Bloomsbury and Harry Potter

We’re very glad to see that there are so many Harry Potter readers enthusiasts.

We’re also very glad that the the dean of liberal arts is with us here this afternoon.

And Randi, it’s very good of you to to come. And I will

introduce our participants and read the reverse order, beginning with Susan Napier.

We’re very glad to have Susan back. She used to teach at the University of Texas. Susan

was one that got us into Harry Potter in the first place. In fact, I’m not sure

that I would have read Harry Potter had it not been for not been for Susan.

We want to also introduce another publishing

panjandrums. This is Roz Vasic Ardy, who is the publisher

at Tourists and it’s Saraj. And I hope after reading

this list that everyone will break out in wild applause because

Iraj is the publisher of Adventures with Brittania, more adventurous with Britannia.

I’m not there yet. Still more adventurous yet. More adventures, penultimate adventures.

Ultimate adventures, resurgent adventures, irrepressible adventures, resplendent

adventures and effervescent adventures.

This brings us snick down to the next volume and we already have a suggestion.

Serendipitous part of you.

Oh, oh, what about magical? And magical is another

possibility. Rush will let you think about this. We are extraordinarily pleased

that Nigel Newton would come to all the way from London to speak to us

this afternoon about Harry Potter in the context of

Bloomsbury Publishing. This is a remarkable publishing firm itself.

Some of you will have heard yesterday afternoon a little bit about the history of the

Bloomsbury this afternoon. It’s a little bit more specific. Perhaps the reason

why Bloomsbury is most famous at all. This is a Nigel Newton

on Harry Potter.

Well, good afternoon. And a very warm welcome

to all of you. As you can see, we we love all of

our children equally. Every every house is

represented in my scarf. So this

is the story of the creation of a leading

global piece of publishing.

And so has it’s the inside story.

May I have your permission that nothing I say will appear on social

media or any other form of repetition?

Is that OK with everyone? Thank you. Harry Potter

stories have a tendency to get taken up, and I had the

misfortune once of being persuaded by my colleagues in Australia

to do an interview on the radio. And I thought, well,

I really don’t want to do that. I never kind of saw that sort of publicity.

But they said, come on, it’s just Brisbane. And I thought, well, OK,

I can talk there, nothing will happen. And I told

the story of how I received a phone call on about the sixth

Harry Potter book from GC HQ, which is

British Secret Intelligence. It’s our equivalent of the National

Security Agency. So they’re the people who who listen

listen to everything, including this. And.

And they rang up and said this was D-Day minus about six

days. And we kept these books very strictly embargoed us,

as you all know. And they said we’ve detected the complete text

of the next Harry Potter on the Internet. And I thought, oh, my goodness.

Aside from being surprised to receive a phone call from government communications headquarters

and indeed their helpful attitude. So I got our edits her

down and we he read out a bit and we thought, thank goodness it was a fabrication

because as I’m sure you know, people wrote entire books of their version of what

the next Harry Potter would be in several of them. It was quite extraordinary.

So Harry Potter was was being protected

by the Secret Service. This was pretty good. So I told that story. And

to my horror, the next week it was on the front page of The

Sunday Times in London. And so some stringer in in

Brisbane picked it up and kind of sold the story on. And I was deeply embarrassed

because it hadn’t been my intention to exploit that story

in the home market, as it were. So that’s why you may not you may

not say anything to anyone and make me regret these stories.

So what is most startling, considering the heights of Potter mania

today, is quite how ordinary

its arrival and reception was since it began

its life. I introduced Star Children’s Editor, who was

a brilliant man, is a brilliant man called Barry Cunningham to

the literary agent Christopher Liddle, the wonderfully named Christopher Little who.

So The Legend Goes was picked by Joe Rolling, flipping

through the Writers and Artists Yearbook, which is a guidebook to literary

agents, amongst other things. And the story goes

that she was taken by his name, Christopher Little Christopher Robin. It sounds

sounds like a sort of man for a children’s book. And he

sent this book in. We were sent the chapters that

leads to up to Diagon Ali, as I recall. I’m just going

to try the studio and am I in the way

of my own songs. And they we we couldn’t afford

chairs in those days. We were the children’s bits was at the top of the 20th Century

Fox building in Soho Square in London. So the four of. We’re sitting on bean bags

and they handed just the one type script, handed

the pages around to each other as each finished the page and they became

incredibly excited as they read this book.

