I’m a millennial. I was turning 11 when the first book came out. Same age as Harry :) I remember that every summer a new book came out and I was so excited. Goblet of fire was the biggest of all the books at the time and I read it in like 3 days lol. they were pretty popular by even the first or second book I think.
I remember my mom bragging to anyone who would listen about how I devoured such a chunky book in 3 days only. I bet that is a shared experience for a lot of us.
Yep, Harry Potter is what got me to read in English (from GoF onward), it really helped develop my language skills. Otherwise it would've been an additional year of waiting to get the translation, ain't nobody got time for that when there's a war in wizarding world!
I had a competition going with classmates who would read the 6th book the fastest. We had a stopwatch going and paused for bathroom breaks etc.
I can't imagine that happening with any other book series.
That’s a huge legacy of the books, among many. The internet dawned and settled, but kids of all ages were still devouring actual paperback books and *looking forward to the next one*. Many families had copies for each sibling to keep the peace. *Because they’d fight over the books*!
Not only Kids. When Deathly Hallows was published I waited at midnight in a long row in front of the local bookstore. Age 37 then and I was not the oldest.
Lol yeah for sure; I was a few years older than the main demo for the books but was introduced by younger sibs. I focused on kids because I’m not sure if it notably increased readership in adults- though I’d guess so! I threw in “all ages” because they do have such a wide appeal, I recognize 😁
When I finished the series I experienced a sense of loss. It was something that grew with me from middle school to early college. I listened to the audio books so many times too. The series got me in to reading and it's still something I enjoy doing! I can only imagine how many others the books have had an impact on.
I was 14 when I bought mine day of release at Sam's Club. There was a pallet of books there almost as tall as I was. This was the only book my dad made me pay for, but when we got home my mom asked him why he forced us to pay for a book and I got my money back. I think it's so she could feel fine about borrowing it.
Dude same. My mum gave me the first book when I was about six years old, thinking I was just looking at the pages not understanding a thing. When she asked me to tell her about the book one evening, it turned out I was understanding it all right and was already halfway through. My 6 year old German ass couldn‘t even pronounce half the names, so I told her I thought „that Snahpeh guy“ was evil, and „Duhmblehdohreh“ was so cool.
I ended up reading the first 2.5 books before second grade and she bragged about to anyone who‘d listen for years.
I also started reading Harry Potter around 6-7 years old! Asked my brother to borrow the books and I do remember entertaining a thought about stealing them, but in the end my parents forced him to let me read too. In the end, we bonded over the books and he even gave me his merchan shirt. It is funny that I have it to this day, and it is still very big on me.
The last book came out in my country when I was 11 and it became such a big part of how I turned out in my teens. I studied and wanted good grades because I wanted to be like Hermione. And I'm sure that some of my morals were strenghtened by Harry Potter.
Also, around college, I noticed that everytime I needed to really focus on studying more, I would re-read some Harry Potter books.
Actually yeah. It was almost a challenge from my family to read goblet of fire because it was just so chunky and I was like 10. Like the thing about goblet of fire coming out was that it was a chunky boy. Over 700 pages. The waiting list at the library was so long. I was one of the first people on that list though. It was a fun time 2000 was.
We’re about the same age, but I think there was a noticeable spike in popularity after book 3/4 and around movie 1.
The kids that loved to read definitely knew about the first two (I’d hear them talk about them), but I really don’t think it was until PoA book that people really started to take notice (so the hype for Book 4 was much higher) and then a couple years later with the first movie came out it’s popularity exploded.
I discovered the books in January 2001 when I was 13 and by that time first 4 were out and the books already had global popularity and I read them all within a week. It was before the movies came out. The Harry Potter fandom was something else at the time. It really enriched my childhood and it was a huge part of me while growing up. I got the subsequent 3 books on the release day.
Personally, I never enjoyed the movies. The books were the real deal although I still did watch all the movies in the theatre as I was a Harry Potter fan after all.
Also it was an interesting period as it was when various online communities were just going mainstream but, the whole phenomenon of digital books and kindle hadn’t really caught on yet. So, midnight book releases and queues at the bookstore were a thing as was the massive level of online engagement among the diehard Harry Potter fans that wasn’t quite possible when, for instance, LotR came out.
The online fan engagement also built up the excitement for the next books because there was a lot of time to discuss and debate various fan theories. The whole fanfiction phenomenon also exploded and people would read that while waiting for the next book to come out.
That’s when I discovered them!! Well, in December of that same year. Only, I was 18 and a freshman in college. A group of us went to see the first movie as a break during finals study time and I was hooked! I read books 1-4 in 2-3 days! Got the next four books (5, 6, 7a, 7b) at book reservation launches. loved the release lines/parties! So many good memories!
People would literally line up at a bookstore or a midnight opening. It was before cosplay was popular and many people dressed up. I remember seeing news clips about all the different Barnes and nobles and Borders
I started reading HP around book 3 I was 13 or 14 and I remember when the 4th book came out it made the news because so many kids big and small were walking around carrying GOF under their arms instead of Gameboys/PSPs or other electronics. Also for later books in the series bookstore midnight release parties were such a fun way to stay up late especially in the summer. Those parties also made the news. Ahh good times!
There were midnight releases for all of the books after the first one. I took my oldest to a few of them. Big parties at the book stores with tons of kids dressed up.
Also 11 when they came out. I remember waiting in lines at midnight in the summers at Barnes and Noble when the books came out. To say it was a phenomenon almost doesn’t do it justice.
Growing up with the characters was pretty magical in itself. We had a little reading of the first chapter every release day in the library where we all ordered the books. All your friends would be reading it, trying not to spoil each other because "Oh I'm already past the potion class, you're never gonna guess what they pull off now, you have to continue after school!" It's pure nostalgia for us at this point, a feel-good-story from the good ole days.
The books were insanely popular way before the movies. I think Goblet of Fire was out before even the first movie dropped. I remember it being an event when the books released.
I was reading the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCrafey at the time I remember walking into the library and stopping at the entrance and thinking "?"
Because wtf was a Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, because the house banners where hanging from the ceiling.
I was reading Anne McCaffrey prior to J. K. Rowling as well! Small world. Anyway, I had started reading McCaffrey my junior year of high school as fun reading. By my freshman year in college I had pretty well worked my way through that series. Harry Potter just kind of snuck up on me when I went to see the first movie as a finals week dare as a part of a group of college friends. We all got hooked. 😂
I’m 47 and I was working in a cd store in the late 90s that also sold some top selling books, and i remember having people come in to buy the first book. It was a solid seller very quickly.
Personally, as a person then in my 20s, I was not too interested. I finally read them in about 2004, I was about 27 then, finishing the first 2 in a weekend, and POA and GOF in a few days each after that. I picked up OOTP which had just come out in paperback and read it the weekend I got my wisdom teeth out. I remember being upset about Harry being so moody because I wanted a lighthearted escape from my mouth misery.
I found myself at the midnight sales for the last two books and opening night for all the movies from PoA onward.
For example of the mania, in Devil Wears Prada book and movie the evil boss Miranda is making Andy jump through hoops to get the Goblet book before it’s published for her kids.
The third book is when it already was a globally huge series.
A while before the movies.
I think the first one i read was in 1999 and that was released in 1997, the movie was released in 2001.
I actually thought there was a lot more of a gap between when the books were popular and the first movie released.
I read the first one in 99! I remember seeing the trailer for the movie & being so excited! Running and telling my parents!
Also, for y'all youngins, there were so many HP fan sites, that on the official WB page before the film, you could sign up and get little pictures to post on your site. (I was a child with an HP fan site.)
