting dark too. Harry Potter is just imaginative by comparison.
It got popular because the internet was getting popular at the time, and the fandom exploded. Wheel of Time also got that boost. I was on Theoryland and Wotmania and ran my own fan site.
Right time, right place.
Also, Rowling kept her digital rights instead of selling them to her publisher. That made her a billionaire and empowered her to interact with her fan communities.
No publisher will ever make that mistake again.
Good point about the internet.
Also maybe the internet - a place where a kid who was a nobody in real life could issue a few magic commands (this was the day of personal websites) could become a hero - might have been a reverse metaphor for Hogwarts.
I think the scholastic book deals early on can attribute to some success but I think it was just something different at the right time. I was the target demographic when the first book came out, I read it and came to school and all the kids had read it too, it wasn't like we talked to each other and made each other read it. So it's kinda weird, but I think at the time YA and youth novels were all over the place and JK hit the right level of goofy but good plot that 9 to 10 year old me wanted at the time. The movies early on though probably helped cement it, there were other youth series I loved at that time that are only getting live action adaptations now and I'm 33.
Everyone’s already covered the writing stuff so I’m not gonna go into that.
I think that story about her writing the first book on napkins in a coffee shop also played a role. I don’t remember if it’s actually true or not but I do know it was a deciding factor in my grandmother buying me the first book.
According to an interview by her, she wrote ideas on napkins but said she had access to a paper and that was where she did most of her writing. She talked a lot about how journalists were really playing up the whole "abused mum who was dirty poor with a kid" trope and how a lot of the stuff they were saying wasn't accurate. Like how she had no support (the cafe she wrote in was owned by a family member) and how her flat didn't have heat. (it did and she said that was one of the most annoying things people said about her.)
HP are not children's books. Neither are they YA books. I was introduced to them by a coworker. Both of us were in our late 40s, lol. He said, "They are not children's books!" I took a chance and purchased the first one. This turned into binge reading the next three and waiting for the new releases. And watching the movies. And re-reading the books.
They are just great storytelling. The writing style is accessible and engaging; past that, who cares about its literary merits. It's a fun, satisfying read that works for multiple age groups.
And it tweaked the noses of the religious right, so how could I resist? All that hoopla about "The books are about devil worship and should be banned!" And Barbara Bush saying, "So what? It's getting kids to read again!"
The series spawned a generation of new readers. The series never talked down to the reader, or up. It was always about the story.
Jk rowling writes dark stuff? Does His Dark Materials, Animorphs, Wings of Fire, The Jumbies, Goosebumps, or even the psychological horror known as the chocolate touch mean nothing to you?
Harry potter is tame as fuck for a middle grade speculative fiction. 0% dark. There's what, two onescreen deaths? And I think they're all in the later YA books. Tut Sutherland is out here popping people's heads off because why not.
Simpson's comic book nerds moan about the worldbuilding, as if anyone outside r/fantasy cares about the rules of quidditch and the need for a laboriously explained hard magic system - but the worldbuilding is actually pretty fantastic, at least in the first few books. It sets up such a cozy and inviting world, which combined with the school setting is just absolutely lazer focused on the fantasies of the intended audience.
Between this sub and r/worldbuilding, I've lost count of how many people out there are complaining about how the Ministry of Magic's pension system isn't functional (note: this is just a hyperbole).
As long as what I'm told makes sense to exist in the world of the book I'm reading, I'm fine with it
I've realised that when some people talk about worldbuilding they're looking at fictional worlds in the same way 'cinema sins' reviews a movie - uh oh! Jk Rowling didn't explain all the methods of magical transportation in book one! Worldbuilding hole! They're so focused on everything making logical and mathematical sense (as if a large part of Hary Potter's worldbuilding isn't deliberately making fun of overly complex bureaucracies etc) that they never even think to consider the aesthetic side, the lived in quality, the feelings evoked.
The books followed the kids growing up at the time. Hp came out when i was 8 or 9. I followed them as they were released, i was 15 when ootp was released. All a parent has to do is be aware of what their kid is reading instead of expecting everyone to do that for them.
for me it was one of the few books that read like it had current day language in it. I read it in dutch. Most of the stuff I had to read or got to read was older stuff with ancient language. HP was refreshing in its setting and its retention. It was creative and its darkness was perfect for the age. Even now I struggle to find something that grabs me like HP did as a kid.
It aged with you.
If you started reading as a preteen it got darker about in line with what you could tolerate.
(In keeping with societal norms)
So you start out with a very whimsical introduction to fantasy for those who might not normally indulge and by the end it’s all “not my Daughter you bitch” and dead relatives/second family.
It’s hard to replicate that moment in history, the election and reelection of GWB, wars of aggression, rise of the religious right and a retreat into the library… maybe it’s impossible, without a time turner since you can never be young again but… that’s the short answer.
It aged with you, in a way Goosebumps or Animorphs didn’t.
Some thoughts.
1. Harry Potter is just one of those lightning in a bottle ideas. A school for wizards. You can have basically any kind of adventure/mystery escapism side by side with more grounded coming of age "school novel" elements. Many people, especially recently say that HP is derivative of the Earthsea books but I dont really think that the latter are relatable to children in the way that HP is
2. Quality. Some people criticize HP as having mediocre prose, or for relying too much on deus ex machina, or for being formulaic, but people tend to forget how much worse other kids books at the time felt with this stuff. Hell, a lot of kids series back in the day (Animorphs, Hardy Boys, etc) were written mostly by ghost writers and had a disposable feel to them.
3. A good balance of kid stuff and adult stuff. Too much media for children comes off as kiddy, and generally kids hate being reminded that they are kids. The books have monsters, death and other stuff like that which is more challenging. Some critics complain that the series is too sexless, even the later books which are presumably for older teens, but again, this would alienate younger readers and their parents.
Harry Potter has the right mix of literary elements and juvenile elements to reach mass popularity. The plot is engaging, the mysteries and twists are exciting, the characters are memorable, and the milieu is fantastical. And Harry Potter had one more thing that no other book series hit quite the same way.
The main character grew up. At that time, this kind of children’s entertainment tended to center around static characters. Millennials were around Harry’s age when it began, and they grew up with him. This made the story endlessly relatable and appealing. And there was another thing…
A marketing campaign that created genuine excitement around the release of each new novel (each of which was reliably entertaining and exciting), combined with a movie adaptation created early on in the run of the novels (the first one came out right around the fourth book if I recall correctly). These movies were relatively faithful adaptations of their source material, at the very least capturing the general imaginative vibe of the series. So even people who didn’t jump on the reading bandwagon got sucked in to the phenomenon.
Not to mention relentless and endless news stories about the popularity of the series and how it had hooked an entire generation into reading when reading was considered to be dying in popularity. And so even adults felt obligated to read the novels. JK Rowling was a legitimate celebrity for many years.
The Potter series did just about everything right. It was in the right place at the right time, and while YMMV on the quality of the books, it’s hard to deny that the story itself is superlative and engaging. Frankly, I think the storytelling is a cut above most other books in its genre, and I feel confident that Harry Potter will continue to be read for many years.
Because they were well written, the concept and stories were appropriate for the target audience, which was ten year olds, but still complex and interesting enough to be enjoyed by adults. What set it aprt from previous witch and wizard type books was the detailed alternate reality world she created for the story to take place in.
Books targeted to middle readers and YA were more reality based, often kind of bland, and were very short. Publishers didn't trust young readers, didn't really think they would be interested in more elaborate, world-building, fantasy type stories. The top books were Goosebumps (which really dont hold up), Newberry stuff like Holes or Hatchet, and the recycled kids classics like Encyclopedia Brown or Roald Dahl. Most were really short, only 20-30k words. So it just was the first series that respected the kids as invested readers I think. And they ate it up.
And those other books were rightfully loved by us 90s kids, but there was so much boring stuff coming out trying to mimic those series. Most of it sucked. And everything targeted to boys was sports books.
To build on this, I think part of it was the fact the books seemed to "grow up" with the readers. The stories dealt with more mature subjects as they progressed, following some of the same things the readers were experiencing as they moved form childhood into early teens, into almost adults.
This probably helped with curbing reader drop out as the kids who read the books at a younger age got older.
Barnes & Noble and Borders didn't even have a YA section when the first two HP books came out, and my library had a single half-full shelf hidden near the adult section. YA wasn't really a marketing category before HP basically reorganized the landscape.
If anyone understood the reason, lots of other writers would have achieved similar success before and after. But it doesn't work like that. Publishing is like a lottery. When your book it published, you get a ticket. Maybe it wins the big jackpot, maybe it wins a smaller prize, maybe it wins no prize at all.
For the ticket to be worth anything at all, the book needs to be at least as good as the worst book to ever become a best-seller. This isn't a very high bar. Mostly a ticket is a ticket.
Once you've had some success, you'll have some reliable fans and the publishers will look at you with dollar signs in their eyes, so you're likely to win some prizes even with a ticket that would have been a losing ticket before. This can be built up over time.
