Rowling in money

This weekend, as the ordinary reader queues up to find out whether Harry Potter will finally defeat Lord Voldemort, the business-minded reader has a slightly different, if equally burning, question. How many galleons, sickles and knuts will the final book in the franchise make? Even as Pottermaniacs exchange spoilers""how many of the boy wizard's friends will die this time, is the sinister Severus Snape really as evil as he seems, will Bertie Botts' Beans be available in ever more disgusting flavours""management and marketing gurus worldwide will be analysing the future of the disgustingly lucrative Potter franchise. When J K Rowling dreamt up the boy wizard who attends the magical Hogwarts, she had no idea that she was about to create the most successful boy brand of all time.

The statistics are well-known. The Potter books have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide, making the series the most successful set of books ever, barring The Bible and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Rowling, who unlike Mao and the authors of the Bible, is in a position to receive royalties, is the world's first dollar billionaire writer, and will add to her fortune with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The franchise includes theme parks, apparently endless quantities of tacky witch-and-wizard merchandise, the very successful films and some slightly dubious forays into marketing. An attempt to market the Nimbus broomsticks mentioned in the magical games of Quidditch was quietly swept under the carpet when parents complained that their children were getting rather more stimulation from the vibrating brooms than was desirable.

Potter shows up in management seminars ("Be a WIZARD Manager!" "Six Death-Eaters at the Workplace and How To Avoid Them") and in academic chautauquas. And an essay in BusinessWeek claims to have cracked the Potter code, in a piece that makes for considerably less riveting reading than any of Rowling's books: "The secrets of Potter's success are thus fourfold: Narrative, Ambiguity, Mystery and Entertainment. Or NAME for short." For some, though, the marketing magic has long since disapparated. Bloomsbury, the publishing house whose fortunes have soared with Potter's popularity, saw a huge dip in its share price when Rowling confirmed that Deathly Hallows was the last book in the series. Independent booksellers have seen their share of the Potter profits disappear faster than you can say "Expelliarmus!" as retailers demand heavier discounts. And authors of other children's books often cast themselves as the house-elves of the business, underpaid and overworked while publishers and readers remain spellbound by Potter.

In the list of those affected by the folding up of the franchise, we must not forget anti-witchcraft activists, whose fringe movement received a much-needed fillip when they found themselves with seven books to rail against. Reading experts predict dolefully that uberfans who only consented to learn how to read in order to browse the Potter books will slump back into a teenage wasteland of illiteracy. There is, however, one way out, and it is provided by Rowling herself. Part of the allure of the books to a generation nourished by malls and experts in the fine art of shopping is her ability to generate at least one unique merchandising idea per chapter, just waiting to be developed and marketed by the right entrepreneur.

What, for instance, wouldn't commuters in Mumbai pay to travel by Floo Powder or broomstick rather than the trains? Which journalist worth his/her salt wouldn't kill for Rita Skeeter's Qwik-Quotes Quill? And which ordinary office-or-party-goer hasn't wished for an Invisibility Cloak, or even a Pensieve, so useful for storing those unpleasant memories of the conversation the boss had with you? All we need is the right marketing maven, and somebody willing to put their muscle behind PotterProducts Inc.