And so they were they decided to submit it to our editorial meeting

and they were trying to send a signal that it would win the Booker Prize of

publishing, which is of children’s publishing, which is called the Smartest Prize

and Smarties. If you don’t know or like Eminem’s a little hard shell,

coded bits of chocolate and they sponsor this this children’s

literary prize. So they rolled the manuscript up,

typescript up like glass sellotape to one end, scotch taped one end

and filled the middle with smarties and then itafter and put

a ribbon on it. So I was sent home. I chaired the editorial committee meeting

us the next day and I had this thing I was supposed to read, but I think I couldn’t be bothered. So

I handed it to my 8 year old daughter Alice, who is now

time later on a kind of a high saying,

Dad, you’ve never published anything this good before and and wrote

that. That was quite awkward to explain to some of our other authors. And she wrote me

this note, which if you can’t read it, says, The excitements

in this book made me feel warm inside. I think it is possibly one of the

best books in eight slash nine year old could read.

So the next day, BARRIE and everyone else in the room who had read

it asked me to authorize an advance of one and a half thousand pounds

for the rights. And I said, well, you know, Alice likes it. And

I did. And in fact, her agent played hardball and

pushed us up to two and a half thousand pounds. So we got it. Now, what we didn’t

know at the time was that ace competitor or as or I’ve even read

in in a tweet, I think from the author that it was 12 competitors of

ours had turned down Harry Potter. So we were in blissful ignorance

of that fact. So really, our only claim to fame is that we were

the ones who didn’t say no. So thank God for that. You remember

the EMI turned down the Beatles. So I’m sure there’s nothing

shameful in our 12 competitors. But I mean, what a load of idiots.

How could you hit

who in this room didn’t get it immediately so

that this was at the time when email was invented and we all had pieces

sitting on our desks for the first time, or some of us and our children’s

marketing manager, who I’m afraid is a bit blurry here. Rosalind Walker

emailed us this new fangled technology every day saying, I know you think

Harry Potter is good, but you don’t understand. It’s really, really, really good. We just

thought, oh, god, why? Why does she go on? And in order to demonstrate

that, we we did know it was really, really good, that we never dreamt it would sell,

you know, probably 50000, let alone 500 million. This was a letter written in

March 1997. So three months before

the book came out on whenever it was June twenty sixth to the literary

reviewer of children’s books for The Sunday Times, telling them what a

remarkable book it was. So we we knew that it was good. We just didn’t know

it was big. And one of our leading bookshops changed to the time articles

were persuaded to put the book in their windows.

And I think our initial print run was 700 hardbacks and two and a half thousand

paperbacks. Now, there was a story there, which is that the

first print run had a major error in it.

And so the books had to be junked. And so we did what the British

have always done in such situations and sent them to Australia

with prisoners and unworn. Things so Australia

is the home of the most valuable first print run in the world, and having

those errors makes them identifiable to second

hand booksellers who know what to look for. But this did start

to take off. It really took off not due

to anything we did, but due to the first children who read it

told other children about it. Playground marketing, if you want to give

it a name. And so it was the brilliance of the text itself and

not the marketing, but it got to about 30000 copies by

Christmas following that June launch. And nothing can ever

compete with the power of word of mouth. And it did win

the Smarties prize. So my colleagues were ipsc. Right? In fact, it it kept every

time the new book came out that kept winning the Smarties Prize. It finally got embarrassing

and we stopped submitting them to give other people a chance.

J.K. Rowling did her first literary events in at Edinburgh

in August nineteen ninety seven. Just a few weeks after publication

in the TV there and about 20 children appeared, the early adopters

contrasting with the tens of thousands who would appear at theNSW in later

years. Now let me find another slide.

This was a van we rented to tell people.

Actually, it’s a book ahead that ask A to drive around London

spreading the news. See

my daughter as the early adopter. And she was the

children’s library assistant, probably aged about nine now, and invited

Joe Rowing to come and speak at her school, Putney High School in London. And she did

a deal was done with Scholastic, the great American publisher, Harry

Potter. And as you know, they published it a year later

and under the title of the the Sorcerer’s Stone. I think later

on there was some feeling in America that the adaptations

of certain words that would happen in the normal process

of trans-Atlantic editing was inappropriate. And I think

Jurisich started being called jerseys again instead of sweaters or whatever.

It was being changed, too. So the first big press

launch came along, I think, with the paperback of the Chamber of Secrets.