But, provided your story is better than the worst bestseller ever published and it's in a category that sometimes produces bestsellers, it's pretty much a lottery. Harry Potter won the lottery, and the wild success of the first book guaranteed the success of more of the same, provided it didn't deviate too wildly from the original.
They're just very good. I was an adult and picked up book 4, I think it was, at someone else's house. I got hooked and bought the ones I'd missed and the new ones as released.
She writes in very accessible language, but the world she built was very complex. It was obviously very well planned, so you trusted the reveals to come were going to be as interesting as what you'd already read.
She paced it all expertly and always gave you a sense of completion with each book while keeping you eager for the next. And no one had read that story before. It wasn't some repackaged Tolkien.
She really deserves all the success she's achieved.
Your lucky you picked up the only book with decent pacing. I guarantee you if you looked at her Harry Potter series with even one critical eye you might notice that half of your points are grounded in positive bias, not fact.
I agree that nostalgia is keeping the stuff relevant. Her latest book, in the cormoran strike series is over 960 pages long and apparently has lots of issues in pacing as well. Thats ignoring everything else.
Yep. That's why Jim Butcher hit the same home run in 1997 as well. Not to mention, video games were not near as good in that time. Children read less and less every year since Harry Potter. And, you couldn't go on Kindle unlimited and download hundreds of urban fantasy Niche novels like you can today
Everyone has made some great points so far, and I wanted to add one thing- her books grew with her audience. The books were super popular with a specific age group, and they grew in complexity as that age group grew older. It allowed the kids who would normally stop reading a series after they got older to continue reading them. It was very well thought out.
As a kid, it was her output. She wasn't even my favorite in retrospect, she just had a very accessible writing style and kept pumping out material that I could talk about with other kids who hadn't read Animorphs, Goosebumps, Fear Street, or the Artemis Fowl (all of which I felt more strongly about) and then she got a MFING movie deal and people were having midnight parties and all this stuff centralized at the book store, it just felt like a good time to be an over eager reader and I think JK Rowling rose very readily to the spotlight in a way I don't see with other children series authors did (even the Goosebump GOAT R.L Stone)
Like A Series of Unfortunate Events was wonderful and got it's due with a live action series but nobody got the insane push HP got and it has everything to do with fandom IMHO.
Harry Potter really captures the worldview of early adolescence. Grown-ups are simultaneously clueless, but also hyper-competent, the way the world works is hard to understand, you and your friends are the center of the world, and that world is starting to expand drastically yet is still pretty small. Sex is vaguely out there but still undefined. (None of the adults in Harry Potter seem to have sex, and they mostly marry their high school sweethearts).
Rowling is a terrible plotter but a great storyteller and is amazing at characterization, much like Charles Dickens.
Sorry idk...I tried to read them...I guess ...OK for some...I was into dr Doolittle when I was young...witchcraft and stuff. Never got it I guess...but she made a fortune appealing to the masses I guess...sorry for my lack of...
Childrens books back then were 100% more censored, Harry Potter wasnt read in any religious household for years and years due to witchcraft in the books.
A BIG part that I think has been forgotten is that in 1999 MANY adults were excited about the books and were a considerable part of the hype.
I was 26 and waited in line at a Barnes & Noble at midnight to buy Goblet of Fire and there were plenty of other adults there. In the following week most of the adults I worked with had read the book.
I can’t think of another book written for kids that has had anywhere near this amount of buzz among adults. This was all before the movies even got made.
I'd say it's cos of the premise:
>11 year old boy who has to live in a cupboard literally under the stairs, like some kind of urban troll, suddenly gets a letter that tells him that he's been accepted into a literal school of magic, and then a huge "bear" of a man turns up and goes "Ye're a wizard!" And performs magic in front of his very eyes, then whisks him away from his personal hell and into a world full of wonder where everyone looks at him with awe cos he survived something thought impossible to survive as a literal baby.
Try telling anyone in a life they don't enjoy that can happen and they'll go wild for it. For those who are too old, it's more "If only that could have happened to me" lol
Thinking back to when I was heavy into them in middleschool, they're great imagination fodder for kids who are into fantasty. There's so much to work with to project yourself into and use as escapism- Which house are you in, what pet would you have, what classes would be your favorite, what type of wand would you have, what's your patronus, etc etc etc.
All the ingredients for an imaginative kid to enmesh themselves in in an individualized way that other series didn't quite have. They really made you feel like you could imagine yourself in the world.
It hit the exact right moment in time where this aspect could explode in online spaces, fandom culture really took off and that's definitely a major factor.
Looking back on the books, they were pretty meh, but I still remember how deeply I could throw myself into the world, even if in retrospect the worldbuilding is near nonexistant.
Early viral marketing.
I'm not saying this to disparage the books - I enjoyed them.
But Warner Brothers owned a ton of news media and magazines and online outlets and used them all to stealth promote the series.
I remember it feeling like it was everywhere before most people I knew had actually read it. It was being mentioned by characters in movie promos and discussed in news segments (the single mum who wrote on napkins! the little kids who just love reading so much! the nasty censors threatening a beloved children's book), and being part of sponsored events at bookstores that, for some reason, I just assumed were organic and not like the corporate things they were.
And obviously that wouldn't have worked if the story was unreadable crap. It had to be lovable enough to sustain the hype. But if you're wondering why it became a phenomenon when so many other great things didn't... that's why.
Here's a pretty good video looking into it, though the history of promotion starts about 10 minutes in:
https://youtu.be/UBftW7FzOVI?si=emOdHaUZ2DjtOjjk
I wouldn’t say J.K. wrote “dark stuff”. The first few books were pretty basic books, nothing too extreme. When it gets more dark is in the later books. Which makes sense bc they were written for the kids who grew up with the first few books. So the later books “grew up” with the kids. They became “harder” to read, more complex, much longer, and they became more dark
To the best of my knowledge it was the first instance of the School for Wizards trope that was actually something a young person might want to read.
The story itself begins where a lot of young people are, not physically but mentally; he is cut off from the people who truly care about him, instead having to endure an environment where indifference is the best he can hope for. A lot of young people, and a lot of adults, really do feel that way, and so they can identify with him.
Then he finds out that he is *special*, and gets to go into a fun new world and have adventures. The reader can live vicariously through that.
The books aren’t that dark. Anyway, success is mostly about right place, right time. The books definitely have strong points, things it does very well, but becoming the mega hit that it did boiled down to a lot of luck. It came out right as the internet was becoming more of a thing and was one of the first works to get an online community, which really boosted it.
I disagree. I think a lot of people genuinely fell in love with them. I didn’t read them until quite late because I thought the premise seemed silly and I was a bit of a ‘not like other girls girl’ so I thought they were too mainstream. Then I watched one of the movies and fell in love with the world, and read all of the books in like a month after.
Mass popularity is, like, 90 percent luck. It doesn't how poorly written or well written, how poorly marketed or well marketed, how audience pleasing or audience turning it is, things just pop off sometimes.
Marketing - and not-so-nice manipulation of the market, either. It's a good (relatable) story and well-enough written, but more importantly, it's a voluminous story; filing the shelves matters. And let's not discount luck. But mostly, it was the marketing. Wasn't it mentioned in at least TWO major movies?? I don't know how much that placement cost, but priceless it was.
Marketing? Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers and then the publisher that finally accepted it only printed 500 copies. It grew popular by word of mouth.
She borrowed a very popular formula that had already been tested in one of the most popular sci fi films of all time.
You’ve got to remember that back then JKR was a mediocre writer but an incredible philanthropist. There was a good reason everyone was supporting her and singing her praises.
Now she’s gone off the deepens but her creation has reached critical mass and it’s got a life of its own. Even if JKR has become awful it would never put a dent in a franchise that people fetishise.
Nostalgia. Kids don't have a good sense of good storytelling or writing, just adventure. The series scaled with the same age group who liked the first ones, and pretty much every single person I've ever met who liked Harry Potter only likes them because they read the books when they were young. The power of nostalgia cannot be denied
You are, alas, mistaken. I loved the first Harry Potter book when I encountered it in my late thirties. My eldest son was in grade school at the time. Though I must admit I never made it to the end of the series and rather regretted not stopping with *Chamber of Secrets.*
It’s hardly exceptions. Have you seen footage of bookstores on release dates for the HP books? It’s *not* just a crowd of children or teens, lol. Adults were in love with the series too.
I’m not saying HP is the best written thing to exist (I recently commented on this sub critiquing it, actually). But it had a quite universal appeal for its creativity and atmosphere.
Marketing. The story of unemployed single mother was a mockery she had wealthy friends and family propping her up. It is a good series and it is clever to incrementally improve grammar for a developing child audience to understand. I was a little thrown by the big words in the last book. Not because I didn't understand but because I'd gone from simplistic explanations in the first book to big words and SOME nuance in the last. But it got as big as it did due to marketing.
Honestly I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again the only reason Harry Potter was as successful as it is and has such a chokehold on pop culture is because it was marketed towards middle grade children.