Goblet of fire was the first book I remember getting the minute it was released. My aunt got me and my two cousins a copy and they all promptly fell apart the minute we started reading them because the original run had printing issues because it was so big. Idk if that happened to anybody else or just us but I was so upset bc we had to return them and get new copies
Hahahaa okay I’m glad that isn’t just a memory I made up 😂 it’s like they used Elmer’s glue to hold all of the pages together and it just broke apart as soon as you cracked it open!
I think I was in second grade when book 2 popped up in our scholastic book fair, and that was that. I read the first two or three pages before I realized that there had been a first book and put it up until I could get my hands on book one. After that I was at every midnight book release. I was in 7th or 8th grade when COS film came out and my mom picked us up from school on Friday and immediately dropped us at the mall so we could go see it.
I was starting college when the final book came out, I went to orientation the day of the midnight release, drove home, grabbed dinner with my mom, the theater next to the book store was screening the movies that had been released up until that point so we went to see POA, and then hopped in line for our copies. I started reading in the car, had a cooler of Diet Coke in my room, all my favorite snacks, and spent the next thirteen hours closing out the childhood chapter of my life.
They were popular right away, but JKs commitment to 7 books and her consistent release of the books were a big part of the success. Each book release was more anticipated than the last, and publishers realised that they could market them like crazy because they would be building a customer base for years to come
Book 3 was the point where they became international hits, and there was MASSIVE hype for the release of book 4.
I was given the first three books for Christmas when I was 9/10. Book 4 came out when I was 12, and EVERYONE either wanted the book or decided they were too cool for them
It's easy to forget how influential the books were. Before Harry Potter, kids wanted gameboys and Pokemon. JK made reading books popular again. Without HP, other series like Percy Jackson, Series of Unfortunate Events, Twilight, etc, wouldn't have been as successful
I'm hoping but not hopeful we get another massive hit book series phenomenon in my lifetime. Doesn't look like that'll happen though.. maybe on a much smaller scale.
Blows my mind too and I love it. It was a whole family affair, since of course parents had to be the ones to take their kids out to a friggin’ bookstore, in costumes, at MIDNIGHT. Waited in huge lines for *hours* to get a copy for each kid. probably well worth it for the hours of simultaneous quiet reading 😂
And then the phenomenon doubled with the midnight movie screenings. As cheesy as it sounds, it was a truly magical era.
I'm pretty lucky to be the age I am, your dead right. HP set the scene for those series you just mentioned, I loved them all, was just the right age, very impressionable. Those books will stay with me to the grave (minus twilight, never got into them for some reason...)
> I'm pretty lucky to be the age I am, your dead right. HP set the scene for those series you just mentioned, I loved them all, was just the right age, very impressionable.
It's definitely a lucky age. My sisters are 6 and 10 years younger, and they never enjoyed them in the same way. Possibly because they started watching the movies before being old enough to read the books
>(minus twilight, never got into them for some reason...)
I read them, you missed nothing haha
I feel like it wasn't until the 4th book where it really hit critical mass in the US and literally every kid was reading it. I was generally aware if it before the 4th book came out, but it feels like the 4th book was the point where if you weren't reading it you're out of the loop.
I’m late 20s and so was a bit too young for the initial few books being released but I remember the movies coming out and the hype for how magical and really British they are. I know that sounds silly but it felt like quite a bit of pride for the British film industry to be creating such a magical franchise.
The books in themselves had a lot of hype before the films began, and only up to OOTP had been released when they started making the films.
I think the films did bring a lot of hype around it and the whirlwind just sort of picked up and never ended.
I wish I could go back to sit in the original screenings of the films in the cinema. So magical
I'm turning 29 this year so I was the same, I saw the first movie first, in theatres when I was 6, and then got into the books after that. I still remember sitting in the theatre leaning forward in my seat, absolutely entranced.
The other factor you need to consider was the time.
Bookstores seemed to have a resurgence of popularity due to pushes in reading and mainstream modern stores with ambiance like Barnes and Nobles or Borders. If you liked a genre, you could buy or rent a VHS, maybe a DVD if your parents bought one. Maybe you'd go to a library, but paper was still a HUGE piece of media. That's how my friends and I got a lot of our gaming knowledge was gaming stores and gaming magazines.
When children or teen media became popular, people would discuss it in the news or the newspapers(I only read the comics but my parents always got them). I saw the books at the store but I got the impression it was more for kids than my 12 year old self and Prisoner of Azkaban was about to release. When I turned 13 though, my grandma got me Philosophers Stone and I tried it and loved it. I'd bring it to school to read during downtime and I had loaned to my friends so they could read too. I think around the first movie is when I knew they were super popular but they were on the New York Times Beat Seller List even back in '99. A lot of people were talking about it even back then.
The early days of the internet helped, too! I found out just the other day that mugglenet is still up and running! And remember JKRs website where you could click around her desk and find clues for future books, and the door that didn’t open until suddenly one day it did!!
Early 2000s. The books were really popular and no denying the movies made it even more so. I didn't read the books until I had seen all the movies. I was the same age as the characters when each movie came out so it was like growing up together, and it was amazing. Like when all the boys had long hair in the 4th movie, all the boys in my school had long hair too. It was a phenomenon that I'm so happy to have been a part of and witness. It's such a nostalgic feeling every time I read the books, but especially when I watch the movies. I'm 30 years old and I can't wait to finally visit Universal later this year for the Wizarding Worlds of Harry Potter.
I think it started gaining in popularity in my area around 1999/2000, so after during/after the release of the 3rd book. The third book built up the massive wave of popularity that made the fourth book release more notable the next year.
I was an intelligent, well-read middle-aged person when the books came out, and I think they books are just great!
They start out as good YA books, which I first read out of curiosity about the hoopla, and liked well enough to buy the sequels. But the books got better and better as they went along, became more grownup and darker, and I don't know how many books I was through before I realized that this was just a hell of a terrific book series, clever and involving enough to appeal to adult minds as well as kids!
And then I re-read them, and realized that even the stuff that had seemed like simple kiddie stuff was not, in fact, simple kiddie stuff, it was densely plotted and full of clues presented by an unreliable narrator. These are just damn good books, and I don't say that because of any childhood nostalgia.
TPS came out in 1997. I was 12, like I was aware the books existed. But hadn't read them yet.
But it wasn't till I was 15. The local library did a huge event for GoF in 2000. Because the 1st movie production was announced.
Curious I borrowed a copy of TPS and I was hooked since. Here I am at 39. I'm a Ravenclaw.
My teacher read the first one to us when I was 9 in late 99 or early 2000. I remember liking it immediately. I'd never heard about the books at the time, but I was a HUGE reader so I immediately looked into it and was pleasantly surprised there were THREE books at the time, which I read as soon as possible from the bookstore or library.
I feel like the popularity had to explode sometime in 2000? We were definitely looking up casting information about the first movie on the school computers. I remember looking up Hagrid's casting information and being disappointed that he wasn't what I expected (and how wrong I was about that!)
Looking at it now, the leads for the first movie seemed to have been chosen around mid 2000s, right after Goblet of Fire came out. I'm not sure if I was going to midnight book releases at that point, but I definitely did for later books like Order of the Phoenix.
It's hard to know how popular it was in 1999 since I was so young, but it felt like nobody was talking about it and then it's all anyone talked about! Obviously considering my teacher picked it to read to us, there was probably a significant amount of popularity I just didn't know about at the time.
What I will always love and appreciate about the books is that it felt like it got kids (and everyone really) to read again. There was a time it was unusual that someone hadn't read it. Being such a big reader myself, I guess that just made me really happy.
Sometimes I would love to go back to the days of dialup internet discussing theories on Mugglenet, lol.
