#Teen & Young Adult Parents Fiction

[destinationtoast]

Hey! I asked this question on a different blog but I’m very curious. Are people still reading Harry Potter? Like do teenagers read it? I got into it when I was younger and the books and movies were actively coming out and everyone was super amped about them but obviously that isn’t happening now. So is it more just like.... general culture where they might go to the Harry Potter theme park, or know Emma Watson was Hermione? Or are people still actively consuming the books themselves? Like... is it relevant?

Hi! :)  To really know the answer to this, we’d need to look at some combination of book sales and/or surveys of younger people about their reading habits.  Neither of those data sources are my forte... but I did find a Variety article from July 2020 titled, “J.K. Rowling’s Book Sales Lagging Despite Industry Boom in June” (emphasis mine):

Last month, sales in print books in fiction overall rose 31.4% in the U.S. from May, according to figures from NPD BookScan, with fiction titles in adult, young adult and juvenile sectors all seeing similar double-digit growth. The author of the “Harry Potter” series, by contrast, saw her print book sales in the U.S. rise just 10.9% in June. “Harry Potter” sales — including licensed titles not authored by Rowling — rose even less, just 7.7% for the month. While the BookScan figures do not account for other points of sale — like eBooks, sales to libraries and direct publisher sales — they do point to a remarkably sudden and sharp drop in print sales for Rowling’s books.

This indicates that (as of June) Rowling's sales were not doing nearly as well as predicted based on their past performance -- or based on how other books were selling. But it doesn't mean that the books are selling poorly or are no longer relevant. 

To try to get a better sense of overall sales, I looked through some lists of Amazon Best Sellers. I found Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the #4 bestseller in Teens/YA and #9 in SF/F (as of Nov 18, mid-afternoon Pacific time -- I guess these lists update hourly).  So it appears that people are still buying a lot of Harry Potter. That doesn’t guarantee that lots of young people still read it (there could be lots of adults reading it, lots of gifts being given to kids who don’t end up reading them, etc), but it's probably a good indicator.  

This also suggests that while Rowling may have hurt Harry Potter sales with her recent transphobic remarks (the Variety article suggests that as a possible cause), she didn’t come anywhere close to stopping sales.  I suppose that’s unsurprising, given that many people I know outside of fandom are unaware of her remarks, and that there are many parents who retain a lot of fondness for the books.  My anecdotal experience is that many of my acquaintances with kids in elementary school/middle school are reading the HP books to their kids -- or their kids are reading the books on their own.

But huge caveat, again: I’m not an expert here and don’t have experience interpreting these particular data sources. If book sellers or librarians want to chip in with more personal experience, that would be great.

#hp #jk rowling #book sales #toasty replies #harry potter