And it continues to cloud people’s perception of it because of nostalgia when quite frankly the overall story is shallow, the world building makes no sense, and if memory serves correct a stolen idea.
And it’s cultural zeitgeist perplexes me because I swear these people haven’t read any other book.
Harry Potter was also well-marketed. I think the first time I learned of it was a copy of Time Magazine in a doctor's office, oddly enough. There was a two page spread outlining the world of Harry Potter, that interested me. All of the backlash against it (There is magic in it, it's satanic!) only served to further advertise it's existence, showing kids on the news lining up to read Harry Potter (What's it about? Let's ask...) etc.
I think because, as other has said, those books are written for kids but not with a condescending tone and also because the tone and theme “grow up” books after books just like the readers and therefore they became books that even older kids can enjoy.
For example, I don’t see this kind of writing with Percy Jackson: the tone is childish from the first book to the last one and there isn't any kind of growth.
Great world building, and written in a way that appealed to the adults that were often reading the books to kids.
Also, they didn’t start as dark. They got darker with each book. Children were able to mature with the books.
I think it’s mostly the setting and the world-building. Hogwarts is an escape for kids with bad home lives; it’s warm, whimsical, and welcoming, but also mysterious and exciting. There’s a reason why people visit Leavesden, and come back again and again! I don’t think it’s so much the story and the characters as it’s the place.
It takes something the target audience has experience with (school), adds magical elements but uses them in unconventional ways (a sport based on broom flying), and builds a world of relatable characters with the protagonists being a group of close knit ordinary kids.
So it has several well established (but perhaps dormant ) genres. The idealized school experience , the close knit group of kids, the expanding magical land, and the battle of good vs evil.
all magic that we imagine as kids are there on the books/movies..wands, flying brooms, a wizard master, mystical/mythical creatures, objects coming to life, colors, holiday settings, castle, dragons etc.. who wouldn't want to watch that amazing series that have all of adventures we wanted to see? kids characters being kids (relatable), all things magic and enchanted..that's what kids want to feel and see
I was 11 when the first book was published. And finding out you're secretly part of a magical other world is pretty much the most amazing fantasy an 11-year-old can conceive of. You're still young enough to be whimsical, but old enough to see that the real world is kinda lame sometimes.
And dark?! Man, did you read Animorphs as a kid? That shit is bleak.
For one thing, the story has a wish fulfillment kind of thing. One day a normal kid living in the normal world learns that he is special and gets to leave and go to somewhere special. (Ignoring his terrible life at his aunt and uncles just to focus on this part of it). There is this hidden world existing right under our noses. Maybe you’re part of that world too.
Middle grades to YA books are censored now? TIL OP has never read Mysterious Benedict Society, Miss Peregrine, Keeper of the Lost Cities, Land of Stories. Heck, the later books of Harry Potter are squarely YA which means they’re competing against the Scythe, Unwound, Hunger Games, and Maze Runner series as far as dark themes. I would say HP is the least disturbing of any of those.
No matter what shit comes out of JKR's mouth these days, and no matter how many flaws I can now see in her writing, whenever I periodically decide to read or listen to the HP books again I immediately get it every time. Imo I think she does a very good job of constantly hinting at there being more to learn about this world, but only actually revealing a bit at a time. I can't really explain it, but every time I've gone back to them I just understand why they captured the minds of an entire generation.
Wish fulfilment. There hadn't been too many "magic academia" stories before it that were as "school" focused as Harry Potter was. It was more relatable. Sure, you had Chronicles of Narnia, The Magicians Trilogy" and others. But those felt too much like fantasy, while Harry Potter felt like it was "grounded".
Right place right time, combined with JKR's style. While she's far from an exceptional writer, she's not bad, either, and she had a strong narrative voice for the books that was playful but not too condescending towards kids. YA was pretty dry at the time and you had your choice between much more mature books or stuff that was too "kiddy" I think, and she struck the perfect balance of mature and not too serious. She also spent a lot of time on the worldbuilding which, while basic, had a lot of cool little things for kids to imagine and wonder about. It was the perfect self-insert story which is what kids like.
>perfect self insert Your last paragraph is so true, this was a big part of the appeal for me psychologically. Reading these books aged 10-11 it’s very easy to imagine the world she paints in those first few books and see yourself getting a letter one summer and going there. This is why the first book is arguably the best, it pulls this off very effectively the first time, from nothing. It only takes her a few pages to have you on board and she steadily opens up the wizard ing world over the course of the first act. The whole introduction to wizarding and Hogwarts, from the acceptance letter to the sorting hall of the castle is just perfect. I used to have dreams about it as a kid. The “you’re a wizard, Harry”, diagon alley, platform 9 3/4 and the train, the boats over the lake! You may hear people nitpick Harry Potter today but I never see anyone go after this, the best part of the books, the hook that captivated a generation of readers for a decade.
Just from outside observation of the fan community (I've never read the books or watched the films), it's like J.K. Rowling had optimised it in a lab to be the most fertile soil possible for a fandom to be created out of nothing. The students being from our real world, as you say, means the fantasy of you and your friends going to Hogwarts is tantalisingly solid. The OC fan-fiction almost writes itself, you just need to imagine stepping off that train. Of particular genius is the houses; not only is it something tactile to colour your own identity in this fantasy world, as well as an ice-breaker/argument starter with other fans ("Which house would you join?"), the houses themselves strongly overlap with popular character archetypes in other media, especially those aimed at kids. Is your favourite character in any show or book the 'smart one'? Ravenclaw is a whole house of characters like that. Prefer brooding edgelords? Slytherin's perfect for you. By making your decision, you're already just a little bit emotionally committed to this world.
The houses did work. People get off on nitpicking and plotholing HP and Rowling now but she really did achieve something with those books, they were exciting, new yet relateable. I picked Hufflepuff as a kid almost 20 years ago, had a hat and everything, I ended up becoming a stoner haha
There's a reason the common room is near the kitchens lmao
Seriously. You can't convince me otherwise. xD Those little badgers are on nightly raids with the munches.
It's not just the houses, either. Whats your pateronus? What wand would you have? What broom would you fly, what per would you own? She added a million different ways that her readers could express themselves
This is probably coming a bit late in the conversation. Just a note on the cultural side of things. Houses are common in the school system in the UK. So this not a major brilliant idea JR pulled out of her hat. Rather it is a nice inspired addition that made Hogwarts even more convincing and relatable to British young kids. Check out Wikipedia it’s pretty interesting! (I’m Not from the uk btw so I used to think like you) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_system?wprov=sfti1
Yep, I've gone back to read the sorcerors stone specifically to understand how she built in the backstory. Really good stuff, and not confusing or convoluted.
"Perfect self-insert story" is exactly the lightning in a bottle it captured IMO. Mistreated kid gets whisked away to a magical castle where now he's a wealthy and talented celebrity and hero? Sign me up! Also, just the idea of exploring Hogwarts sounds like a blast, and the setting is given so much color and so many fun details. Honestly, the later books lost me (even as a kid) once the plot holes and questionable stuff really started to make themselves plain, but I totally get why 1-4 were a phenomenon despite the fact that they also had issues.
The funny thing is that the translations of the books (at least the Greek ones) are very much children-oriented, even when JKR's originals went the YA route after the second one.
Well they're still children's books, which is why a lot of people just... move on from them. It's just that she managed to write in a tone that let tweens/early teens not feel 5-8 years old.
People also aren't mentioning the fact that the books matured gradually as the characters and the original target audience aged. That was an impressive writing skill.
It's a cool trick but I dunno about impressive. Coming of age stories do that regularly, with Joyce having the most extreme example nearly 100 years earlier.
Or Little Women.
Great point!
I'd definitely consider the 4th-7th books YA at least. The 6th book in particular is almost *too* YA with all of the "snogging" that constantly occurs.
I think this is another reason the books remained popular. They grew up with the readers.
Yes, I was so old at the time I just read them and then read something else
>Well they're still children's books, which is why a lot of people just... move on from them. r/readanotherbook begs to differ.
Yeah that's why I said a lot and not all or even most. Even the threads in other subs you get people who just clearly won't move on even if they're 30+ now.
Can you elaborate on how the translation is more childish than the English? I'm learning Greek right now, and had considered picking up the Harry Potter series as something easy to read that I'm fairly familiar with already.
Totally agree. I was 11 and in the UK when Philosopher’s Stone came out, so was the prime demographic. At that point, for fantasy, there were Tamora Pierce’s series, TA Barron’s Merlin books, and Redwall, and most everything else I remember was sci-fi or horror (animorphs/goosebumps). Nothing really combined present-day POV/characters with speculative elements. It was easy to get immersed in. For all her faults, JK painted some vivid, concise settings. And I also think she managed to do something smart, market-wise (even though it sucks this worked or needed to be done). She chose a gender-neutral pseudonym and made the main character a boy in a bad situation. In ‘97, we (girls) were always consuming media with boys as the main characters, but boys were rarely doing the same (at least, not in my experience). So JK’s choice opened up her market to all YA genders. Goosebumps did that, as well, but ofc had a very different tone. JK tapped into a need to be seen and to be heroic that we all felt.