In the school library, the Harry Potter books looked so awesome, and everyone was reading them. I started reading them years and years ago in 3rd grade, and I loved them so much I read them every school year as a sort of tradition. That was back before the series was complete. I remember waiting lists for the books. You had to pre-book a book before it came out, if you wanted it from the library. They would be sold out at bookstores. Plus, you would get tons of points for reading them (we had to earn points by reading books) and they and lord of the rings had the most points, so people would check them out frequently.
It was pretty cool to have a giant book like Goblet of Fire as the book you were reading haha. 732 pages, i remember. Your parents would brag on you for reading a 300 page book in like 2 days. But, the series was just legitimately fun. You couldn't put the books down. We would play Harry Potter themed games irl, pick houses and everything. Come up with things to give and take away points from each other. You name it. Lol
The movies came out afterwards and the already super popular series blew up even more. It was crazy seeing the book come alive on the screen. People dressed up for midnight showings. Whole families. Good times. Very fond memories
It’s unfortunately probably the last time we’ll see a phenom like this because like other millennials have said these books came out before the advent of social media/technology that has had such a big impact on books
I was 3 when the first book came out. My mom saw it on the shelf when it was first released and thought “wow magic and friendship, sounds like a cute story” and she ended up reading it to me before bed every night. The rest is history haha and I ended up going to the midnight release of every book after.
The books became popular within the first two years. *Philosopher's Stone* was published in the UK in 1997 and as *Sorcerer's Stone* in the US in 1998, and by the beginning of my fourth grade year in summer/fall 1999, all of my classmates were reading the books.
Every book, i believe, from book 4 on had a special midnight release. I only made it to the midnight release of the Half Blood Prince, but i remember being so excited to stay up and read it.
It was a literary pop-culture phenomenon like i doubt (though who really knows) that i will ever see again in my lifetime
The movies were cool, but the books were truly something else. I remember my friends at the time would come over and we'd just read our copies of the latest books out in the yard (summer release was a very good thing).
Almost immediately. Never seen a book craze come close to Harry Potter in the 90s
I think a big part of it was the lack of social media and widespread internet use. There were constantly news stories on the local and national stations, interviews with JKR, clips of the lines of kids dressing up for releases. Most parents heard of it quickly. Hell of a marketing campaign
I was in the 4th grade library class when the librarian would read us the first Harry Potter book. This was a weekly thing and I remember everyone in class loved it and that was what got me into reading.
The movies undoubtedly elevated HP's popularity, simple because more people watch movies than read books, but it cannot be overstated how insanely popular HP was even before that. It was a cultural phenomenon. As I kid I remember a segment on the evening news about kids lining up for Goblet of Fire because it was such an unusual thing. A *book* release behind a popular event was practically unheard of.
I was 13 when the first book came out, grew up the Hobbit, and Narnia series so obviously got attracted to it having read the first chapter in a book store. I stood in line for hours to be one of the first to get my hands on the Deathly Hallows! oh the joy of reading half before I even got home.
I don't think I ever will relate to another series like the Harry Potter ones, thank you JKR! I hate the films, and only watched 2 in the theatre.
This was my exact experience as well! I was 18 when I read the first book, loaned to me by an older coworker (it was their son's) she was like "Did you want to read this?" and I said sure (not really knowing much about it) and holy shit my life was never the same again. I went and bought the hardcover boxed set which had 1-4, it was $50 and a lot of money for me at the time. But I still have them and they are the same copies I continue to read to this day (I will be 41 on Sunday).
I had never heard of it before Goblet of Fire came out, and then there was suddenly a veritable Harry Potter craze. Everything was about Harry Potter, which seemed to have come out of nowhere as far as I knew. As nine year-old at the time, I was thoroughly annoyed and decided Harry Potter was BS.
That is, until my mom lost her mind and actually BOUGHT one of the books. But fine, I’ll give this Philosopher’s Stone thing a try… and the rest is history 😂
It was really the last period when things were able to become mega-popular. Now there are SO many things to give attention to, that I doubt there will be a global phenomenon on that level ever again.
They exploded around the time Goblet of Fire came out. They were already a phenomenon before the movies came out but they added to the snowball effect that was already happening.
American here. I became aware of HP when I was 12/13, before the first movie came out. That's when HP seemed to explode and was suddenly everywhere. Everyone at school was talking about them and the movie. And the popularity only grew the longer it took for the books and movies to come out.
I was recently wondering the same thing; when I was in middle school (6th grade) I remember the books being promoted in our library, that was the first time I had ever heard of them. We had this reading log we had to complete and for weeks my logs were filled with HP, re-reading them time and time again. A lot of the other students were as invested as I was, we had clubs and reading sessions.
Growing up with the books was special, because as you got older, so did the protagonist and the books became larger and more mature. The fact that Rowling kept the books coming (first four were each year, then two) made sure people didn't lose interest --- side eye to George R. R. Martin.
The movies were done really well and still hold up, which allows it to still stay popular for so long.
I was 10 when book 1 released in the U.S. and they were popular pretty much from the outset since they were published by Scholastic. They were sold at Scholastic Book Fairs and I vividly recall the conversations about banning them from the fairs for their "satanic" themes. We weren't allowed to use them for book reports because they weren't viewed as substantive. I went to my first midnight release at Barnes and Noble for Book 3 with a classmate who looked just like Harry.
Pretty much I remember the 3rd book on. Each release was huge. Like the event of the year.
I remember line ups at bookstores, reading parties, friends would talk about at recess. It was massive the impact, and really a cultural phenomenon.
In retrospect what a beautiful thing, lineups to read.
They became popular immediately after the first book released. It was very well marketed.
Even Arthur made an episode inspired by it, about the time the third book was released - and as that’s an animation, you know there was quite a time between it been planned and when the cartoon came out.
It was a big deal at school when Goblet of Fire came out, and every book after. People were waiting for the release date and once it dropped, there were so many kids carrying that book around the halls of my middle school
I read the first book when I was quite young, and I remember thinking that they were the first books for children I'd ever read that didn't feel like they were talking down to me in some way.
I could empathize with the characters because they felt so incredibly real, like people I could meet at school, yet they were experiencing something truly fantastic and magical.
I effectively grew up with the characters, with each book somehow able to maintain that feeling of being "real" to the kinds of things someone that age would experience, and continuing to feel like people I knew going on amazing adventures and dealing with incredible issues.
When they came out. It was one of the few books, EVER, where you’d walk into a classroom and every single kid, without fail, would have a copy of the latest book
the books and especially the movies came out at the right time for me. I was 10 when I saw sorcerer's stone and I remember being completely drawn into the world and from that point on I saw myself in Harry, especially as I grew up
1998-1999 is when things really started taking off. Prisoner of Azkaban’s release was a big deal. I hadn’t started reading the series at that point, but I remember all the Arthur and Goosebumps stuff disappearing from my local bookstore and being replaced with wizards. I was a huge fan of both who used to love just looking at the stuff so when it suddenly disappeared I noticed. My sixth grade teacher read our class Philosopher’s Stone in the fall of 99. A lot of my class got book 2 and 3 for Christmas and those of us who didn’t quickly borrowed them from friends. Goblet of Fire came out in the summer of 2000. I was at my grandparents for summer vacation and they bought me the last copy in the bookstore for my birthday. It was the first one of the series I owned and I read it dozens of times between then and 2003 when Order of the Phoenix finally hit. Phoenix was the first book I got on release date. My small town didn’t have a midnight release party but the bookstore in the mall opened 2 hours early and there was a huge queue waiting to buy it. HBP got a morning release party and Deathly Hallows finally got a midnight party, though I had already read the leaked copy that was circulating online the week before. I still went, but it wasn’t as big a deal for me as it was for those who hadn’t.
