Not such a wizard idea

Publishing sensation: Harry Potter

David Sexton|Literary Editor|Evening Standard

11 April 2012

Ships have always been launched. So have spears, and, more recently, spacecraft. Until quite recently, however, books used merely to be published. They would be printed, bound, taken round to the bookshops and left to their fate. Sometimes there would be a small gathering, plied with glasses of sulphurous plonk, to mark the occasion.

We've changed all that. The launch of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, at midnight on Friday, is going to make the launch of an Apollo rocket look like a shamefaced sidling-away. It is the largest such event in bookselling history. Bloomsbury, JK Rowling's publisher, is not saying exactly how big the first print run is going to be, but it has been estimated at two million in this country, 8.5 million in the States.

The previous instalment of the saga, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, had an initial print run of 1.2 million copies here; 372,775 of those sold on the first day, 8 July 2000. This time the stakes are still higher.

The booksellers have long been organising competitions, quizzes and countdowns in anticipation. On Friday, there will be midnight openings all over the country - 100 branches of Waterstone's, 140 branches of W H Smith. There will be magicians, raffles, puppet shows.

There is going to be a grandiose movie-style premiere party at Waterstone's in Piccadilly, where £100,000 has been spent turning the shop into Harry Potter World. In America, a million badges and stickers are going to be handed out by Harry Potter lookalikes. And, at King's Cross, platform 93/4 will be recreated once again.

There have been keenly awaited serial novels before. When Dickens was publishing The Old Curiosity Shop in 1840, the weekly numbers caused a great stir far and wide. It is claimed that "waiting crowds at a New York pier shouted to an incoming vessel: 'Is Little Nell dead?' ... "

When in 1999, after an 11-year gap, Thomas Harris finally published Hannibal, the third Lecter novel, there was a huge furore - or so it seemed at the time, although Hannibal's return was shy and bashful compared to Harry's latest.

At one London bookshop, fans queued to buy the book as it was released at midnight and were served broad beans and chianti by an Anthony Hopkins lookalike. At Euston, the following day, the publishers handed out bacon sandwiches to commuters, a tasteful allusion to the fact that a number of people are eaten by pigs in the novel.

Unfortunately, many readers decided that it was the novel itself that was hammy - "a snorting, rooting, oinking porker", said Martin Amis. Let's hope Harry hasn't suffered a similar transformation. Or if he has, it's a reversible spell.

But, if it is natural that readers are impatient to hear what has happened to a favourite character, there is now an attempt by publishers to turn the publication of all their biggest titles into spectacular events.

Last week, New York readers queued in their hundreds to buy Hillary Clinton's Living History - again, at midnight, the time taken to be the gauge of real enthusiasm. What can these poor saps have been thinking?

For this accelerating rush to make books into events is a folly, a self-inflicted injury. Films have openings, shows have first nights, even exhibitions have private views, but books do not need launches at all (authors are another matter). They are objects, not events.

When you read a book, you are not confined to a single time or place, as you are when trapped at a concert, or, heaven forbid, a play. The encounter of writer and reader through the printed page is a far more elegant and less oppressive transaction than that. The writer has a chance to compose herself at leisure, to become far more intelligent and appealing than she could ever be in real time. The reader, for his part, can approach the book as he likes, picking it up, putting it down, pausing, re-reading, skipping, at will.

You can read a book as and when you like. Both parties thus enjoy some freedom from the usual constraints of life. It's one of the things that makes reading and (so it is said) writing so delectable, this freedom, even if it is illusory. It is also worth reminding ourselves that any book which truly lives, lives beyond its author and reaches readers not yet present, entirely unforeseen.

We all know this but there is a conspiracy throughout the books business, from the review pages through to the shop windows, to pretend that the only titles that matter are the latest ones. We conspirators all do our best to turn these permanent objects into passing events, as though we miss the very moment of publication at our peril. Books are increasingly promoted like movies, to be consumed now or never.

Harry Potter will survive this weird frenzy. The stories will be read for years to come, both nostalgically in later life by those children now struggling through it for the first time, and by children yet unborn. Even being "the biggest book event ever" (in terms of numbers and revenue at least) is not going to affect that.

But more run-of-the-mill books are beginning to suffer from the way nearly all publishers now strive to turn their few most promotable titles into such emphatic events.

Publishing and bookselling are becoming distorted by this pressure. Henceforth, books will either be the new Harry Potter or they won't - and they nearly all won't. That is not going to help other writers - or their readers.