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Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry
VoidEngineer writes "In a surprisingly insightful article entitled Harry Crushes the Hulk, Frank Rich discusses how "Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix" beat out "The Hulk" and goes on to offer some insightfull and interesting comments on demographics, digital media piracy, file sharing and p2p networks, the iTunes store, and more... His conclusion? "[Consumers] may well be willing to pay for their entertainment -- if the quality is guaranteed and the price is fair."
[Consumers] may well be willing to pay for their entertainment -- if the quality is guaranteed and the price is fair.
Sheesh, what dunce claimed that? Clearly consumers are more willing to pay if you threaten and sue them. Duh.
... I would certainly pay for accessible, reasonably priced, good quality music and video.
I don't have an Australian Drivers licence, and my local video store requires *australian* photo ID. So, that counts me out as a video consumer. The last time I bought a CD was for *one* song I liked. I'd use ITunes if it were available out here.
Sadly, I doubt that the companies will wake up and smell the coffee...
"[Consumers] may well be willing to pay for their entertainment -- if the quality is guaranteed and the price is fair."
That sounds familiar.. where have I heard that.. oh yeah, now I remember, that's how all the other industries work.
prices on entertainment goods aren't nearly as bad as I thought. I'd been complaining about how expensive it was being an anime fan boy, and saying I'd happily pay $5 bucks an episode for my anime. Then along comes the Nadesico Box set for $60. That's $2.30 an episode. At prices like that it's not worth the trouble of pirating it.
:).
And yeah, I paid $30 for Morrowind, but it'll be months, if not years, untill I'm finished with it.
On the other hand, music goers into the lastest American stuff are still getting gorged. Then again I got John Arch's A Twist in Fate for $10 bucks, and lots of the stuff I liked when I was a kid (Judus Priest, King Diamond, Early Fates Warning, The Ramones, the list goes on) is getting released on the cheap.
It's funny, but we fan boys aren't getting screwed nearly as bad as we used to. Anyone who paid $35 for 2 dubbed eps of Ranma 1/2 knows what I'm talking about. If the trend carries on like this, I'm gonna have to shut my mouth and start buying more stuff
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The entertainment industry loves 15+ kids for their spending power, but loathe them for the grand scale theft of music and videos. However, they will pay for quality, ie. the fifth Harry Potter book, but won't spend the same kind of dough on an album with one hit and a lot of fillers. It's nice to finally see journalists getting the point so many in the Slashdot crowd have been trying to make for some time.
I would love to be able to pay for my favourite songs but last week I found one of my latest CD purchases was copy protected.
:-(
It was the Amélié Soundtrack CD I bought in Australia. Sadly the CD did not even mount in the Linux or Mac boxes I tried it on.
Both the original and replace CDs I tried worked on standard players but could not be mounted on a CD drive. Typical nasty BMG copy protection.
I got my money back but even the store techie was surprised they had not mentioned the protection scheme on the packaging. He mentioned it was required in Oz. Is this true?
Annoying because I want to show my support for a funky French film and was willing to put my money where my mouth was.
If iTunes was available in Australia or the UK, then I would be buying that album online just to avoid the CD protection.
From a consumer who actually pays for music...
"...insightfull...insightfull..." Do you think he thought it was "insightfull"?
Pay for just "good quality" and "fair price"? I wouldn't. I want good quality and fair price, yes, but fair use is just as important (if not more). If I pay anything for it, I want to be able to use it to it's fullest, whether that means ripping it to listen to on my MP3 player, burning a copy for my car, or putting it in the microwave. Then I'll buy it if I decide I want/"need" it.
Its odd, but sometimes the most obvious solutions are the ones that are almost blatantly ignored in marketing (and in many other fields, I would imagine).
For instance, my International Political Economy professor at one point was on a plane heading for Brazil (he was studying something or other while there) and sat next to a guy who worked in the marketing department for the lab that produces and develops Mallox (or was it Alka-Seltzer?).
They got to talking and it turned out the guy was going down there to help figure out this problem they were having in sales. In some areas their product was selling very well, but in other areas it wasn't selling at all. Marketing had spent billions of dollars (litterally) and said "people in those areas like products that are from the US, so we should put a little American Flag on the packages" and he was going down to do something of a feasability check on this.
My professor turned to him and said, evidently without missing a beat "your product isn't selling well in those areas because your product provides relief for over-eating and the people in those areas are starving!"
The guy's face dropped and shortly thereafter was taking down contact information and writing notes.
