Harry Potter: A Multi-Billion Dollar Business
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Case Details:
Case Code : MKTG079
Case Length : 15 Pages
Period : 2003
Pub Date : 2003
Teaching Note :Not Available
Organization : Amazon.com
Industry : Books and Publishing
Countries : UK
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"Harry Potter is a bigger property than anything else we have ever seen, and we are nowhere near saturation point."1
- Diane Nelson, Senior Vice President, Warner Brothers, in June 2003.
Harry Potter's Magic Spells Success for Many!
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In June 2000, a rather unusual story made the headlines of leading newspapers in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK).
The story was about how the book, 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,' had become the biggest publishing success in the history of the books business.
The book (the third in a series of seven books about a boy named Harry Potter), authored by J.K. Rowling had broken all records at online book retailing majors Amazon and Barnes & Nobel with advance orders of 300,000 each. The advance order figure was five times more than what most new bestsellers warranted for in the industry.
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Commenting on this, Lynn Blake, General Manager, Amazon.com's book store, said, "This is probably the biggest e-commerce event yet. We have certainly never seen a book that sells like this one does."2 The unprecedented number of orders indicated how readers all over the world were eagerly awaiting its release.
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Analysts pointed out that Harry Potter books belonged to that rare class of books which were avidly read by children and adults alike. This frenzy for the books (termed 'Potter Mania' by the media) had not only benefited book sellers but also helped many other businesses mint money.
Scholastic Inc (Scholastic), a US-based book publishing house, was one of the companies that benefited immensely from Harry Potter's phenomenal success. Scholastic published around 3.8 million first print copies of 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' in 2000. The company had reportedly sold 20.9 million copies of the first three books3 in the Harry Potter series, earning around $100 million from them in 2000. |
Judy Cowman, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Scholastic, said, "It is just an extraordinary publishing event. There has not been anything like it."4 The Harry potter series not only raised the company's revenues but also generated significant investor interest.
Harry Potter: A Multi-Billion Dollar Business
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