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| Friday, 24 December 2004 |
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Editorial | |
| News Business Features Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
| Please forward your comments to the Editor, Daily News. Email : [email protected] Snail mail : Daily News, 35, D.R. Wijewardene Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 11 2429429 / 94 11 2421181 Fax : 94 11 2429210 The magic of books What is it with Harry Potter ? The fictional boy wizard has fans all over the globe, the films are smash hits and the merchandise keeps rolling in. Now, fans of Harry Potter have more reasons to celebrate, with the news that author J.K. Rowling has finished the sixth book in the series. Titled "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", the tome is set to be published on July 16, 2005 worldwide. It picks up the story of Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as his evil foe Lord Voldemort's "power and followers are increasing day by day," Rowling's publishers Bloomsbury and Scholastic said. The book opens with a chapter that "has been brewing in J.K. Rowling's mind for 13 years," say Bloomsbury and Scholastic. The billionaire author has said the "half-blood prince" of the title is neither Harry nor Voldemort. Several publishers rejected Rowling's wildly improbable but absolutely fascinating tale of a boy attending a wizards'school, before a sharp editor at Bloomsbury noted its massive potential. Bloomsbury was proved right - the fifth book in the series, published in 2003, made publishing history by selling five million copies within 24 hours. More than a quarter of a billion Harry Potter books have been sold worldwide in 60 languages ranging from Gujarati to Ancient Greek. Why do we like Potter, portrayed elegantly by Daniel Radcliffe in the movies, so much ? Perhaps there is a Potter in all of us. Who does not like to have a little bit of magic in an otherwise ordinary life ? Potter may be all-fiction, but another recent publishing phenomenon has critics and fans wondering whether it could involve some truth as well. Dan Brown's top-notch thriller The Da Vinci Code has taken the literary world by storm. Part history, part fiction, Da Vinci Code satisfies our urge to know more about the past in an easy-to-understand manner. In fact, several books that attempt to decipher the riddles in Brown's book have already been published. A book about a book is the ultimate accolade that an author can receive. Readers love good yarns, but they also look for books which do not fit into the ordinary scheme of things. After all, who thought that a book about punctuation would stick to the best seller list for nearly one year ? But this is exactly what happened with Lynne Truss' amazing book Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The success of these books indicates that there is a still a good market for books that defy conventional thinking, despite the proliferation of television channels. Budding authors take note - innovation is the key to success in the publishing world. |
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