>While she's far from an exceptional writer, she's not bad, either, Except she is an exceptional writer. She literally wrote the books that defined an entire generation.
I love it when people try and downplay her accomplishments. Like sure, of you try and compare her to Narnia or the Lord of the rings, the two works that always seem to come up when people dunk on her, it may not seem the best, but come on
McDonald's defines our food culture - is it exceptional cooking? Is the MCU the peak of cinema?
Mcdonalds is delicious, and the MCU is peek cinema, actually, especially the first 10 years, and it's still great today. Not everything has to be some profound, life-changing piece of work or art to be exceptional.
Fair enough, we just see the world and art very differently! Now you know why I call her unexceptional, though, even if you don't agree.
Another is the books were very different from everything at the time. The idea of a fantasy book series taking place in school, the kid not having a nice family, being long, and lasting for multiple books was considered something kids wouldn't want to read, which is why it was rejected several times.
There was also the internet factor. HP was published around the time that regular use of the internet was becoming more common, which resulted in lots of fan communities springing up. That crossed with the number of world building questions to ask plus the amount of mystery in the later books led to a huge volume of fan discussion, speculation and fiction which also served to boost the series’ popularity.
For sure, I remember that the internet both was how I got the book (lol early Amazon) and how I stayed involved, joining an HP community my friends at school pushed me to on one of those shitty proto-social media sites.
Ahh, the days of the Snape Brides.
I always credit JK with having created a book series that effectively grew up with its fans. Stone, Chamber, Prisoner, Goblet, all follow a pretty structured horror buildup, up to straight up moidah in Goblet. After that it starts to wrestle complicated concepts like 'victimless crimes,' kids stepping in where they shouldn't and the nature of our feelings as humans and our responsibility to them vs others. Those books grew up with me. I never finished the series, but I remember Deathly starting pretty wildly vicious too so I recall feeling that this must have been the final book as it even *began* with a sense of finality.
Perfectly encapsulated.
It wasn’t just kids who were reading harry potter
At least for my age, I think you nailed it on the fact that there weren't a ton of great books out there that scratched the same itch. I was 4 when the first book came out and I don't know, was maybe 6 or so when I started reading them. The only other books I remember reading at the time were Redwall. Then Eragon when I was closer to 10 or so. Most of the books we read in school were dry. I think the only ones I truly remember are Hatchet, The Giver, and Running Out of Time. I was never an HP superfan, but being both fantastical and set in the present day was unique, and really struck a chord.
why are you saying she's far from an exceptional writer whats so far about it?
Because my standards for an exceptional writer are Woolf, Nabokov, Pynchon, Joyce, Emily Bronte or Saint-Exupery. She's nowhere close to that level of prose or depth even with the writers who wrote for children.
harry potter didn't need much prose or depth did it?
No, because it's a children's book that isn't aiming to be anything more than that (as opposed to, say Saint-Exupery whose children's book is one of the peaks of 20th century literature). That's fine, really, but "I wasn't trying to be deep" doesn't make you an exceptional writer, either. She's fine. She's not peak of the artform, and doesn't have to be.
It’s also extremely commercially oriented. It was a gift to capitalist companies, straight up.
For sure and JKR isn't rich from book sales only it's largely selling little plastic wands and licensing for parks and stuff.
The books were fine and well paced but even as a child you could tell the world building was far less developed then other fantasy novels.
Bad take; unless by ‘fantasy novels’ you mean the hardcore nerd-level series where the writing isn’t that great so they try to compensate with an absurd amount of complexity.
Hi, I didn’t mean to insult your sensibilities. The Harry Potter books excel at story and character. Although an expansive world just hidden underneath our own is developed, it is with much less forethought than the characters themselves. There is clearly a lot of planning in the horcrux storyline seeded from book 1, or snapes allegiances and betrayals, or really any of the characters story arcs. The journey has appropriate set ups and pay offs. But the world building just doesn’t. I don’t think there were guiding principles to how magic works in her world. Introducing apparition and floo powder requires esoteric rules for why one would exist when the other does too. Also, many say the time turner was a plot hole but I think it’s more than that; I think there wasn’t consideration to whether magic in the HP universe should easily be able to manipulate time. Aurors and the order of the phoenix fight death eaters using the same spells Harry learned as a first year student - this took be out of the book while I was reading and left me wondering what Harry aspires for in becoming an Auror if he’s already just as good as them. I’m not trying to nitpick rules like some “hardcore nerd” - these decisions impact the plot in ways that are disappointing for some readers and requires JKR to explain away issues that arise. Again, the time turner is one the the best known examples. But it also causes interesting plot threads to be dropped. In the final book, conflict escalates to international war involving giants, centaurs and werewolves. When I read book 7 I was excited to see Hagrid and death eaters compete for vying alliances but this all occurs off-screen (off page?). Centaurs introduced in the first book are barely brought back. I cannot say for certain this is due to lack of world building vs plot efficiency, but that was always my impression.
>Centaurs introduced in the first book are barely brought back. Centaurs are seen throughout the series. They are the ones who ran off with Umbridge, sure. One even becomes a Hogwarts teacher... They live in the forest so we're not going to see them all the time.
No, I read the first book at six years old and I distinctly remember thinking that it was odd that the wizards didn't have guns and that their entire civilization agreed to maintain not just total anonymity, but such an incredible degree of segregation that (when the second book rolled around a few year slater) Rons dad was so bad at muggle culture despite 1) working with muggle technology for a living, and 2) *living in England and having business in London*. The place isn't exactly void and empty. The worldbuilding is fun but it's shock full of holes.
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I'm not american lol But a bullet is faster than an Avada Kedavra sorry lol
You can see the obvious answer to the question "how do you kill a modern wizard" in other media like Fate, where the answer is in fact "shoot them with a gun" lol. And Fate wizards are much more powerful in general, even.
No. It's pretty shallow world building compared to other basic, popular fantasy series. No need for ultra nerd levels like Anathem or anything like that. Just generic YA fantasy.
I can’t believe more people aren’t saying this. I quit reading after the fifth book came out. Ate through that shit in like two days and abruptly realized that this was not a good book at all. And frankly, the writing in the series is what makes it bad. Lot of the folks downvoting must have missed everything that was out at the time, because I recall moving on to a couple of series from Darren Shan and being relieved that it was far less dumb. Books that aren’t really that great are always going to be popular. They’re more accessible, the reader doesn’t get frustrated and there’s few hard moments or questions. That’s why adults were carrying around Twilight books for a while. They want something easy.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. Dan Brown’s book come to mind; most people don’t read high minded philosophical novels, they read simple, easy and fun things that they can enjoy without much effort. A less toxic version of the trait that probably supports populist politicians. Writing ‘bad’ is not a bad way to make something that can appeal to a larger audience.
>Right place right time This abject nonsense is repeated so many times in the top answers. Why do you kids believe it's credible that in 1997 there were millions of people just hanging out waiting for a whimsical Britishy book about a boy with a silly name who goes to a magic school with a sillier one? Because I was there, and nobody was waiting for that. If it hadn't come out then, and instead came out now, it wouldn't sell a single book less. It succeeded in spite of it's intense "wrong place, wrong time" - ness, and any narrative trying to pretend otherwise is a bizarre attempt to downplay some incredibly, unusually good storytelling.
All great successes are right place, right time, though. Countless genius works have gone unnoticed because they never had the chance to shine, countless mediocre works have succeeded because they got lucky. Worldwilde levels of fame and success aren't some direct conversion of skill/work -> success.
1. Dark compared to what? Have you read old fairy tales meant for kids? Many of the old stories involve kids being eaten or taken due to reason. In "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats", six of the kids (goatlings) get eaten by a wolf who pretends to be their mother. Later, the mother cuts open the belly of the wolf, releases her kids, puts rocks inside of his belly, and said wolf drowns in a lake. And this is not the darkest by far. 2. It's simply good - decent writing, interesting, okay pace 3. Attractive to the target audience - kids go on an adventure into a wonderful new world (if you don't think about some of the nuances of the world), cause a lot of mischief at a school... 4. Right place right time 5. The kids are shown doing fun, wonderful things in a magical world that real kids can relate to wanting. I mean, who wouldn't want a flying broom?
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Around when the fourth was released my mom got me into the books. Sometime back in ~2000-2001 I think, same time that the first movie was coming out. The release of the fifth book was massive. And honestly the reason I got fluent in English, as I couldn't wait for an entire year for the book to be translated to my native tongue. First book I read in English from start to beginning. This was in small Finnish towns.
Yes this was very confusing, what is the OP reading that they think modern ya books aren't dark, what the what.
I mean...I have read a lot less darker books in my time that were meant for kids (Artemis Fowl deals with death but not quite as seriously as Harry Potter, and the The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel rarely got too dark or too into death and the like). Young reader books in my time (the 80s) were things like the hidden door which was the equivalent to Escape to Witch Mountain or the sequel to E.T. the Green Planet or the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. Then again in the 80s even comic books were more mild than now days.