And it’s notoriously hard to get press coverage for a paperback launch

because that’s coming many months after the hardcover.

But we did we had an events, obviously at platform nine and three quarters at King’s

Cross Station, which we had two events in the great children’s television program.

Blue Peter came and filmed that. And there

was a Hogwarts steam engine, pumpkin soup. Dumbledore

was presence and a nationwide tour, culminating with 800

children coming in Manchester to an event which was a record

at the time. Now, one of the really exciting moments

was the The Prisoner of Azkaban.

And and we did have a really great idea then. Sorry, I got over there right

there. You can see which is there were stories

that children were playing truant from school on the day a new Harry Potter

would come out. So we decided to launch the book at 3:45

p.m. so they could come after school. And booksellers were just completely

stupefied at 3:45 p.m. But they obeyed

and. And we knew we’d really made it big. When The Daily Telegraph

the next day ran a photograph on the front page of a very long line of children

outside the Lion and Unicorn Bookshop, a small bookshop in Richmond

to the west of London. And suddenly we were big news. It may

in fact, it made the news on television. BBC One, ITV, Channel 4.

And it doesn’t seem remarkable now, but it seemed very remarkable at the time that

we beat the record of Hannibal. The novel by Thomas Harris out a month

previously, which sold 54000 copies in week one

and ASKEDand sold 64000 in the first two and a half days.

So this was the press loved it. Their headline was Hannibal Eaten for Breakfast

by 30.

So Harry Potter this moments reclaims the supremacy

of the book over the Gameboy, which was the phenomenon of its time

and effectively made reading cool again, and especially for boys

who who stopped regarding it as the province of their sister

if they had one. And this has driven a huge increase in reading by

children and may even have a ripple effect to this day.

So one of the great excitements came

next with the publication of the Goblet of Fire, and by then

the press were all over us. Harry Potter is such a big phenomenon

that our trash was being searched for details of when the next book

would come out. And there were real problems.

I think I’m gonna mean who who wears a scarf indoors anyway.

There’s a real problem with people, the press in particular, trying to find

out the plot before the books came out. So we we had

huge secrecy. We didn’t produce any more

advance proof copies. We placed all the ads without

even the title being known. What the title was was a big secret.

Rolling held an international press conference in April that year and gave away just three

details about HP for us. It was known

that just created a feeding frenzy of anticipation. We kept the

manuscript in a bank vault and that was really for real.

You know, we had breakdowns and everything. In fact, we we only allowed four people

in our own company to read it prior to publication on a need to know basis.

The editors and the production people. So

the great fun came with the launch of that book. When we did the Hogwarts tour

and we really went for this full on. So I put together a steam train.

I borrowed this beautiful locomotive from someone, commissioned

this sign, which I still have sitting at home and then

tried to put together a basically a sort of Edwardian train borrowing cars

from different people. This is the dining car.

We were on the road for probably three or four, five days. There

is Joe, that is my

son, William. I thought I’d take the whole family. That

obscure head at the back is me. And these are that’s

Rosalind Walker and I Matthewson, who is the editor,

the brilliant editor of the Harry Potter books. So it was

unbelievable fun we we set out on this train. It’s quite

difficult taking a steam train around because you have to fit on the tracks between these very

fast intercity trains and not get run over. So it’s it’s a real

art. And we went to Didcot, which some of you may know

as a station on the way to Oxford. And at each station,

a thousand children had won free tickets to be the people who could

go on the train and get their books signed. And very topically, for

the events of last week, the car that I borrowed for

the actual signings was a kind of Edwardian library car. And it was

the train car on which the armistice at the end

of World War One in the field, the forest of calm that we’ve all been seeing pictures

of in the last week was their car. So the kids

would come in at one door, walk down to that big desk where

General Fourche and signed the disastrous.

Justice or that led to the disastrous feticide treaty, so it’s

quite a historic carriage, and then they would get off at the other end and we proceeded

around the country. We went. Eventually, I think through

Kru, we went to York, we went to Perth and Scotland

and every step of the way there were a thousand children

waiting once when we were in the middle of the countryside. There were

about 50 people at the very place where we had

to stop to put water into the steam engine. That’s how they work.

