While the children’s book market is surging, JK Rowling’s sales are lagging amid the controversy over anti-trans comments by the Harry Potter author.
The children’s book market saw a major boom in sales in June along with the rest of the book markets amid coronavirus (COVID-19) influenced shutdowns driving readers to buy a good deal more books than normal. However, a notable exception to this boom in sales are books from the Harry Potter franchise and author J.K. Rowling specifically.
NPD BookScan’s numbers for June showed a 31.4% increase in print fiction, but Rowling’s works saw only a 10.9% increase, while Harry Potter books (including licensed books not written by Rowling) have increased only 7.7%. These stalled increases in Rowling and Harry Potter sales follow Rowling making anti-trans statements on the internet in early JUne and then doubling and tripling down on the comments, including writing an essay explaining her position. Her comments and her continued attempts to defend her original position saw Rowling draw criticism from pretty much every notable figure in the Harry Potter world, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Eddie Redmayne plus the Harry Potter fansites, Leaky Caldron and Mugglenet.
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Causation, of course, does not prove correlation, but it is interesting to note that a similar increase in print fiction sales in June 2019 saw Rowling’s sales go up by a very similar percentage (35.2% for Rowling and 33.3% for print fiction overall). In addition, print sales for books having been booming since COVID-19 shutdowns began in March, and before June, Rowling’s sales had been up 26.5% compared to the first half of 2019 before the abrupt drop off in June.
Kristen McLean, analyst and executive director of business development at the NPD Group, spoke about Rowling’s numbers, “Looking at [Rowling’s] performance against the rest of the market, especially as benchmarked against her performance in 2019 — which was very consistent with the rest of the market — I think she’s down. She’s certainly underperforming the rest of the market, comparatively, by two thirds.”
These sales lags amount to real dollars lost, as Rowling would have made nearly $1.7 million more in sales had her sales increased at a same rate as the overall market, as it did last year. Similarly, Harry Potter books would have made another $2 million if those sales had matched the overall market rate.
BookScan numbers do not include eBooks, sales to libraries and direct publisher sales, but it is clear from the available information that Rowling’s numbers fell off dramatically since her anti-trans controversy began. Without further consumer research, the connection cannot be proven, but it remains that Rowling’s sales are taking a hit for one reason or another.
Via Variety.