You would think this would be obvious, but sometimes that is exactly the solution is hiding.
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The media coverage of Harry Potter started *because* of its popularity, it didn't cause it. I will grant that the popularity of the fifth book has probably been helped along by the media coverage, but remember, the popularity of the series was already quite entrenched when the fourth book was being anticipated. The fact that little kids were lining up to be the first to read a 700 plus page book on their own was what made the story newsworthy.
I agree with your point, but IIRC Bloomsbury Ltd. is not a member of RIAA. And I wouldn't exactly describe the latest Harry Potter as crap, and am happy in the knowledge that my dollars were well spent on a hardbound copy.
I watched the development of the 5th book being scanned for distribution over an irc book trading channel.
.rar archive and available for download.
On Friday Night/Saturday Morning: First Chapter scanned and proofed. The whole book has reportedly been scanned, and is being proofed. Scans are available of both versions of the cover.
Saturday Afternoon (I wake up) Told the proofed version will be ready by 8 pm. Rough versions of all the chapters are available. people looking for the book are being send to a seperate channel. A website has been established where one individual has taken the rough chapters and has been proofing them himself, and posting them online.
Sunday Afternoon book has been proofed and is combined into a html file with the cover images. This is turned into a
This comment doesn't really have a point. I will say I purchased a copy of the book, and I was personally involved with the scanning. I just want people to be aware of the existence of scanned books, in the hope that it will enhance this discussion.
Gryftir
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
I actually hunted down a copy the new HP book online the day it came out; after failing to find it in bookstores. Then, I found it again online, the no-shipping variety, and finished the book before it even arrived last wednesday.
Though I'm sure the author would love to sue me for saying so, you don't lose too much in reading the electronic format. Unlike music or a movie, however, a book is something we don't always finish. A bad book we put down. When we finish a book, we know that it was at least readable.
I guess what I'm saying is that I've never finished an ebook without suffereing the immediate compulsion to grab myself a copy of the real deal. Movies, music, anime, tv... these things are more impulse buys. I would never buy them in the first place normally, but after being exposed to them in a way I wouldn't have been in the first place, I at least have a reason to purchase them.
A book is something I cannot avoid purchasing if I enjoy it. Don't ask my why, I don't know. But I suspect that I am not alone in this; I also suspect that as much as a mediocre amount of piracy can help music sales, it can probably be a great boon for the sales of a less popular book.
I'm not saying "Go forth and pirate books!"; I'm just saying that maybe having people get exposed to your book, no matter how it happens, results in drastically increased sales?
Thoughts?
Anyone else getting tired of this? I mean, can't reporters make the connection? When was the economy at it's peek? In 2000. What has it been doing since 2000? Going into deeper and deeper recession. What does that mean? People are spending less money on goods and services.
What?! The entertainment industry saw a drop in sales during a worldwide economic recession? It must be the pirates fault!
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
Harry Potter is a children's story set in an adult world. As you go farther along, you begin to see that the HP universe is actually a very frightening place, where very bad things can happen to very nice people.
Also, the characters tend to be far more realistic than you would expect in children's literature. Not all the good guys are nice, and not all the bad guys are mean.
Summary: It's just a good story. Read more.
Visit the
Now things are different for me. Now I live in the small town of Robbinsville, NC. There are 2 video rental stores both with poor selections and no movie theaters at all. I love movies, so yes, I admit, I download movies that I used to go to theaters to see, cause otherwise I have to wait for the rental. For movies that have been out a few months however... I now use netflix as my rental source, I still don't prefer to P2P, as the quality isn't good and I personally believe that if I like something, I should pay for it so that the people who make it get the incentive to make more things like that.
Money makes the world work, but the article does make a point, everyone targets the younger crowd who have no money to spend, yet they continue to raise their prices higher and higher till their target audience can't afford it anymore, of course they would turn to P2P. I mean movie ticket prices are somewhat rediculous, there are places that it costs $10 for a matinee ticket! Why would a kid want to shell out $10 for 2 hours of mindless entertainment, when they could pay $17 for a book that will entertain them for days. Even the audiobook version is 24 hours of entertainment. And what Rowling can do for young minds is far more magical then anything Harry learns at Hogwarts. For a long time children have fallen away from reading, the instant gratification world in which we live has bred children to not want to read, and in many cases, not be able to read. Yet J.K. Rowling has the most amazing ability to grab minds child and adult alike and make them crave more and more. Each book she releases longer then the previous, this one nearly 900 pages in length, yet children as young as 6 make it through it not once but multiple times. And when Rowling can't write fast enough for these eager readers, the children actually look to OTHER books. Rowling has done more for literacy then anyone in the late 20th century.
