Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
...
ETA: You want a really good example where your theory is dead wrong? Harry Potter 1, 2, and 3. Very low sales at release for each. Then comes Harry Potter 4, and BOOM. The series takes off and starts selling like hot cakes. Including everybody that needs to catch up and get the first three in a hurry. Definitely not in the new release window.
|
That's not actually true, which if you think about it, should be obvious. If Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had low sales, there wouldn't have been a Harry Potter 2. Each of the books were best sellers when released. Of course, there is a big difference between being a best seller (HP1 had an initial print run of 5000 books and sold over 100,000 in the first year) and become the huge seller that it became. Actual sales figures are a bit confusing since the US edition of HP1 came out about a year after the UK edition. The US publisher of HP1 paid Rowlings a $100K advance, a very high amount for a first book.
The series exploded in 1999, i.e. after HP3, not HP4. That is when I was introduced to the books by a friend. I went to the release party for HP4 at B&N in 2000. It was the first HP book that was released at the same time in the UK and the US. It sold over 3 million copies in the US on the first weekend.
(yea, I'm a HP fan. What can I say? My favorite Harry Potter trivia - Bloomsbury bought the first book for a 2500 pound advance because the CEO's 8 year old daughter really liked it. )