Young reader books in the 80’s were pretty much before YA as a category even existed. So, any kids book had to be family friendly/appropriate for all ages. Now, MG books (middle grade books, including the entire Artemis Fowl series) are still about the same level of darkness as Escape to Witch Mountain, but YA books (particular the older end of YA books) are free to have a whole lot more darkness. Harry Potter changed age categories with its original readership from MG to YA to Upper YA, and the darkness in the last HP book is very much in line with what you see in a lot of YA that’s aimed at older teens.
>Have you read old fairy tales meant for kids? Most people would immediately assume based on context that they are comparing against contemporary books of the time, not against ancient folk fables.
Can we really say they're comparing to contemporary books of the time when in the same sentence they make a comment about nowadays children's books being more censored (and are they?).
Really depends on where you live. In ultra-conservative America? Absolutely. The only books they want you reading are "good" "christian" books, and not anything that might teach their kids any of that "sinful" librul snowflake nonsense such as critical thinking or freedom of expression.
I think it was Roald Dahl who said something to the effect that children’s stories can be written darker than adult stories because kids always have faith that things will work out in the ene.
Yeah, fairy tales are dark but at that point, Disney had pretty much watered them down so much that most kids are more familiar with those versions than the actual versions. Even books copying the fairy tales not made by Disney were copying their formula.
> Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights. -- J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy ([relevant video](https://youtu.be/4As0e4de-rI?t=2923)) Look at [XKCD 1472](https://xkcd.com/1472/), or perhaps at the [overview of Myst island](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dni/images/5/58/Mystisland.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20200815014117). Those places look fun to explore because they have a high density of unique points of interest. When there's only one of everything, learning more about them feels rewarding. Harry Potter's initial appeal was similar - it's very emotionally immersive. That's different from the usual way "immersive" is used in sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, which implies a degree of plausibility (or tax policies, according to GRRM). The Wizarding world feels very snug, inviting and simple (at least in the first 3-4 books), woven together by a steady stream of lore. It's very clearly defined - four houses coded in primary colors, one book for each of Harry's school years etc. It's very easy to ponder how you would fare as a student there - which house would you get sorted in? Who would you be friends with? What would the Mirror of Erised show you? What would be your boggart or patronus? It also grew up along with its characters. In the later books the naive aspects faded away, since they were no longer needed. At that point, the series' appeal has shifted to the subversion of previously established notions, as well as to going to unexpectedly dark places. Also, the steady stream of lore continued throughout.
Strong story, simple storytelling, good marketing. Can someone show examples of books that are allegedly as good, but never sold well? Because all examples I have seen thus far are self-explaining why they won't sell.
Interesting. Can you give examples?
That's what I was sort of asking. Because every example I have seen I have already forgotten exactly because of that. :D
If you take two random books from that time, aimed at the same audience, one will be better than Harry Potter and the other will be worse.
In terms of literature a good book may be terrible in terms of marketing. This aspect seems to be misunderstood on routine by many writers. The writing style and the book itself may be exceptional, but it just lacks strong plot, branding and distinguishability, simple archetypes, monomyth and shared values. As far as I see, most books fall in this category. Books that win literature awards do not usually equal with books that well well on the generic market.
Exactly. Look at the biggest selling books of the 21st century: * Harry Potter. * Twilight. * 50 Shades of Grey. You'd have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to say that they are "good" books, but they were popular.
It doesn't take much to call HP and even Twilight "good" maybe not great or legendary or whatever you want to say but they are well executed strong stories with compelling characters that captivated lots of readers 50 shades comes with the sex/porn aspect as well which means you can assign less weight to how well it sold I think.
Thank you for proving my point. Also, I think you're on your alt.
What does that mean
It means they think there can't possibly be two separate people who disagree with them so it's obviously one person logging in on multiple accounts to say that the books weren't bad
Mistborn?
Mistborn didn't sell well??
Unlike 99% of middle grade fiction (the first three books) it doesn't talk down to the reader. Most fiction aimed at kids that age is clearly an adult talking to children rather than just telling the story.
\- I would say that the books are good and quality content spreads much more easily than the bland or bad. \- They have a very simple, but intriguing premise, so an advertiser or friend can hook you very quickly \- Books targeting middle/high schoolers tend to be rarer and lower quality, so it is an easier market \- The movies were quite good, and far more people watch movies than books, so that is likely a large driver of success.
Well on your last point, the movies definitely helped in the long run, but they only got made because the first book was super sucessful. There was articles back then that Harry Potter was making kids read again, all before the movies.
Regular release schedule. All books written and ready to go. Great movies. Easy to read prose. Fulfills fantasy of both being a wizard and "the cool kid" at high school. Target demo started YA and because Rowling had regular yearly releases, her books could age with her demo. Other authors can't do that if they don't release regularly.
I constantly see people putting down her writing and world building and saying she’s mid to bad. They’re wrong, the series has great writing and she gave it an excellent voice that spoke to kids and got an entire generation into reading. Undermining her work and just calling it simple luck is insulting, she made a great, if flawed, world and did a great job making it palatable not only to kids but to adults as well. It also translated well to the big screen which further catapulted its success. I would even say the religious outlash that caused book burnings just made it even more successful. Everywhere I went growing up, kids would talk about it, parents would talk about, teachers would talk about it. People could be in entirely different walks of life and social circles and they would still talk about it together. They could have never picked up a book before or already have been passionate readers and they all loved it. YA books came out afterwards that had some of the love and success but she did it in a way that captured the imaginations of more than just the target audience and that is why it is so well loved.
It's ridiculous. They are fantastic books. The writing is beautiful, inspiring, and still holds up when I read it now as 32 year old adult. The world building is amazing. I grew up in this magical world and it's annoying how it's become popular to shit on these stories.
Am 47 and still love to re read them. Lot of people who only know the HP movies probably don’t know that JK Rowling made kids love to read again. By themselves, not because they were told too. Every time a new book came out you better made sure you reserved a copy at your local bookstore otherwise you would miss out! I walked into a lantern on my way back home after picking up book 2 from the book store and read-walking back home 😆.
Your not the only one who grew up with the books into adulthood, and not to say you don't try and think of books in a critical lense, but have you tried, for one moment, sat down and thought at least about the house elves? Or even the last books poor worldbuilding, or considered how bad the prose is? I'm not saying you should hate it, but I don't think, considering the popular opinion is praise for it, that is should be looked at uncritically.
>books came out afterwards that had some of the love and success It's important to understand that this was a *direct result* of Pottermania: "OK, because of HP I have started reading books for fun again (or for the first time), but I've finished all the HP books, so I'll find something to read next...". Hunger games, Artemis Fowl, Twilight, Lemony Snicket, and many others were boosted from mild success to million-sellers-with-film-adaptations because the frequent-novel-reading market was suddenly tens of millions of people larger - due entirely to Harry.
My personal theory is that the series became so popular because it is perfectly crafted for fandom. The school houses act like a mini personality test, so your Hogwarts house becomes part of your personality. There is a VAST cast of characters, so plenty of options for people to find characters, couples, and scenarios to write fanfics about. The world building is both familiar and yet complex enough that someone can easily take the world and create their own stories within in. JKR crafted so many objects and food items and things that could be turned into merchandise. The series was, perhaps accidentally, perhaps on purpose, crafted to become a fandom powerhouse and it worked.
JKR reportedly was writing books for her own kids before they ever became published and became best sellers. Think of it this way. You are writing stories for your kids, you write the first few for 8-9 yos and then your kids grow a bit past those so you start writing for your kids as they grow and the books grow with them. I haven't read the books myself, my daughter loves the living heck out of them though, but if they follow a timeline at all like the movies then you can see how the tone is a lot lighter for the first two-three stories before starting to get heavier and darker. I am not certain of course because I wasn't there publishing or writing her books with her, but I would wager that shows the growth in her children as she wrote the material. I could be wrong and there are certainly Harry Potter experts out there more adept than I so I will defer to them in the end.
I think it's because they were incredible. I remeber being 15 and reading the first one, I couldn't believe how good it was, I couldn't stop reading. And I was a book-worm, I read so many books before them. They still felt over-the-top amazing. I had to tell everybody about it. And that's how I found about them, because friends who read them also had to everybody about it. And that was when just the two first were out, they weren't dark at all. They were just *so good.* I don't think there was any other reason for their success other than their quality. They were simply that good.
Yeah the other answers are so bizarrely determined to pretend they weren't that good and it was just "the right time" or "good marketing" or "because of the movies" (LOL) or something. No, they were so unusually good that they spread like wildfire through word of mouth.
They made me feel warm and at home. Hogwarts was a place where anyone feeling unloved could go to feel like they belong. There were troubles, yes but there is also friendship, light, learning and love. There’s so much wonder in the HP books and I’m still, 20 years on, yet to find a book as compelling as the HP series.
They were. The plot twists, the fantastical world, the humour, the characters that feel like actual people and the allegories of real world issues and politics that are used to teach children and help them empathise. People are very quick to denigrate the series (in no small part because of JKR trashing her reputation and credibility), but they are wonderful books.