Sadly it won't be enough, we live in far too much of a video world, Children come home from school and immediately turn on the TV to watch increasingly disgusting cartoons or play mindless video games, they do this until they go to bed, then get up and continue the next morning before school, when the weekends come instead of sitting outside under a tree reading a good book, they spend the whole day inside burning images into their eyes, and when they cannot get enough through TV and what movies they can afford to see in theaters, they hop online and download the rest of the available movies. Would the best thing be a reasonable price on entertainment? Or less entertainment with more quality to it?
If you don't care for Harry Potter, that's fine, not everyone does. But by this statement you're implying that you don't read fiction because you're an adult, and I fail to see what one has to do with the other.
My father is in his seventies now and still devours about three novels a week. He is a rather intelligent and well-educated man. He cared for my ailing and home-bound mother for ten years all by himself until she passed away a few months ago. All through that time he read tons of fiction. It helped him remain sane while he saw my mother deteriorate despite his best efforts. A social worker that visited him once said she was astonished at the quality of care he was giving my mother.
Here is a man that is very much an adult. He shoulders his adult responsibilities seriously and with skill. Yet he continued to read fiction during that time. We need fiction as an escape, if nothing else, a way of immersing ourselves in another world as a way of recovering from the harsh realities of real life.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
I have never purchased a hardcover book for full price. I've always waited for soft-cover, or found a hard-cover book on sale. This is because books are not usually the hype machines that movies are- I don't NEED to read them right now, because there are other things to read to fill the time before the book comes out. Hard-cover buyers are just suckers, who subsidize the industry for the rest of us.
This was true until I found myself paying full price $29.99 for the latest Harry Potter.
The last book (#4) was the best in the series so far, and I hope this just comes close. I haven't been able to read it yet though- there are two women in the house, so that makes me last in line....
I do buy music- and I hate it. I would love to see something like iTunes on the Windows platform. The only thing that scares me about it though, is that people will only buy the 'hits'. Everyone I know has the same experience with music- you buy the album 'just for this one song', but USUALLY the depth of the album surprises you, and the song you initially liked ends up being the one you hate the most.
So if we only buy the ones we like, a lot of music will never get noticed...
Kid Rock's album (don't remember the name, but the one with 'Cowboy' on it) was actually a fairly solid album. Songs like 'Got One For Ya' and 'Black Chick White Guy' weren't played on the radio, that I heard, but they ended up being some of my favorites. Also, Uncle Kracker (hey, if you didn't like Kid Rock, you probably didn't buy this either) had a hit with 'Follow Me', but in my mind the rest of the album was much better.
There are a lot of cases though were I know I don't want the whole album- usually older songs from one-hit-wonders that I want to put on some party CD or something like that. I mean, do I really want to purchase the entire Rose Royce collection, just to get 'Car Wash'? Although Rose Royce does have at least 5 different 'best of' albums, but I really don't want to pay for the rest of their music. (Interesting note, I saw Rose Royce at the Asparagus Festival in Stockton, CA. They played at 12:00 Noon...it was pretty sad..maybe I should buy their albums just so they don't have to do that again)
Another example is the band Orgy. These guys are horrible- but they did a real good cover of New Order's 'Blue Monday'. I bought the CD...it was one of those rare occurances when I threw the CD away....even with one good song, it wasn't worth the piece of plastic it came on.
So- when do I know the album has depth, and when do I know that I really do only want one song? I guess I will need to rely more on reviewers, and try to make better decisions. So I don't waste money.
My problem with books is actually more complicated. If I don't like a book, I have usually spent quite a few hours to find out. I hate that waste of time- and of course reviews are only for hard-cover, so I never really catch on to those. I end up buying a lot of books I don't really like.
Some good books though:
Hole in the Head
Slab Rat
Carter Beats the Devil
The Straw Men
Blah blah blah
No reason to lie.
The real Order of the Phoenix has 870 pages, 38 chapters, and starts with the line "The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close...". There are a few people with way too much free time who have written their own complete books based on what they think OoP might be. You probably got one of those. But, if you're going to worry about it so much, why not just go buy the real book?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
That's because you are no longer a kid, and your tastes have changed. The Harry Potter books, which I have not read I will admit, are aimed at children, not at your level. From all I've heard, they are written well, but so is, say, the Judy Blume books that kids loved. Doesn't mean adults will find them of interest.