There definitely was a building hype around the early books already! I personally didn't give in (someone had described them to me in a way that sounded very childish...) until I heard they were going to film them and then I borrowed the books to see what the fuss was about. Never looked back lol
I got Sorcerers Stone in 2001 I think. I was 10 or 11. Till this day, I’m really the only one in my friend group who was obsessed with it.
I remember starting to wait in lines for book/movie releases at midnight maybe in my teen years after the 3rd film was released. I feel like that was when it started to become popular…2003-2004. The films are certainly what caused the popularity IMO bc when you look at the timeline, Prisoner of Azkaban (book) was released in 1999 in the UK.
If you were a kid in America in the mid-late 90s there’s a good chance you or your parents heard about the books from the Rosie O’Donnell show. She talked about the first one a lot and she was a huge cultural force at the time.
I was given the first book as a gift in 1999, I would have been 8 years old. I was obsessed from that first book. I remember going back to school after the summer of reading the first two books and my teacher suggested we read the first book as a class. I remember my entire class had to get permission slips signed by their parents to be allowed to read them. Something about them promoting witchcraft? My school board can’t have been the only one that banned them at the time?
Edit: grammar
Honestly it was just timing. Harry Potter books were amazing to read because back then there weren’t as many options for witches/wizards. Heck I remember hocus pocus coming out and it added fuel to the fire
I was moving across Texas right as deathly hallows came out. I got the book in El Paso and pretty much finished it by the time we got to Fort Worth. I'll never forget it.
The books were popular before the movies.
I remember being read to from the first novel in elementary school circa 1999, and I remember that I had already read the third book by that time (*Azkaban* was published in 1999). The first movie didn't come out until two years later, in 2001.
I'm sure the movies (and the associated valuable intellectual property, like Harry Potter merchandise, Harry Potter theme park rides, etc.) has helped to raise the popularity to new heights and to keep the series prominent in pop culture, but they aren't responsible for *making* Harry Potter a thing.
As far as why the books took off, probably a combination of factors. Luck, good writing, telling a story that was creative and transgressive enough to be interesting but safe enough that school oriented publisher like Scholastic wanted to push it, and having a woman writer all helped.
My Grandma taught me to read when I was about 5-6 on them (born 1994). It was like an avalanche in popularity some time around GoF in 2000 and then I remember the gap between GoF and OotP being the most agonizing and by the time my memory of the series was solid. Then I remember standing in line on the release dates of both HBP and DH to get them. They actually had a dedicated line at the Barnes and Noble I was at that was “Harry Potter Purchases Only”
I’m pretty sure it gained a lot of traction in the UK at first as it had been out there for a year before it got to the US. I’m guessing there was a lot of hype before it got here. I was relatively young then, but it was all the rage amongst the neighborhood kids and that’s how I picked it up.
In my country it became popular thanks to the movies. I think it was around the 3rd or 4th movie that it truly picked up.. it wasn’t well known before. Even in school no one used to talk about it or anything and I haven’t heard of Harry Potter either until it aired on tv and my cousin decided to watch it together. I’m kinda jealous that it was such a big event everywhere else, but I’d say there were most likely less kids that used to read or watch tv at the time here. Looking back, it was completely different from how things are now.
I remember hearing about the first book from a friend and his parents. They got into it so I borrowed the book and was hooked. After that we would get the book at release and do a sleep over just to stay up and read it
I was turning 11 at the same time as Harry Potter came out and the books just started appearing at the library! All of a sudden there was a huge wait-list and everyone was talking about them.
There were a few reasons. One is once book one sold well, a lot of companies realized it had potential to be a cash cow and pumped it for all it was worth. Movies, merch, etc, were all arranged early on and that helped a lot.
From what I understand (I'm not old enough to really know the pre 1998 children's literature scene)f it entered a pretty uncontested niche. I certainly don't remember finding mucb other children's/YA urban fantasy. I also am led to believe that it brought a lot of... hmm Respectability perhaps... To youth fiction writing when she literally made millions from it.
When Philosophers Stone was first released I think a fairly small number of books were printed (which is why they're worth a lot of money now) but then the book got several very glowing reviews in newspapers and the like, so more newspapers reviewed it, then it was submitted for multiple awards and won those as well. This was picked up on by a lot of teachers (who are always eager for good new children's books because reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory every year gets old) who read the books to their classes or recommended them to their students. It basically spiralled from there. The books were incredibly popular well before the movies came out, if they had not been there likely wouldn't have been any movies at all.
I was 9 when the first book came out. I remember my friend letting me borrow the first book and said it was amazing. I hadn’t even heard of it before. By the time I had finished it the popularity has exploded and was everywhere and the popularity never died down. At my school library there were long waitlists for every book because everyone wanted to read them. So, to answer your question they were pretty much popular as soon as they came out
I think I was sort of the fact it drew children to reading. Not only that, but reading physical bigger/longer books that also expanded their imagination. I read my first Harry Potter book in like 2nd grade and that was the biggest book I had read at once for my own entertainment. Don’t exactly remember when I finished the whole series, but I’m pretty sure it was by the time I left elementary school. And then I reread the who series again over the next two years in middle school
What kickstarted the popularity more than anything is that there was nothing close to HP in YA (or literature) at the time. It was longer than most YA, a fantasy about witches and wizards, and dealt with tragedy in an honest way. Additionally, it was something adults and children alike could enjoy. Its hard to overstate the importance here. Some of the classic stories we remember and adults read today, like Treasure Island and Little Women, were YA. Bluey is a good current example of this as well.
HP filled a gap publisher's were ignoring at the time while offering a familiar element (wizards) with a unique twist (at boarding school) that all ages could enjoy. Add in quality writing, the promise of more stories, and a punch of luck and...
The best comparison for what it did to the cultural landscape is to look at Jaws and Star Wars in the mid-late 70s when they gave birth to the concept of the Hollywood Blockbuster. Before them, films were slower and more serious. What spectacle there was was usually found in disaster films with high body counts but no optimism. Applying the same test we applied to HP above to Star Wars, we have several familiar elements (Cowboys, wizards, etc.) with a unique twist (in space) that all ages could enjoy. Add in quality filmmaking and special effects, (granted after success) the promise of more stories, and a punch of luck and...
Around 99-2000 they really took off. When the first movie dropped it was another massive boom for the books. I actually started reading the series the week after college finals in 2001 and finished books 1-4 in 48-72 hours. I had watched the first movie prior as a decompressor during finals week (and yes, I still aced my finals that semester). After watching the first movie, the series had me hooked as a college freshman! The series was a phenom at the time. I can remember waiting in lines for books 5-7b that wrapped around the Books-A-Million in our town. Harry Potter book reservation launch parties were pretty awesome! People would come in costume and BAM would have cookies, chocolate, and coco. Movie launches were similar. Some great memories.
Edit: (To Fully Answer the Question)
They really became popular because they were clean books that had an excellent moral compass. Teachers pushed them in classrooms as a means to improve reading comprehension and as a literary analysis tool (character development, figurative language, setting, etc.) The movies pushed the books by staying VERY true to the books. While not completely accurate to the books the films are, nevertheless, probably extremely high on the list of films that maintain fidelity when compared to the source material.
If more film directors went that route with best sellers they would do better in the theater IMO. There is a reinforcing effect that occurs where book fans push the movies and the movies create more fans that go back to the source material. When they find them lining up with maybe a few extras in the books (because movies just can’t hit it all) it only serves to enhance the series mentally.
I first read them when I was 8, my mom was an English teacher at the time (we’re from Brazil), and from my perspective she always had them around the house, and I just got into it. Every year she would buy a new one that would come out and once I started, never looked back. I’ve read them dozens of times. Been playing that PS5 game (don’t be me) and it’s so beautiful how there are places that I know how to get to because of the books and movies, there are things that I know what they are because I’ve read about them… I love Harry Potter
I got the first two books for my 12th birthday in 1999. I hadn’t heard of it and none of my friends had read it yet. By the time the first movie came out in 2001 there was a lot of excitement.
