Thursday, April 07, 2016

Publisher Nigel Newton on harnessing the Harry Potter effect

Wednesday 6 April 2016 ABC

Nigel's publishing house, Bloomsbury, was at the centre of the phenomenon and immense fortune generated by JK Rowling's series.

Nigel Newton
Listen:
Publisher Nigel Newton on harnessing the...
  
 

Left:  Nigel Newton (ABC Radio)






Nigel co-founded the publishing house, Bloomsbury, in London during the 1980s.
His children's division was struggling when a manuscript was offered to one of his agents at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
It was a novel for young people by an unknown author called J.K. Rowling.
The manuscript had been rejected by 12 other publishers, but Bloomsbury signed the author without hesitation.
What followed was a decade of intense excitement, and extreme security measures around the 7 instalments of the Harry Potter series.

A large part of the thrill of each annual release was the strict embargo surrounding the plot; and there were many audacious attempts to leak the stories ahead of time.
Children and adults adored the books, making Harry Potter the biggest selling non-religious text in the history of the world. More

No comments: