Harry Potter does not just denote the mania that has gripped readers across the globe. Nor is it only about the rags-to-riches story of its author, J K Rowling. The story of Harry Potter is of a brand transformed into an icon, transcending age, cultural, geographical and many other barriers. The brand Potter extends to a host of categories from toys to movies to apparels to many others. In essence, it is the story of what it takes to make a billion dollar brand.
Harry Potter is a bigger property than anything else we have ever seen, and we are nowhere near saturation point.July 16, 2005, was no ordinary day. It was the day millions of booklovers, mostly young (per-haps not so young), anxiously waited for two long years! Their wait was finally over at 0001 BST, to be precise, when the sixth volume of the Harry Potter series titled Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released.
Never in the history of the publish-ing industry, globally, has a book gen-erated so much interest and developed a fan following that cuts across age, language, cultural barriers and even continents. The Harry Potter mania is indeed phenomenal. The magical spell it has cast on the psyche of the audi-ence can be gauged from the fact that fans across the globe waited for hours in queues to buy a copy of the book. |