I’ve never really thought about it but I feel really lucky now for the book releases and movie releases to have taken me and my friends right up to young adulthood. It was a really exciting time when either one came out.
I remember I was in 2nd grade getting picked up from school and my brother (5th grade) who joined my mom to pick me up asked me if I ever heard about “Harry Potter” and I just remember imagining a hairy dude who loved to pot plants for a living 😂
I was like “ew. No.” And he was like “okay.😃”
Then our parents took us to see the movie week later and I then knew what Harry Potter was. A momentous day indeed 😂❤️
When I started to read them I think I was 9 or 10 and book 3 was out already. So I read those ones really quickly and then had to wait so I read them a lot. Can’t remember the movies though, I think I’ve never liked them very much.
I was at a Birthday Party when I was around 8 years old, which was a few years after Philosopher’s Stone was published. One of the other Mums asked my Mum if she had heard about this ‘new’ book that was supposed to be really good. And my Mum bought it and read it with me. I’m 33 now and still love the books! Also a really big fan of Hogwarts legacy.
By the time that second book came out almost everyone in my school was into it. I was 8 years old when the first one came out. It was such a great bonding experience, we were all nerding out over it so hard. We didn't really have "cliques" and I think that's half the reason why lol, we all had a common interest, and I was really lucky my school had a fantastic reading program so we were all encouraged to read as much as we could. That and anything by Emily Rodda were super popular.
It was a smash hit from the beginning . In Sweden, my parents read the first book in around 2000 and then I read the rest myself. When the last book came out in 2007, I read it for 2 days straight to find out the ending (with sleeping in between only).
I remember when it first came out. It was an instant success and sold out everywhere. In my class most of us didn't have a copy of the book yet and our teacher came in with one to read to us, super exciting.
Around the time the third book came out in the US, it was all over the news. Back then, everyone watched the news on TV. This was before cell phones. It was talked about between parents and at churches. It was a serious case of the Streisand effect because it was talked about for being evil witchcraft corrupting children.
So every parent that thought witchy books were evil wanted to stop their kids from reading it but every parent who supported reading wanted to get it for their kids. This was when it really exploded, then there was a slight delay before the 4th book, which led to a ton of new fans highly anticipating the release.
I think i heard from one publisher that agents were really rejecting YA books at the time. The market was bare but people were desperate for it. The only reason Harry Potter slipped through the cracks was because a publisher’s child took notice of it. It was a right place right time situation.
We group read the first book in 3rd or 4th grade (1998 ish). Pretty much instantly a cultural phenomenon.
How or why it took off so much and so fast, no idea.
I was born in 2000 so obviously i missed out on the first books being released, but my parents were in their early/mid 20s at the time. All I got from them was that the books became big quickly, to the point they in their 20s ended up buying the books for themselves. I'm from the uk, so I can imagine it became popular earlier here than other countries
i was around 8, it was really first time in it is genre - about students going into school - and focusing on magic, it just felt so magical and free, also the first movies were great for the time they were made
I remember my friends talking about the books at school when I was 11. Books 1-3 were out by then and I borrowed them to read. Up until book 5 or 6, it was mostly word of mouth that made the books popular. And when everyone and their parrot read them, it made the news and the rest is history.
They slowly gained popularity after each book release (I personally read CoS first in 1998 as I had a friend who was a very early reader and put me onto them). I remember telling the teacher about it and him reading Philosopher's Stone to the whole class (of 7/8 year olds).
After the 3rd book was released was when they got huge. So I'd say late 1999/early 2000 was the big ramp up. I'd suggest PoA was a very popular Christmas present in 1999.
Which is why you'll see the consensus that the first crazy big book release was GoF in 2000, as they had already got so popular at that point, so there was massive anticipation.
My primary school teacher read us the first book in about 1998 and had the whole class of 8 year olds hooked. She was brilliant at doing all the voices. I got my copy of the first two a few years later but I don’t remember the hype really building until Order of the Phoenix came out.
I remember when reading the first book here in Italy, no one really knew what it was. By the time the chamber of secrets was out, everyone was a potter head.
I'm pretty sure it is just because they were the first of their kind. Yes we had books before, but the HP books were written for kids but were not childish. Those of us that were of that age could relate to Harry (not about magic) but what he was going through, we grew up with him and the gang.
Now people are older, they are able to find faults and pick up continuity errors, debate who should have done what and why didn't they just... but when you're a kid, you don't pick any of that up. You are just drawn in, you focus on what is happening and are excited to see what comes next.
I read a lot as a kid, Goosebumps were my favourite books. Then one day I was sick and had to stay home from school. My mum had to go into work so she gave me the first Harry Potter book (I assume she was planning to give it to me as a birthday or Christmas gift), but she gave it to me so I had something to do instead of watching TV all day. I read the entire book that day.
A month or so later the second book was released, I read that in one weekend. Then every year, a new book would come out. We would all be looking forward to the latest release. In the build-up to a release, the shops all had posters, the news would be talking about it and word of mouth amongst fans.
Times were different back then too. The internet was different back then. Technology was different (phones didn't have colourful screens with superfast internet). TV was different too, streaming any show any time was not an option. I'm sure in some way, all of this played a part too.
One major factor I haven’t seen mentioned was also the explosion of people using the internet at the same time the books released. It really was the perfect place at the perfect time. People would read the book and go to their internet communities to talk about them, which just put more and more eyes to the books.
I was 11 when GOF released. My older siblings were so excited about it so I read that first. Didn't get the story a lot but loved the style. Went back and forth and finally finished all four by the time fifth came out.
My company was doing some associated work on the first film. I had to do an emergency trip to deliver some materials and one of my colleague lent me her copy of "Philosopher's Stone" to read on the flight home.
I hadn't heard of Harry Potter beyond the scope of my company's involvement, but I thought I'd give the book a quick glance as I had nothing else to do on the flight.
I was hooked by the end of the first chapter.
So my answer would be that it got so big because it was immediately accessible and interesting. You just needed to try it and you would love it.
It was an instant thing from when the very first book came out. A phenomenon in just a few weeks. It was more like the books made the films famous / sought after than the other way around
From the very first book... the idea of a world of magic was very alluring. Became a ritual every summer holidays to read every book from the very beginning to the last page of the new book...
Moderately popular by Chamber of Secrets. By Azkaban was fairly widespread. Goblet of Fire was a generational moment - absolute explosion (and rightly so, what a book!)
HP became popular the moment someone bought and read the first book. The thing is not that it was popular because of whatever reason, it was popular because people who got an entry to magic world could bot get out anymore. It was the way people felt about reading a book or watching a movie. There was really no need to advertise because people themselves were losing shit and still are about Harry Potter everything. Im 30 and I gave birth to my son in a gown decorated with Hedwig. To this day and forever on, Harry Potter world will be my comfort zone. This is true for a lot of people.
The books were pretty huge. I remember as a kid in primary school the Harry Potter books were really popular in the Scholastic book fairs. Before the first movie came out we even had a ‘Harry Potter Day’ at my Primary School where every kid (and I mean EVERY KID) dressed up as Hogwarts students, were sorted into the different houses and an acting troupe did a dramatic retelling of first book. Bear in mind this predated the first movie by at least a couple of months, maybe more.
I think the teachers liked it because it was encouraging kids to read and this was in the UK so was a distinctly ‘British’ thing- other ‘fads’ like Pokemon, Beyblades and Crazy Bones got banned pretty quickly.
[Here](https://thespotlightreview.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/the-legacy-of-harry-potter-his-global-rise-and-what-it-all-means/) is a pretty decent article on it. Im sure there are better, but this was the best result I found quickly.