And and and we thought, how did these people know we’d be right here

in the middle of nowhere? And the locomotive driver explained, and

they have no idea who you are and don’t care. They’re train spotters. And they

heard there was a steam train, so they came to write it down 3 4

to show you shouldn’t always assume you’re the center of events. So we were

front page news for every day for four days on the train and sold

three hundred and seventy two thousand on the train in the

first day. So. And so you would go from this mayhem on

these platforms. And then when the train would pull out, you just have sudden peace

again. And a man appeared with a glass of champagne. There were just

about well, there you see all the people who are on the train. And we had sleeping carriages

and it was we were very independent. So

what’s next? So this is the order of the Phenix.

So the way I found out, because I never would really know,

nor did my colleagues when the next book was going to be finished.

And part of the thing about being a publisher is you don’t press an author

saying, you know, when is it going to be when you don’t want to put pressure? So you never ask an author

when their next book will come. But one day at

my desk, I got a phone call from Christopher Liddle and he said, Nigel,

can I meet you at the Pelican pub? And I said, Yes, sure.

Did you say the Pelican? And that was the place where we would meet for these

handovers of the manuscript. So I turned to jelly, rushed and got in my car and

drove out to the pelican. And he was there with two pints set up at the bar and

a innocuous Sainsbury’s supermarket carrier bag sitting

on his feet. And he

said, We never discussed the bag at all.

We just had our drinks, chatted about the weather, as one does. But but when

I left, I left carrying the same streets bag. So it’s a classic dead drop.

I’d read by John McKerrow. I knew how to do this.

And so then we had a promotion of the book. We took over the

Albert Hall, four and a half thousand people sess and we

invited children for free. But on a kind of ticketed basis from all over

the country, trying to represent all regions and all different types

of everything. And it was really great. And I think Stephen Fry

interviewed her on the stage about that time.

The British Booksellers Association had its annual conference in

Brighton, and I was just down the coast near summer called Seaford in

Sussex. And Joe ruling came and also Michael

Ondaatje, she. And that, believe it or not, is me sitting on the right.

And so that was a very exciting launch.

J.K. Robing, the most talented person I know, brilliance, intelligence,

funny, astonishing, hardworking sense of humor, fun. It was

these were very exciting times. So

what I was going to try to dwell on next.

This was a launch we had at Edinburgh Castle and

it was a kind of song Ague Mayor Offact with. Images of Harry being

flashed up onto the walls of the castle.

I was going to reflect on some of the qualities

of the book, as Roger asked me to

do so when he invited me to speak to you today.

And I think part of why it’s endured is the emphasis

on human qualities in Harry Potter. And

on the other hand, the accentuation of your qualities as an individual

resourcefulness, intelligence and its more importance,

bedfellow, common sense and most importantly, self-reliance.

At the end of the day, it’s you who takes on the world and not the team. And it’s Harry

alone who controls his destiny, not his group of friends, as he squares

up to Lord Voldemort, camaraderie and friendship, or nevertheless,

the qualities that underpin the world of Hogwarts and

the intense friendships that are formed at school. The

psychological foundation of Harry’s existence is his love.

The love that his dead parents hold for him, the love that sustains

him through his life and giving him the strength to win his battles.

But life at Hogwarts is about fun and circumstance and wits

and humor and practical jokes as well.

So we can just remember that we can all be Harry.

If we believe in magic or God or in our

personal battles of good versus evil. But if we can’t

be Harry, then we can be his store friends Ron and her miney

always at his side, and they are pretty good and pretty admirable too.

The characters are are so powerful

in these books without Ron and her miney is Harry fully

Harry. Every reader projects themself or every child onto

one of them, and we truly can’t bear the thoughts of the possibility of

any of them dying. And it’s such a relief that J.K. Rowling,

who does dispatch beloved characters without fear assessment,

also allows them all to survive. They are the heart of the stories.

There are routes into this amazing world and their journey

is our journey. So if.

If you like. I think one of the things that we

could dwell on is the fact

that the position that we find ourselves in 21 years later,

so 21 years have flashed by and the whole or

is it 20 to 21 from the UK publication. So it’s only with time

that we can begin to understand its true

scope and breadth, breadth and its openness to appreciation. Time

and again, new generations are discovering the books the whole

time. The I think in in Britain alone there

are 700000 new 8 year olds every year. A remarkable

statistic I mugged up on. And so the kids who are

reading these books today are the are the children of the early

readers who who like all classics, mothers

and fathers, want to pass on to their their kids. Whether it’s

C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien or a male on the

enthusiasms, the books that comforted and enthralled them in their own childhoods.

And so the phenomenon seems to to actually be be growing. 21 years

later, we seem to be selling more

books than ever. And and aided by