How Harry Potter conquered the world

AS THE world awaits the release of the sixth Harry Potter, many people's thoughts turn to the phenomenon itself. Why did it happen? What are the causes of JK Rowling's staggering literary triumph? How come the boy wizard's creator is sitting on a gigantic pile of Galleons when so many other authors haven't got two Sickles to rub together?

Needless to say, there are almost as many theories about Pottermania as there are readers of Rowling's remarkable books. The top seven suggestions are as follows:

Suggestion 1: Rattling Good Read

The simplest explanation of the Harry Potter phenomenon is that they are good books, well written. They are better than good books, in fact. They are superlative works of literature. They are imaginative, engrossing, intriguing, surprising, captivating, moving, exciting et cetera.

I subscribe to this viewpoint.

Although, as a marketer, I'm hardly qualified to comment on literary matters. I read incessantly and can honestly say that certain passages in the books are beyond good. They are sublime.

When Neville Longbottom is awarded 10 extra house points in Philosopher's and, at the very end of Goblet, when Dumbledore turns to Harry and says: "You have shown bravery beyond everything I could have expected of you," I not only felt shivers down my spine but was yanked back to my most emotional childhood reading experiences. I suspect that there are millions and millions just like me.

But, adolescent atavism aside, the argument doesn't really stack up.

Meritorious though they are, her books aren't uniquely meritorious. There are many other storytellers of equal merit and many much better, according to leading kid-lit authorities.

Suggestion 2: Postmodern Potter

When consumers are asked to step outside their personal reading bubble and account for Harry Potter's staggering success, they typically ascribe his popularity to two factors: "escapism" and "something for everyone".

Harry Potter offers readers a wonderful parallel world - immediately adjacent to today's not-so-wonderful world - where steam trains depart from Platform 9 3/4, welcoming taverns sell foaming mugs of butterbeer, broomsticks circumvent the daily commute and inanimate objects do as they're bid.

In this regard, Harry Potter fits neatly into the notion of postmodern culture.

Postmodernism is associated with hyperreality, the creation of places, spaces and settings that are more real than reality itself. Theme parks, megashopping malls, Las Vegas casinos and first-person- shooter computer games are all held up as exemplars of postmodern hyperspace.

The world of Hogwarts, Hedwig, Hagrid, Huff lepuff, Honeydukes, Hermione and Harry is hyperreality writ large. Very large. To the tune of 200 million copies sold - and counting.

Suggestion 3: Fizzing Whizbees

JK Rowling has been understandably reluctant to analyse the HP phenomenon herself. She has, however, suggested that the books' success is due to consumer buzz, word of mouth, good old-fashioned recommendations from friends.

However, careful examination of Harry Potter, The Early Years, reveals that matters are rather more complex.

Chamber of Secrets was published in June 1997 and within a month the US rights had been sold to Scholastic for an unprecedented six- figure sum. It was the sale of the rights that triggered the buzz, not schoolyard chatter, since there wasn't sufficient time for playground Potter patter to start the Rowling ball rolling, especially as only a few hundred copies of the book had been printed.

The initial groundswell is as attributable to media interest in the rights sale - to say nothing of Rowling's own "fairy story" - as it is to mad-keen kids boasting about the boy wizard to their friends.

Suggestion 4: King of the World Wide Web

Alongside worth of mouth, there's word of mouse. It is surely no accident that Pottermania coincided with the casting of the net. One of Harry's earliest and most ardent fans was the son of an AOL executive, who persuaded his father to establish a dedicated discussion group on the portal. As AOL was the ISP that did much to domesticate cyberspace, in the United States at least, the boy wizard was a web wizard from the outset. America, remember, accounts for 55 per cent of total HP sales.

However, if Harry's global reach is partly attributable to the weaving of the world wide web, it is also due to his quintessential Englishness. Global culture, despite frequent predictions to the contrary, is not especially homogenised.

The goods that sell best globally are often profoundly local, stereotypically national. Harry Potter sells Englishness.

All the qualities associated with England in the abstract - stoicism, bravery, fair play, determination, good humour, irreverence, etc - are embodied in the boy wizard.

Suggestion 5: Yo, Retro!

Tradition underpins yet another explanation of the Harry Potter phenomenon, one predicated on nostalgia. The merest glance across the contemporary cultural landscape reveals that we are living in retrospective times. Retro motors like the VW Beetle or Chrysler PT Cruiser sit outside our mock-Tudor or neo-neo-Georgian houses equipped with retro Roberts radios or Art Deco television sets, on which we watch I Love 1970 or Fawlty Towers reruns before going out to our Friendsreunited reunion followed by a 1980s-night disco in a First World War theme pub.

Harry Potter is part and parcel of this retroquake. The books are brand new old-fashioned fairy tales. They are full of ye olde touches, from ancient steam trains to venerable educational institutionslit by candles, heated by log fires, kitted out with four-poster beds and all the accoutrements associated with traditional boarding schools of the Tom Brown, Billy Bunter, St Trinian's archetype. Yet they are set in the present and bang up to date.

Suggestion 6: Boffins Ho!

Retro is all very well, but as explanations go it's a bit vague and zeitgeisty.

An injection of scientific rigour is required. For some, Harry Potter is an example of "emergence", a side-effect of our increasingly networked world where one thing leads to another, some things suddenly erupt out of nowhere and promptly scoop the pool.

For others, Harry Potter is a literary version of Richard Dawkins's "memes", gene-like, self-replicating socio-cultural fragments that spread rapidly throughout society and drive everyone to distraction.

For yet others, Harry Potter is a monument to the "wisdom of crowds", the fact that the many are smarter than the few, that the collective intelligence of crowds of people - millions of JKR readers - is greater than that of any single individual.

Be that as it may, quasi-scientific explanations don't really account for the Potter phenomenon. They help us understand the spread and world-wide uptake of Rowling's creation, but don't explain why her books, and only her books, were plucked from obscurity so stupendously.

Suggestion 7: Fortune Favours the Brand

The final suggestion is very simple, almost as simple as good- bookswellwritten. It was all down to luck. On studying Rowling's story, one can't help but be struck by the number of times the fates intervened. She sent the first Potter manuscript to Christopher Little's literary agency simply because she liked his name. Her slush-piled submission was read by an office worker at a loose end one lunchtime.

It landed on Bloomsbury's doorstep at the very moment when the publisher was developing its children's list.

Scholastic picked Harry up at the urging of Janet Hogarth, who had previously worked for Bloomsbury, as luck would have it. Harry Potter wasn't David Heyman's first choice when he was looking for movie projects to develop, but his kids and a colleague persuaded him that the boy wizard was worth pursuing.

It thus seems that, for all her undoubted literary skills, the bottom line is that Jo Rowling got lucky. She won the literary lotto. She scooped the rollover of rollovers, the biggest jackpot there's ever been. As she herself observed in November 1997: "I am the luckiest person in the world."

However, even in her wildest dreams she couldn't have imagined the luck that was still to come. And will doubtless continue next month when the next instalment hits the bookstores. Good luck to her.

Wizard! Harry Potter's Brand Magic by Stephen Brown is published by Cyan Books at Pounds 7.99.

(c)2005. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.