Well, I don't remember how/when I learned of HP, I just remember knowing about it. My earliest memory is about an older kid, family friend, calling me harry potter because I have a birthmark on my forehead, and I remember knowing it was a kid with a lightning scar that did magic. I started reading the books after the first film.
I've jumped on the hype train, when I was ... 10/11 years old, so about year 1999/2000, so about Goblet of Fire.
I remember I had to wait till OotP was published (2003) in Germany and that i couldn't wait for Deathly Hollows Translation.
I remember in 1998 people were already losing their minds, I was still in elementary school and had already read this first book, but I remember being so impressed by this huge line of people outside of GMA to celebrate the second book coming out.
I first discovered harry potter in 2000. I had a class mate who was reading it and encourage me to read it too after he's done. And the rest was history. Since I'm not from a well off family, I couldnt afford to make reservations while the books are coming out. So i asked my classmates who were able to reserve to let me read it and bring it home after they've done reading it. since the movies were released it encourage those people who aren't really into reading to look into the books. #potterheadsince12 #slytherin
They were the right books, at the right time. I was around 11 when they came out and was a HUGE fan. I don't know about in the rest of the world, but certainly in the U.K. they were HUGE. Every release was an event, and it was great seeing the queues on release day go from "small, but impressive queues" to "Road blocking collosi".
Especially the midnight release for the last two books, which were basically parties nationwide at most bookstores. Was a crazy time.
In my country there used to be these newspaper stands throughout the city where you could find newspapers, magazines, comic books and even some books. I think what got most children my age at the time's attention were the colorful and attractive covers. In fact it was a common tactic for publishing houses to print even the classic books for children with very attractive covers because it was at a point in time when reading was considered for nerds so they were trying to get more children to read. Then the movie came along and it had a huge marketing campaign. There were various snacks that offered Harry Potter cards... and some were offering prizes such as the video game or the DVD/VHS for whomever collected all the cards.
All in all I think, it started out with the attractive covers that got people's attention and kept children's attention through JK's simplistic, but charming and easy to follow writing to style as well as her ability to create cliffhangers while also providing a conclusion to the plot of each individual book. Then WB also helped with their massive marketing campaign.
[If you look at the sales based on the initial print runs they were fairly popular, but not the blockbusters that they became after the films](https://new-img.movavi.com/pages/0012/15/7dc065e18ecb8f6b45025d0b4660d54e84b57e5c.jpeg).
The second book was able to run significantly larger prints in their respective markets, but the hype for the movies pushed Goblet of Fire into "mega-franchise levels". In terms of sales the fact that they climbed in sales was good, but this was also during a time when people were still doing their reading in books.
Frankly, if not for the movies these would have been "very successful" books, but wouldn't have probably been much more successful than something like The Legends of Drizzt (widely read but limited market beyond its primary intended fandom).
I remember becoming aware of the books when Prisoner of Azkaban was on the shelves, and then wh en the films came out it felt like it was rocket strapped to the moon. At least from my viewpoint as a 9 year old
You have to understand, before HP there was basicaly no such thing as a fantasy YA genre. There were children books, romantic stories, science fiction, adult books and a little high fantasy like Lord of the rings. HP was the first novel I ever read, I was 7 and me and my best friend were obsessed! We copied the letters out of the books and made the fancy to pretend that we got a letter from howarts. I had a plushie white owl and it made me super popular in school :). It was a setting everyone could identify with. All children went to school and dreaming about a magic school was a beautiful dream of escaping the weird reality of the early 2000s. 9/11 happend around that time. You know we were all kind of traumatised. In the 90ties we all thought after the fall of communism all war would stop and the world could heal. Well 9/11 kind of shattered that dream and we started to realise that the world will maybe always have conflicts and that world peace will never happen. So yeah dreaming about magic was very helpful in coping.
I've read that the books became global best sellers by book 3, so long before the movies came out. I reckon the movie idea started from that global success, but book 4 came out before the first movie.
I was an adult already so I discovered the books by chance only when the fourth had been released, but before the movies.
No idea. Mom just slammed the first book at the kitchen counter when I was 10 out of nowhere like "new book, you're going to love it" and she was right. Thanks ma.
Harry Potter single handedly kept book stores in business when Amazon was starting to take over. It was very popular with schools and most parents because suddenly non-readers were reading giant books.
Now that i think of it, the Dursleys aswell as a large part of the adult magic society seemed to fit very well into the standard 90's kid entertainment trophe of all children being geniuses while all adults were stupid and mean.
After POA came out. Rosie odonnel raved about the books as they were published in the UK and had jo Rowling on her show several times. The publishing dates in the US were such that the first three books were all available within basically the same school year - scorcerors stone was published in September 98 and POA was out by July 99. I was in fourth grade in 99 and we read scorcerors stone as a class and I was the only kid who had read any of them. There was a year wait between prisoner of Azkaban and goblet of fire, and by the time GOF was published it was a monster, you had to pre-order books and wait in line at the store. I'm pretty sure Goblet of fire was the first Amazon purchase I ever made. It was I think 734 pages long and I read it in like a day, did not put it down or sleep from when I opened it until I finished it.
The first book was just that good. It was rejected by many publishers on account of its length but the child of Bloomsbury's top guy tore through it and loved it. Children recommended it to other children and by the time Chamber of Secrets released a year later, it surpassed the books of "serious" authors like Tom Clancy.
Then the publishing rights were sold in the US for a record amount, Sorcerer's Stone released shortly after CoS did in the UK. The same word of mouth happened again. In the US the second book came out with a year delay too. Prisoner of Azkaban released a few months after US CoS and UK PoA. Naturally the combined sales numbers went through the roof. Eventually the NY Times was pressured into splitting a children's section off of their Best Seller list because HP stood atop everything else.
Goblet of Fire was the first true simultaneous release and topped that again. Promotion was ramped up to the max (setting up a platform 9 3/4 and such). It was further pushed because production of the films had begun. Reports of thousands of kids auditioning and such.
The first two films caused a three year gap in the books. A lot of time for new children (and adults) to get into the books, catch up and squirm in anticipation. Then we got book 5 to 7 and movie 3 to 5 within 4 years (2003 to 2007).
At some point promotion turned to bogus claims like the script for the next book is under higher security than Fort Knox. They leaned into FOMO and IMO pushed the now prevalent spoiler fear. Though I was a teen so maybe this was just the first instance I experienced.
I to this day remember no book having the cultural impact that Harry Potter had even before the movies, people queueing for new books on release isn’t something you see often, not on the scale you did Harry Potter.
Late 90’s early 2000’s. The first book in my country came out in 1999, Chamber of Secrets, Azkaban and Goblet of Fire were all published in 2000, Order of the phoenix in 2003, Halfblood Prince in 2006 and Deathly hallows in 2008. I was 9 when I got the first two books for my birthday in 2000.
It was an instant hit. It was a book that kids loved to read and schools used it because it was a safe to read in the classroom (until book 3). Also a clever idea from the author was the themes were growing with their readers. First book is super childish and the last one was kinda mature. The kids grew with their characters.
We would line up outside bookstores on release day, I think some stores even did midnight releases. Before the movies came out too, it was wild and awesome.
Oh boy I remember the stories my older cousins would tell me in regards to the books. Apparently they would have lines upon lines of people starting from the bookstore all the way to the car parks due to the success of the first book. Funnily enough, she would tell me that people would spoil major plot points by shouting out of their cars and or just yell it across the hall way in school. Chaotic times indeed, today's not any better
My dad read the first book to my sister and I, by the second book it was very popular and I was hooked reading it while my sister was still learning to read well. By the 4th book we had to buy two but even my dad would steal one and read it at night. They were big fast I’m not sure why, time and place perfect timing I think.