It's very interesting lookin at younger you's perspective compared to today. Like you, I love Harry Potter, but now, as a 23 year old, to compare it to, lets say, Crime and Punishment, HP looks abysmal.
Those are two completely different types of book trying to do completely different things. Crime and Punishment is a *terrible* children's book
Why on earth would you compare Harry Potter to Crime and Punishment?? 🤣 🙄 I'm 32 and I still think HP is fantastically written. You have to compare it to things within it's genre. It's like comparing Gaurdians of the Galaxy to Citizen Kane. r/iamverysmart
due to the magnitude of its influence and how much people revere em. contrary to popular belief, you can compare oranges and apples. not once did i say i am smart, just a simple comparison.
I loved HP from the age of 9 to, I want to say 16-ish? I didn’t exactly grow up with it, but it was part of how I learned English and developed reading as a hobby. I was obsessed with Pottermore back when it was a web-based game with a community too. But when Pottermore was turned into extra HP lore from Rowling around when I finished high school, I read all the posts and just…didn’t like them. I distinctly remember how much I hated the Ilvermony school in particular. Which got me to start thinking more critically about the HP books and the little things that once bothered me, but I let go because I was young and charmed by the fantasy of it all. Stuff like the house-elves, the house selection process, then the worldbuilding of her wizarding world as a whole (which is quite poor if you really think about it.) I still like the basis of a magical school, but at the age of 25 I have to say the magic of Hogwarts is gone for me. It’s a very accessible series for sure, with a good, simple writing style and a decent plot. They’re good but not as good as they seemed to me when I was younger.
I stopped reading beyond the 7. Dont meet your heroes vibe. Dont start with jk herself. Big hmmmm.
Lots of people making lots of good points. I'd like to add that Rowling did an impressive job of following her audience as they grew up, introducing more complex themes and language as her readers grew up with the series
The dark stuff doesn't really start happening until book 3 and 4. But really it was just good marketing, right place, right time, and a simple enough story that could be easily adapted to movies. Americans loved the success story of the single mom who wrote a novel on napkins in a bar in her spare time and became an overnight success. Of course it wasn't really like that. The basic premise also really spoke to children. An unhappy boy in an abusive home who learns he's magic and basically a chosen one and gets to be whisked away to a magic school and save the day? It's the perfect escape fantasy for all the lonely, depressed, friendless kids in the 90s. And there was enough details to be interesting while also having enough gaps to let kids fill in the blanks at play time. The movies didn't start until around book 3 or 4 I think and that just added to the popularity even more. And they chose a good director to do it (though I've never been happy with the adaptation), Chris Columbus who did Home Alone, along with John Williams composing. It was a good starting point for the movies. Also there was quite a bit of censorship and attempts at censorship back then. I don't think that's really changed since then. It's always the Evangelicals doing it. They tried to ban Harry Potter too, it was a huge deal. They thought it was like rock music or rap trying to poison children's minds and convert them to satanism. Nothing's changed.
>The dark stuff doesn't really start happening until book 3 and 4 Messages written in blood calling for the extermination of a racial minority and subsequent terror attacks by a giant snake * isn't * dark stuff?
Also a teacher turns out to be the living host of the most evil person in the world who is living on the back of his disfigured head, and tries to kill the 11 year old protagonist at the end of the first book?
Gosh y'all have a low bar for what's considered dark. Cartoons in the 90s weren't all Rugrats and Arthur. And children are regularly exposed to Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. Plus video games were getting dark too. Harry Potter is just imaginative by comparison.
Don't remember frequent attempts to kill the child protagonist of LOTR by a serial killer with magic powers tbh.
Not much worse than what kids are learning in school at that age about racism and slavery
It got popular because the internet was getting popular at the time, and the fandom exploded. Wheel of Time also got that boost. I was on Theoryland and Wotmania and ran my own fan site. Right time, right place. Also, Rowling kept her digital rights instead of selling them to her publisher. That made her a billionaire and empowered her to interact with her fan communities. No publisher will ever make that mistake again.
Good point about the internet. Also maybe the internet - a place where a kid who was a nobody in real life could issue a few magic commands (this was the day of personal websites) could become a hero - might have been a reverse metaphor for Hogwarts.
I think the scholastic book deals early on can attribute to some success but I think it was just something different at the right time. I was the target demographic when the first book came out, I read it and came to school and all the kids had read it too, it wasn't like we talked to each other and made each other read it. So it's kinda weird, but I think at the time YA and youth novels were all over the place and JK hit the right level of goofy but good plot that 9 to 10 year old me wanted at the time. The movies early on though probably helped cement it, there were other youth series I loved at that time that are only getting live action adaptations now and I'm 33.
Children’s books today are not censored
Everyone’s already covered the writing stuff so I’m not gonna go into that. I think that story about her writing the first book on napkins in a coffee shop also played a role. I don’t remember if it’s actually true or not but I do know it was a deciding factor in my grandmother buying me the first book.
According to an interview by her, she wrote ideas on napkins but said she had access to a paper and that was where she did most of her writing. She talked a lot about how journalists were really playing up the whole "abused mum who was dirty poor with a kid" trope and how a lot of the stuff they were saying wasn't accurate. Like how she had no support (the cafe she wrote in was owned by a family member) and how her flat didn't have heat. (it did and she said that was one of the most annoying things people said about her.)
The short answer is she wrote a very easy to read world rich story that managed not to have too many bad plot devices that would ruin the immersion.
>children’s books were not as censored as they are today. Huh?
HP are not children's books. Neither are they YA books. I was introduced to them by a coworker. Both of us were in our late 40s, lol. He said, "They are not children's books!" I took a chance and purchased the first one. This turned into binge reading the next three and waiting for the new releases. And watching the movies. And re-reading the books. They are just great storytelling. The writing style is accessible and engaging; past that, who cares about its literary merits. It's a fun, satisfying read that works for multiple age groups. And it tweaked the noses of the religious right, so how could I resist? All that hoopla about "The books are about devil worship and should be banned!" And Barbara Bush saying, "So what? It's getting kids to read again!" The series spawned a generation of new readers. The series never talked down to the reader, or up. It was always about the story.
Jk rowling writes dark stuff? Does His Dark Materials, Animorphs, Wings of Fire, The Jumbies, Goosebumps, or even the psychological horror known as the chocolate touch mean nothing to you? Harry potter is tame as fuck for a middle grade speculative fiction. 0% dark. There's what, two onescreen deaths? And I think they're all in the later YA books. Tut Sutherland is out here popping people's heads off because why not.
Yeah, Roald Dahl would like a word about how dark books for kids can be...
I’ve seen episodes of courage the cowardly dog darker than these books. 😂
Simpson's comic book nerds moan about the worldbuilding, as if anyone outside r/fantasy cares about the rules of quidditch and the need for a laboriously explained hard magic system - but the worldbuilding is actually pretty fantastic, at least in the first few books. It sets up such a cozy and inviting world, which combined with the school setting is just absolutely lazer focused on the fantasies of the intended audience.
Between this sub and r/worldbuilding, I've lost count of how many people out there are complaining about how the Ministry of Magic's pension system isn't functional (note: this is just a hyperbole). As long as what I'm told makes sense to exist in the world of the book I'm reading, I'm fine with it
I've realised that when some people talk about worldbuilding they're looking at fictional worlds in the same way 'cinema sins' reviews a movie - uh oh! Jk Rowling didn't explain all the methods of magical transportation in book one! Worldbuilding hole! They're so focused on everything making logical and mathematical sense (as if a large part of Hary Potter's worldbuilding isn't deliberately making fun of overly complex bureaucracies etc) that they never even think to consider the aesthetic side, the lived in quality, the feelings evoked.
Also many of the things they critics are well explained/implied in the books, showing that most of the time they only rely on the movies or hearsay
The books followed the kids growing up at the time. Hp came out when i was 8 or 9. I followed them as they were released, i was 15 when ootp was released. All a parent has to do is be aware of what their kid is reading instead of expecting everyone to do that for them.
for me it was one of the few books that read like it had current day language in it. I read it in dutch. Most of the stuff I had to read or got to read was older stuff with ancient language. HP was refreshing in its setting and its retention. It was creative and its darkness was perfect for the age. Even now I struggle to find something that grabs me like HP did as a kid.
The World keeps you engaged. Also the Timing was great, movie adaptations certainly helped alot too.
It aged with you. If you started reading as a preteen it got darker about in line with what you could tolerate. (In keeping with societal norms) So you start out with a very whimsical introduction to fantasy for those who might not normally indulge and by the end it’s all “not my Daughter you bitch” and dead relatives/second family. It’s hard to replicate that moment in history, the election and reelection of GWB, wars of aggression, rise of the religious right and a retreat into the library… maybe it’s impossible, without a time turner since you can never be young again but… that’s the short answer. It aged with you, in a way Goosebumps or Animorphs didn’t.
