Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Has Harry Potter changed the course of the New York Times Book Review -- and the children's book market -- for good or for evil? It depends on whom you ask.
Aug 16, 2000 | It takes a wizard to change the course of the Times.
For more than a year, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has occupied the top three slots of the New York Times' adult fiction bestseller list. Last month it was about to capture a fourth when the 68-year-old national institution debuted its first new offshoot in 16 years and effectively evicted the Potter books from the prime real estate they had monopolized for more than 20 months.
Harry Potter managed to grab the top four slots on the new list, a children's books bestseller list that includes 11 other children's and young adult (YA) titles. The new list is located below the adult roster in a quarter that is considered either a ghetto or a lucrative niche, depending upon whom you ask.
"It's been a long time coming," remarks Joanna Cotler, publisher of Joanna Cotler Books at HarperCollins Children's, "and I'm thrilled that Harry Potter is what finally pushed them into it. I've always looked at the New York Times' bestseller list as wonderful free advertising. Now children's books get it, too."
Not everyone is quite so thrilled with the new digs for children's literature. For many in the publishing business, the new bestseller list is the publishing equivalent of moving from a penthouse into a basement apartment. "It was startling to me that they would choose the moment when the fourth Harry Potter would be hitting No. 1 on the adult list," says Barbara Marcus, president of the Scholastic Children's Book Group, J.K. Rowling's American publisher. "The Times became a spoiler of it all. I always believed that bestseller lists are just that, and they should be recording and reporting the bestselling books in the country."
Francesca Lia Block, author of YA crossover classics such as "Weetzie Bat" and "Girl Goddess #9," confesses, "If I were J.K. Rowling, [being relegated to the children's bestseller list] would really disturb me because it would say that this book is only for children."
Cotler, who is Block's editor, is also sympathetic to Marcus' frustrations. "Scholastic owned the New York Times adult bestseller list for the last year. Now, they only have the opportunity to be on one list, which is a hardcover-only list, and the slot that they had for paperback no longer exists. Is it fair when they are outselling every book by miles? Not really. That would never happen to an adult book."
And Craig Virden, president and publisher of Random House Children's Books, exclaims, "3.8 million copies: That's an adult number! And even though I think that anything that draws attention to children's books is great for business, I have to say that this is really unfair to Scholastic."
Marcus notes that 30 percent of the first three Harry Potter books were purchased by and for a reader 35 or older. "It would seem to me that if we were tracking adult bestselling reading behavior, one would say that the book should be on both lists."
New York Times Book Review editor Chip McGrath is keenly aware of how difficult it is to discern between children's and adult literature, since most books for children are purchased by adults, so he is leaving it to publishers to "tell us if it's a children's book or a grown-up book. That's how we'll track them on the list."
Herein lies the rub. If publishers can choose how their books will be classified, those who view the children's list as a ghetto have the option to place a bid on other real estate. For an example, one need only look as far as "Pastoralia" author George Saunders, who announced in an Atlantic Monthly article in April that his next book, illustrated by Caldecott winner Lane Smith, was a kids book -- only to have his Random House editor, Dan Menaker, insist that it was most definitely a book for adults.
Get Salon in your mailbox!