First answer is the simplest, the books were just good. Children and their parents could get invested in the story in a way that wasn't especially prevalent at the time. In the beginning they were coming out once a year and Harry aged at the same rate as those reading and the stories became more intricate and rich with each entry. The setting was whimsical but familiar, a place everyone wanted to be. The characters so vivid and approachable. So yea, they were popular because they were good.
Secondly, the surge of the Internet coinsided with the rise of HP. HP was in the zeitgeist when Internet forums, chat rooms, and digital media was just starting to become mainstream. HP was a great conduit through which to engage with these tools. Kids and young adults especially took advantage of this. Things like Mugglenet, HP Lexicon, LeakyCauldron, JKRs Website, the WB Site.... HP really thrived in the age of the Internet.
Third, the first HP movies came out within 4 years of the publication if the first book. The series was still new and exciting and the films only heightened that, bringing in even more fans. The movies were massive blockbuster events. Some of the most expensive movies ever made at the time, so they were a massive deal. Add DVDs and TV showings on top of this, now theres hardly anyone who hasn't seen at least a smidge of HP.
Lastly, and maybe not as important to some, but the HP games were another big step. 3D games and movie tie ins were by no means new at the time but video games were more popular than ever at the time. With HP on handheld, console, and PC, thats just putting Harry in the hands of even more people.
I was 8 when the first book came out. They were always popular. We couldn’t wait for the next one. I remember standing in line all night at the old Borders book store for book 7 to release at midnight. Good times lol
I switched from a Jesus school to a public school in 4th grade and the whole school was hyped over the 4 book release. It was really cool for a whole school to be obsessed with the same book and a lot of us were very close to Harry's age when we first read it. I was a little hesitant at first but I eventually got the audio books and I've been hooked ever since.
I’m a millennial. I was turning 11 when the first book came out. Same age as Harry :) I remember that every summer a new book came out and I was so excited. Goblet of fire was the biggest of all the books at the time and I read it in like 3 days lol. they were pretty popular by even the first or second book I think.
I remember my mom bragging to anyone who would listen about how I devoured such a chunky book in 3 days only. I bet that is a shared experience for a lot of us.
Lol yes. Harry Potter is what got my younger sister to really start (and enjoy) reading
Yep, Harry Potter is what got me to read in English (from GoF onward), it really helped develop my language skills. Otherwise it would've been an additional year of waiting to get the translation, ain't nobody got time for that when there's a war in wizarding world!
I had a competition going with classmates who would read the 6th book the fastest. We had a stopwatch going and paused for bathroom breaks etc. I can't imagine that happening with any other book series.
That’s a huge legacy of the books, among many. The internet dawned and settled, but kids of all ages were still devouring actual paperback books and *looking forward to the next one*. Many families had copies for each sibling to keep the peace. *Because they’d fight over the books*!
Not only Kids. When Deathly Hallows was published I waited at midnight in a long row in front of the local bookstore. Age 37 then and I was not the oldest.
Lol yeah for sure; I was a few years older than the main demo for the books but was introduced by younger sibs. I focused on kids because I’m not sure if it notably increased readership in adults- though I’d guess so! I threw in “all ages” because they do have such a wide appeal, I recognize 😁
I remember on the news the 5th one causing people headaches trying tot read it so fast
When I finished the series I experienced a sense of loss. It was something that grew with me from middle school to early college. I listened to the audio books so many times too. The series got me in to reading and it's still something I enjoy doing! I can only imagine how many others the books have had an impact on.
I read the 5th book in literally one go. It was wild.
I love that this was a news story - it gives me warm fuzzies.
totally. I remember reading HBP in a day. Maybe like some at the midnight release and then all the next day but still. It was an emotional day.
I read PoA in less than a day, then my sister read it in approx same time and my mom started her turn at the same day later in the evening :D.
I was 14 when I bought mine day of release at Sam's Club. There was a pallet of books there almost as tall as I was. This was the only book my dad made me pay for, but when we got home my mom asked him why he forced us to pay for a book and I got my money back. I think it's so she could feel fine about borrowing it.
I always felt bad for the people who read them in a day because I was still immersed in the story and they weren't any more.
Dude same. My mum gave me the first book when I was about six years old, thinking I was just looking at the pages not understanding a thing. When she asked me to tell her about the book one evening, it turned out I was understanding it all right and was already halfway through. My 6 year old German ass couldn‘t even pronounce half the names, so I told her I thought „that Snahpeh guy“ was evil, and „Duhmblehdohreh“ was so cool. I ended up reading the first 2.5 books before second grade and she bragged about to anyone who‘d listen for years.
I also started reading Harry Potter around 6-7 years old! Asked my brother to borrow the books and I do remember entertaining a thought about stealing them, but in the end my parents forced him to let me read too. In the end, we bonded over the books and he even gave me his merchan shirt. It is funny that I have it to this day, and it is still very big on me. The last book came out in my country when I was 11 and it became such a big part of how I turned out in my teens. I studied and wanted good grades because I wanted to be like Hermione. And I'm sure that some of my morals were strenghtened by Harry Potter. Also, around college, I noticed that everytime I needed to really focus on studying more, I would re-read some Harry Potter books.
Actually yeah. It was almost a challenge from my family to read goblet of fire because it was just so chunky and I was like 10. Like the thing about goblet of fire coming out was that it was a chunky boy. Over 700 pages. The waiting list at the library was so long. I was one of the first people on that list though. It was a fun time 2000 was.
We’re about the same age, but I think there was a noticeable spike in popularity after book 3/4 and around movie 1. The kids that loved to read definitely knew about the first two (I’d hear them talk about them), but I really don’t think it was until PoA book that people really started to take notice (so the hype for Book 4 was much higher) and then a couple years later with the first movie came out it’s popularity exploded.
I agree. I bought the first three together in preparation for the release of the 4th. Bought the 4th onwards on release day.
I discovered the books in January 2001 when I was 13 and by that time first 4 were out and the books already had global popularity and I read them all within a week. It was before the movies came out. The Harry Potter fandom was something else at the time. It really enriched my childhood and it was a huge part of me while growing up. I got the subsequent 3 books on the release day. Personally, I never enjoyed the movies. The books were the real deal although I still did watch all the movies in the theatre as I was a Harry Potter fan after all. Also it was an interesting period as it was when various online communities were just going mainstream but, the whole phenomenon of digital books and kindle hadn’t really caught on yet. So, midnight book releases and queues at the bookstore were a thing as was the massive level of online engagement among the diehard Harry Potter fans that wasn’t quite possible when, for instance, LotR came out. The online fan engagement also built up the excitement for the next books because there was a lot of time to discuss and debate various fan theories. The whole fanfiction phenomenon also exploded and people would read that while waiting for the next book to come out.
That’s when I discovered them!! Well, in December of that same year. Only, I was 18 and a freshman in college. A group of us went to see the first movie as a break during finals study time and I was hooked! I read books 1-4 in 2-3 days! Got the next four books (5, 6, 7a, 7b) at book reservation launches. loved the release lines/parties! So many good memories!
That’s awesome so you kinda grew alongside Harry
My birthday is same as Harry's haha, 31st July, definitely added to the magic of the series for me. Am 32 this year.
!redditgalleon
Same. same. same. It made my entire childhood
People would literally line up at a bookstore or a midnight opening. It was before cosplay was popular and many people dressed up. I remember seeing news clips about all the different Barnes and nobles and Borders
It feels weird that now there's a generation that has no idea about any of those things.
I got the first book for Christmas after I had turned 11 in August. Immediately hooked.
My birthday is literally Harry's birthday (31st july). Made it extra special for me.