Some thoughts. 1. Harry Potter is just one of those lightning in a bottle ideas. A school for wizards. You can have basically any kind of adventure/mystery escapism side by side with more grounded coming of age "school novel" elements. Many people, especially recently say that HP is derivative of the Earthsea books but I dont really think that the latter are relatable to children in the way that HP is 2. Quality. Some people criticize HP as having mediocre prose, or for relying too much on deus ex machina, or for being formulaic, but people tend to forget how much worse other kids books at the time felt with this stuff. Hell, a lot of kids series back in the day (Animorphs, Hardy Boys, etc) were written mostly by ghost writers and had a disposable feel to them. 3. A good balance of kid stuff and adult stuff. Too much media for children comes off as kiddy, and generally kids hate being reminded that they are kids. The books have monsters, death and other stuff like that which is more challenging. Some critics complain that the series is too sexless, even the later books which are presumably for older teens, but again, this would alienate younger readers and their parents.
Harry Potter has the right mix of literary elements and juvenile elements to reach mass popularity. The plot is engaging, the mysteries and twists are exciting, the characters are memorable, and the milieu is fantastical. And Harry Potter had one more thing that no other book series hit quite the same way. The main character grew up. At that time, this kind of children’s entertainment tended to center around static characters. Millennials were around Harry’s age when it began, and they grew up with him. This made the story endlessly relatable and appealing. And there was another thing… A marketing campaign that created genuine excitement around the release of each new novel (each of which was reliably entertaining and exciting), combined with a movie adaptation created early on in the run of the novels (the first one came out right around the fourth book if I recall correctly). These movies were relatively faithful adaptations of their source material, at the very least capturing the general imaginative vibe of the series. So even people who didn’t jump on the reading bandwagon got sucked in to the phenomenon. Not to mention relentless and endless news stories about the popularity of the series and how it had hooked an entire generation into reading when reading was considered to be dying in popularity. And so even adults felt obligated to read the novels. JK Rowling was a legitimate celebrity for many years. The Potter series did just about everything right. It was in the right place at the right time, and while YMMV on the quality of the books, it’s hard to deny that the story itself is superlative and engaging. Frankly, I think the storytelling is a cut above most other books in its genre, and I feel confident that Harry Potter will continue to be read for many years.
Because they were well written, the concept and stories were appropriate for the target audience, which was ten year olds, but still complex and interesting enough to be enjoyed by adults. What set it aprt from previous witch and wizard type books was the detailed alternate reality world she created for the story to take place in.
Agree - I read them as an adult as they came out. Love them!
Because MAGIC
Books targeted to middle readers and YA were more reality based, often kind of bland, and were very short. Publishers didn't trust young readers, didn't really think they would be interested in more elaborate, world-building, fantasy type stories. The top books were Goosebumps (which really dont hold up), Newberry stuff like Holes or Hatchet, and the recycled kids classics like Encyclopedia Brown or Roald Dahl. Most were really short, only 20-30k words. So it just was the first series that respected the kids as invested readers I think. And they ate it up. And those other books were rightfully loved by us 90s kids, but there was so much boring stuff coming out trying to mimic those series. Most of it sucked. And everything targeted to boys was sports books.
Tamora Pierce thanked JKR for teaching publishers that kids will read longer books.
To build on this, I think part of it was the fact the books seemed to "grow up" with the readers. The stories dealt with more mature subjects as they progressed, following some of the same things the readers were experiencing as they moved form childhood into early teens, into almost adults. This probably helped with curbing reader drop out as the kids who read the books at a younger age got older.
Barnes & Noble and Borders didn't even have a YA section when the first two HP books came out, and my library had a single half-full shelf hidden near the adult section. YA wasn't really a marketing category before HP basically reorganized the landscape.
If anyone understood the reason, lots of other writers would have achieved similar success before and after. But it doesn't work like that. Publishing is like a lottery. When your book it published, you get a ticket. Maybe it wins the big jackpot, maybe it wins a smaller prize, maybe it wins no prize at all. For the ticket to be worth anything at all, the book needs to be at least as good as the worst book to ever become a best-seller. This isn't a very high bar. Mostly a ticket is a ticket. Once you've had some success, you'll have some reliable fans and the publishers will look at you with dollar signs in their eyes, so you're likely to win some prizes even with a ticket that would have been a losing ticket before. This can be built up over time. But, provided your story is better than the worst bestseller ever published and it's in a category that sometimes produces bestsellers, it's pretty much a lottery. Harry Potter won the lottery, and the wild success of the first book guaranteed the success of more of the same, provided it didn't deviate too wildly from the original.
This is the real answer this sub doesn't want to hear.
They're just very good. I was an adult and picked up book 4, I think it was, at someone else's house. I got hooked and bought the ones I'd missed and the new ones as released. She writes in very accessible language, but the world she built was very complex. It was obviously very well planned, so you trusted the reveals to come were going to be as interesting as what you'd already read. She paced it all expertly and always gave you a sense of completion with each book while keeping you eager for the next. And no one had read that story before. It wasn't some repackaged Tolkien. She really deserves all the success she's achieved.
Your lucky you picked up the only book with decent pacing. I guarantee you if you looked at her Harry Potter series with even one critical eye you might notice that half of your points are grounded in positive bias, not fact.
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I agree that nostalgia is keeping the stuff relevant. Her latest book, in the cormoran strike series is over 960 pages long and apparently has lots of issues in pacing as well. Thats ignoring everything else.
Honestly? They got lucky. Urban Fantasy would always be a massive hit with the teenage target demographic, and HP got a foot in the door first.
Yep. That's why Jim Butcher hit the same home run in 1997 as well. Not to mention, video games were not near as good in that time. Children read less and less every year since Harry Potter. And, you couldn't go on Kindle unlimited and download hundreds of urban fantasy Niche novels like you can today
?? Jim Butcher is *niche* and only a thing in the Anglosphere. It just can’t be compared to the worldwide appeal JKR had.
For me back then, it was ✨MAGIC✨. Basically what I wish real life school was like. I was obsessed back then. I really REALLY wanted a wand so bad
Everyone has made some great points so far, and I wanted to add one thing- her books grew with her audience. The books were super popular with a specific age group, and they grew in complexity as that age group grew older. It allowed the kids who would normally stop reading a series after they got older to continue reading them. It was very well thought out.
As a kid, it was her output. She wasn't even my favorite in retrospect, she just had a very accessible writing style and kept pumping out material that I could talk about with other kids who hadn't read Animorphs, Goosebumps, Fear Street, or the Artemis Fowl (all of which I felt more strongly about) and then she got a MFING movie deal and people were having midnight parties and all this stuff centralized at the book store, it just felt like a good time to be an over eager reader and I think JK Rowling rose very readily to the spotlight in a way I don't see with other children series authors did (even the Goosebump GOAT R.L Stone) Like A Series of Unfortunate Events was wonderful and got it's due with a live action series but nobody got the insane push HP got and it has everything to do with fandom IMHO.
Harry Potter really captures the worldview of early adolescence. Grown-ups are simultaneously clueless, but also hyper-competent, the way the world works is hard to understand, you and your friends are the center of the world, and that world is starting to expand drastically yet is still pretty small. Sex is vaguely out there but still undefined. (None of the adults in Harry Potter seem to have sex, and they mostly marry their high school sweethearts). Rowling is a terrible plotter but a great storyteller and is amazing at characterization, much like Charles Dickens.
Sorry idk...I tried to read them...I guess ...OK for some...I was into dr Doolittle when I was young...witchcraft and stuff. Never got it I guess...but she made a fortune appealing to the masses I guess...sorry for my lack of...
Childrens books back then were 100% more censored, Harry Potter wasnt read in any religious household for years and years due to witchcraft in the books.
A BIG part that I think has been forgotten is that in 1999 MANY adults were excited about the books and were a considerable part of the hype. I was 26 and waited in line at a Barnes & Noble at midnight to buy Goblet of Fire and there were plenty of other adults there. In the following week most of the adults I worked with had read the book. I can’t think of another book written for kids that has had anywhere near this amount of buzz among adults. This was all before the movies even got made.
I'd say it's cos of the premise: >11 year old boy who has to live in a cupboard literally under the stairs, like some kind of urban troll, suddenly gets a letter that tells him that he's been accepted into a literal school of magic, and then a huge "bear" of a man turns up and goes "Ye're a wizard!" And performs magic in front of his very eyes, then whisks him away from his personal hell and into a world full of wonder where everyone looks at him with awe cos he survived something thought impossible to survive as a literal baby. Try telling anyone in a life they don't enjoy that can happen and they'll go wild for it. For those who are too old, it's more "If only that could have happened to me" lol
Thinking back to when I was heavy into them in middleschool, they're great imagination fodder for kids who are into fantasty. There's so much to work with to project yourself into and use as escapism- Which house are you in, what pet would you have, what classes would be your favorite, what type of wand would you have, what's your patronus, etc etc etc. All the ingredients for an imaginative kid to enmesh themselves in in an individualized way that other series didn't quite have. They really made you feel like you could imagine yourself in the world. It hit the exact right moment in time where this aspect could explode in online spaces, fandom culture really took off and that's definitely a major factor. Looking back on the books, they were pretty meh, but I still remember how deeply I could throw myself into the world, even if in retrospect the worldbuilding is near nonexistant.