" My wife says its aimed at a lower grade audience, so why does she read it?
This is similar to something I have wondered about for several years: why do adults like the HP books? Cleary they weren't meant for them, and adults were clueless about the books until their kids discovered them and made a fuss. My theory is three-fold:
- The hype factor: When anything gets hyped a lot, people join in just to see what the fuss is about.
- The quality factor: The HP books are apparently well-written, not just hyped junk. The hype machine came after Rowling wrote the first few books. They are good books, simple as that. Again, I cannot speak from personal experience, but I have friends who have read the books and tell me what they think.
- The literacy factor: Adults are not reading as often as they used to, and the literacy level of adult fiction has lowered over the decades to keep up with the times. Compare a newspaper from a hundred years ago to one today. Compare a popular novel to one today. People like easier material. They get lazy. So when they pick up a HP book they find it's easy to read, contains a good story, and they feel as if they are accomplishing something.
"I have read a few chapters of the HP and find it near tripe. I am not a fan of fiction anymore, I am an adult, and find the story to be a waste of time."Well, I find your concept of adulthood to be odd. Fiction is universally known as a window into the human condition. The best fiction tells us more about the world than the most thoroughly researched non-fiction. It says more in a glance than reams of charts and facts. So to hear you dismiss all fiction tells us why you don't like the HP books, but it also tells us something about you.
Namely that you are probably just trolling. :)
Within 72 hours of The Order of the Phoenix being published my partner and I had both read it cover to cover; I'm currently reading it for the second time. She's 39 and I'm 47; we have no children. We've both read all of the Harry Potter books, the first long before it was filmed. There are somewhere between five and ten thousand novels in this house - we both read a lot.
J K Rowling's work is not 'bullshit'. It's not, in my opinion, great literature either, but it is superb and highly imaginative story telling, tightly plotted and compellingly told and stands repeated reading.
There are two particular things I can point to which indicate that the Harry Potter phenomenon is something genuine in terms of literature. The first is, of course, that the first Harry Potter book came out from a small independent publisher with no fanfare at all. The whole snowball effect was entirely by word of mouth, at least until The Philosopher's Stone was filmed. Up to that point there were no external factors - no marketing, no colateral - so that only the intrinsic quality of the work could have made it one of the biggest best sellers of all time.
The other thing is that, in the UK, the publishers brought out an 'adult binding' of the Harry Potter books because they found that adult readers were embarrassed to be seen reading a "children's book" on public transport. This had never been done before for any other "children's book"
Both the original binding and the 'adult binding' of several Harry Potter books have separately been on the best sellers lists in Britain for years, and an individual Harry Potter book has been the best selling book in Britain for three of the last four years (in 2001, Harry Potter books took the top four places on the best sellers list). At this moment, Harry Potter books are first, second, eighth, ninth, seventeenth, and twenty-second on The Guardian's best sellers list. That's right, six places for five books. The second place, after the "children's binding" of Order of the Phoenix is the "adult binding" of the same title. Given that many adults will have the "children's binding" (we have) this indicates that roughly as many adults as children are reading the book.
Furthermore, apart from The Order of the Phoenix, all the Harry Potter books have Booktrack Platinum Awards for selling over a million copies within five years in Britain. Only six other books have ever won this award.
Harry Potter isn't a 'flash in the pan' success. It's a solid, consistent success over a period of years. It's a series of children's books, but it has sold well to adults. Its success long predates its marketing and is still out of all proportion to the amount of marketing effort it receives.
Of course, popularity is, as you say, no indicator of aesthetic merit. However, this degree of popularity sustained over this long indicates something, and it doesn't indicate hype because the popularity (at least in Britain) predates the hype, not the other way around. Yes, it's easy to appear superficially cool by rubbishing Rowling's work. But unless you have some alternative explanation for this degree of popularity, your shallowness and lack of
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
But I doubt if the children get even a quarter of the stuff she talked about (the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and Jesus Christ
The phoenix predates Christianity anyway only a Christian would see an analogy. One interesting thing about the entire series is that virtually no character is assigned any kind of religious faith.
it's named Fawkes after Guy Fawkes etc.).
British kids would get this quite easily.
A better example of some of the more obscure references would be that Hagrid bought Fluffy from a Greek man...
Is it as good as they say?
I'd like to see the marketing campaign that can get 10 year olds to sit and read -- nearly continuously -- an almost 900 page book that was actually crap. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.