Early viral marketing. I'm not saying this to disparage the books - I enjoyed them. But Warner Brothers owned a ton of news media and magazines and online outlets and used them all to stealth promote the series. I remember it feeling like it was everywhere before most people I knew had actually read it. It was being mentioned by characters in movie promos and discussed in news segments (the single mum who wrote on napkins! the little kids who just love reading so much! the nasty censors threatening a beloved children's book), and being part of sponsored events at bookstores that, for some reason, I just assumed were organic and not like the corporate things they were. And obviously that wouldn't have worked if the story was unreadable crap. It had to be lovable enough to sustain the hype. But if you're wondering why it became a phenomenon when so many other great things didn't... that's why. Here's a pretty good video looking into it, though the history of promotion starts about 10 minutes in: https://youtu.be/UBftW7FzOVI?si=emOdHaUZ2DjtOjjk
I wouldn’t say J.K. wrote “dark stuff”. The first few books were pretty basic books, nothing too extreme. When it gets more dark is in the later books. Which makes sense bc they were written for the kids who grew up with the first few books. So the later books “grew up” with the kids. They became “harder” to read, more complex, much longer, and they became more dark
Because all of the alternates where Harry Potter didn't become a sensation were destroyed by time traveling Potterheads.
To the best of my knowledge it was the first instance of the School for Wizards trope that was actually something a young person might want to read. The story itself begins where a lot of young people are, not physically but mentally; he is cut off from the people who truly care about him, instead having to endure an environment where indifference is the best he can hope for. A lot of young people, and a lot of adults, really do feel that way, and so they can identify with him. Then he finds out that he is *special*, and gets to go into a fun new world and have adventures. The reader can live vicariously through that.
Jill Murphy's worst witch books were - and are still - pretty popular. I believe they were one of the inspirations for Potter.
"Inspiration" is generous.
Am I wrong or was it because she had a good story behind the story, e.g. Single mum writes book in cafe?
Right place, right time. Like so many things that are popular. Many don't want to admit it, but luck has a huge part in success.
The books aren’t that dark. Anyway, success is mostly about right place, right time. The books definitely have strong points, things it does very well, but becoming the mega hit that it did boiled down to a lot of luck. It came out right as the internet was becoming more of a thing and was one of the first works to get an online community, which really boosted it.
Good writer. Too bad she now spends every waking moment fear mongering trans women.
They were trendy. It was a social thing. People read the Harry Potter series so they could say they read the Harry Potter series.
I disagree. I think a lot of people genuinely fell in love with them. I didn’t read them until quite late because I thought the premise seemed silly and I was a bit of a ‘not like other girls girl’ so I thought they were too mainstream. Then I watched one of the movies and fell in love with the world, and read all of the books in like a month after.
Mass popularity is, like, 90 percent luck. It doesn't how poorly written or well written, how poorly marketed or well marketed, how audience pleasing or audience turning it is, things just pop off sometimes.
Marketing - and not-so-nice manipulation of the market, either. It's a good (relatable) story and well-enough written, but more importantly, it's a voluminous story; filing the shelves matters. And let's not discount luck. But mostly, it was the marketing. Wasn't it mentioned in at least TWO major movies?? I don't know how much that placement cost, but priceless it was.
Marketing? Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers and then the publisher that finally accepted it only printed 500 copies. It grew popular by word of mouth.
Neoliberal cultural hegemony.
She borrowed a very popular formula that had already been tested in one of the most popular sci fi films of all time. You’ve got to remember that back then JKR was a mediocre writer but an incredible philanthropist. There was a good reason everyone was supporting her and singing her praises. Now she’s gone off the deepens but her creation has reached critical mass and it’s got a life of its own. Even if JKR has become awful it would never put a dent in a franchise that people fetishise.
Nostalgia. Kids don't have a good sense of good storytelling or writing, just adventure. The series scaled with the same age group who liked the first ones, and pretty much every single person I've ever met who liked Harry Potter only likes them because they read the books when they were young. The power of nostalgia cannot be denied
You are, alas, mistaken. I loved the first Harry Potter book when I encountered it in my late thirties. My eldest son was in grade school at the time. Though I must admit I never made it to the end of the series and rather regretted not stopping with *Chamber of Secrets.*
There are always exceptions.
It’s hardly exceptions. Have you seen footage of bookstores on release dates for the HP books? It’s *not* just a crowd of children or teens, lol. Adults were in love with the series too. I’m not saying HP is the best written thing to exist (I recently commented on this sub critiquing it, actually). But it had a quite universal appeal for its creativity and atmosphere.
Marketing. The story of unemployed single mother was a mockery she had wealthy friends and family propping her up. It is a good series and it is clever to incrementally improve grammar for a developing child audience to understand. I was a little thrown by the big words in the last book. Not because I didn't understand but because I'd gone from simplistic explanations in the first book to big words and SOME nuance in the last. But it got as big as it did due to marketing.
Honestly I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again the only reason Harry Potter was as successful as it is and has such a chokehold on pop culture is because it was marketed towards middle grade children. And it continues to cloud people’s perception of it because of nostalgia when quite frankly the overall story is shallow, the world building makes no sense, and if memory serves correct a stolen idea. And it’s cultural zeitgeist perplexes me because I swear these people haven’t read any other book.
Because it was well written and the peasants love a good story
I was 11 when the first book came out. He and are the same aged
Harry Potter was also well-marketed. I think the first time I learned of it was a copy of Time Magazine in a doctor's office, oddly enough. There was a two page spread outlining the world of Harry Potter, that interested me. All of the backlash against it (There is magic in it, it's satanic!) only served to further advertise it's existence, showing kids on the news lining up to read Harry Potter (What's it about? Let's ask...) etc.
I think because, as other has said, those books are written for kids but not with a condescending tone and also because the tone and theme “grow up” books after books just like the readers and therefore they became books that even older kids can enjoy. For example, I don’t see this kind of writing with Percy Jackson: the tone is childish from the first book to the last one and there isn't any kind of growth.
Great world building, and written in a way that appealed to the adults that were often reading the books to kids. Also, they didn’t start as dark. They got darker with each book. Children were able to mature with the books.
I think it’s mostly the setting and the world-building. Hogwarts is an escape for kids with bad home lives; it’s warm, whimsical, and welcoming, but also mysterious and exciting. There’s a reason why people visit Leavesden, and come back again and again! I don’t think it’s so much the story and the characters as it’s the place.
It takes something the target audience has experience with (school), adds magical elements but uses them in unconventional ways (a sport based on broom flying), and builds a world of relatable characters with the protagonists being a group of close knit ordinary kids. So it has several well established (but perhaps dormant ) genres. The idealized school experience , the close knit group of kids, the expanding magical land, and the battle of good vs evil.
Juvenile empowerment and adult drama
Good marketing.
all magic that we imagine as kids are there on the books/movies..wands, flying brooms, a wizard master, mystical/mythical creatures, objects coming to life, colors, holiday settings, castle, dragons etc.. who wouldn't want to watch that amazing series that have all of adventures we wanted to see? kids characters being kids (relatable), all things magic and enchanted..that's what kids want to feel and see
I was 11 when the first book was published. And finding out you're secretly part of a magical other world is pretty much the most amazing fantasy an 11-year-old can conceive of. You're still young enough to be whimsical, but old enough to see that the real world is kinda lame sometimes. And dark?! Man, did you read Animorphs as a kid? That shit is bleak.
For one thing, the story has a wish fulfillment kind of thing. One day a normal kid living in the normal world learns that he is special and gets to leave and go to somewhere special. (Ignoring his terrible life at his aunt and uncles just to focus on this part of it). There is this hidden world existing right under our noses. Maybe you’re part of that world too.
Middle grades to YA books are censored now? TIL OP has never read Mysterious Benedict Society, Miss Peregrine, Keeper of the Lost Cities, Land of Stories. Heck, the later books of Harry Potter are squarely YA which means they’re competing against the Scythe, Unwound, Hunger Games, and Maze Runner series as far as dark themes. I would say HP is the least disturbing of any of those.
No matter what shit comes out of JKR's mouth these days, and no matter how many flaws I can now see in her writing, whenever I periodically decide to read or listen to the HP books again I immediately get it every time. Imo I think she does a very good job of constantly hinting at there being more to learn about this world, but only actually revealing a bit at a time. I can't really explain it, but every time I've gone back to them I just understand why they captured the minds of an entire generation.
The World keeps you engaged. Also the Timing was great, movie adaptations certainly helped alot too.
Wish fulfilment. There hadn't been too many "magic academia" stories before it that were as "school" focused as Harry Potter was. It was more relatable. Sure, you had Chronicles of Narnia, The Magicians Trilogy" and others. But those felt too much like fantasy, while Harry Potter felt like it was "grounded".