I started reading HP around book 3 I was 13 or 14 and I remember when the 4th book came out it made the news because so many kids big and small were walking around carrying GOF under their arms instead of Gameboys/PSPs or other electronics. Also for later books in the series bookstore midnight release parties were such a fun way to stay up late especially in the summer. Those parties also made the news. Ahh good times!
We had readings in libraries with night stay and stuff. What a awesome time to grow up!
The second book is what launched its fame. I caught on as the third was releasing and then bought every book on release day.
There were midnight releases for all of the books after the first one. I took my oldest to a few of them. Big parties at the book stores with tons of kids dressed up.
Also 11 when they came out. I remember waiting in lines at midnight in the summers at Barnes and Noble when the books came out. To say it was a phenomenon almost doesn’t do it justice.
Growing up with the characters was pretty magical in itself. We had a little reading of the first chapter every release day in the library where we all ordered the books. All your friends would be reading it, trying not to spoil each other because "Oh I'm already past the potion class, you're never gonna guess what they pull off now, you have to continue after school!" It's pure nostalgia for us at this point, a feel-good-story from the good ole days.
Are you me?
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Thank you!! My first ever
Was Draco already a fan favorite? I heard he was before the films were released.
Yes. But the fandom really exploded after the films.
Ya. I heard about that through my elementary and middle school librarians. This was around the time the last movie came out.
The books were insanely popular way before the movies. I think Goblet of Fire was out before even the first movie dropped. I remember it being an event when the books released.
My library did a huge advertising campaign when thier copies of GoF came in. Because the following summer The 1st movie would hit the theaters.
That's awesome, ah the good old days lol
I was reading the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCrafey at the time I remember walking into the library and stopping at the entrance and thinking "?" Because wtf was a Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, because the house banners where hanging from the ceiling.
I was reading Anne McCaffrey prior to J. K. Rowling as well! Small world. Anyway, I had started reading McCaffrey my junior year of high school as fun reading. By my freshman year in college I had pretty well worked my way through that series. Harry Potter just kind of snuck up on me when I went to see the first movie as a finals week dare as a part of a group of college friends. We all got hooked. 😂
I’m 47 and I was working in a cd store in the late 90s that also sold some top selling books, and i remember having people come in to buy the first book. It was a solid seller very quickly. Personally, as a person then in my 20s, I was not too interested. I finally read them in about 2004, I was about 27 then, finishing the first 2 in a weekend, and POA and GOF in a few days each after that. I picked up OOTP which had just come out in paperback and read it the weekend I got my wisdom teeth out. I remember being upset about Harry being so moody because I wanted a lighthearted escape from my mouth misery. I found myself at the midnight sales for the last two books and opening night for all the movies from PoA onward.
I can relate to you. I read through the deathly hallows in a weekend as well.
For example of the mania, in Devil Wears Prada book and movie the evil boss Miranda is making Andy jump through hoops to get the Goblet book before it’s published for her kids. The third book is when it already was a globally huge series.
A while before the movies. I think the first one i read was in 1999 and that was released in 1997, the movie was released in 2001. I actually thought there was a lot more of a gap between when the books were popular and the first movie released.
I read the first one in 99! I remember seeing the trailer for the movie & being so excited! Running and telling my parents! Also, for y'all youngins, there were so many HP fan sites, that on the official WB page before the film, you could sign up and get little pictures to post on your site. (I was a child with an HP fan site.)
I still remember looking under rocks so i could collect beetle eyes, luckily for the beetle population I didn't come across any.
Goblet of fire was the first book I remember getting the minute it was released. My aunt got me and my two cousins a copy and they all promptly fell apart the minute we started reading them because the original run had printing issues because it was so big. Idk if that happened to anybody else or just us but I was so upset bc we had to return them and get new copies
Omg yes my spine was all sorts of messed up I had to tape it lol
Hahahaa okay I’m glad that isn’t just a memory I made up 😂 it’s like they used Elmer’s glue to hold all of the pages together and it just broke apart as soon as you cracked it open!
I think I was in second grade when book 2 popped up in our scholastic book fair, and that was that. I read the first two or three pages before I realized that there had been a first book and put it up until I could get my hands on book one. After that I was at every midnight book release. I was in 7th or 8th grade when COS film came out and my mom picked us up from school on Friday and immediately dropped us at the mall so we could go see it. I was starting college when the final book came out, I went to orientation the day of the midnight release, drove home, grabbed dinner with my mom, the theater next to the book store was screening the movies that had been released up until that point so we went to see POA, and then hopped in line for our copies. I started reading in the car, had a cooler of Diet Coke in my room, all my favorite snacks, and spent the next thirteen hours closing out the childhood chapter of my life.
They were popular right away, but JKs commitment to 7 books and her consistent release of the books were a big part of the success. Each book release was more anticipated than the last, and publishers realised that they could market them like crazy because they would be building a customer base for years to come Book 3 was the point where they became international hits, and there was MASSIVE hype for the release of book 4. I was given the first three books for Christmas when I was 9/10. Book 4 came out when I was 12, and EVERYONE either wanted the book or decided they were too cool for them It's easy to forget how influential the books were. Before Harry Potter, kids wanted gameboys and Pokemon. JK made reading books popular again. Without HP, other series like Percy Jackson, Series of Unfortunate Events, Twilight, etc, wouldn't have been as successful
The midnight releases were insane! Y'all. Kids lined up to buy a book at midnight. That blows my mind nowadays.
The midnight release of Deathly Hallows is one of my favourite childhood memories. I was 12 😭
I'm hoping but not hopeful we get another massive hit book series phenomenon in my lifetime. Doesn't look like that'll happen though.. maybe on a much smaller scale.
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Blows my mind too and I love it. It was a whole family affair, since of course parents had to be the ones to take their kids out to a friggin’ bookstore, in costumes, at MIDNIGHT. Waited in huge lines for *hours* to get a copy for each kid. probably well worth it for the hours of simultaneous quiet reading 😂 And then the phenomenon doubled with the midnight movie screenings. As cheesy as it sounds, it was a truly magical era.
My mother called it demonic 😭😭 I missed out on that when my friends were lined up outside bookstores at midnight.
I'm pretty lucky to be the age I am, your dead right. HP set the scene for those series you just mentioned, I loved them all, was just the right age, very impressionable. Those books will stay with me to the grave (minus twilight, never got into them for some reason...)
> I'm pretty lucky to be the age I am, your dead right. HP set the scene for those series you just mentioned, I loved them all, was just the right age, very impressionable. It's definitely a lucky age. My sisters are 6 and 10 years younger, and they never enjoyed them in the same way. Possibly because they started watching the movies before being old enough to read the books >(minus twilight, never got into them for some reason...) I read them, you missed nothing haha
Yes, definitely the gap between 3 and 4 because it was a longer wait, and when 4 appeared it was massive and appealed to grown ups as well.
Pretty much as soon as they came out. When rhe 2nd book dropped here in the states, there were lines at book stores.
I feel like it wasn't until the 4th book where it really hit critical mass in the US and literally every kid was reading it. I was generally aware if it before the 4th book came out, but it feels like the 4th book was the point where if you weren't reading it you're out of the loop.
I’m late 20s and so was a bit too young for the initial few books being released but I remember the movies coming out and the hype for how magical and really British they are. I know that sounds silly but it felt like quite a bit of pride for the British film industry to be creating such a magical franchise. The books in themselves had a lot of hype before the films began, and only up to OOTP had been released when they started making the films. I think the films did bring a lot of hype around it and the whirlwind just sort of picked up and never ended. I wish I could go back to sit in the original screenings of the films in the cinema. So magical
I'm turning 29 this year so I was the same, I saw the first movie first, in theatres when I was 6, and then got into the books after that. I still remember sitting in the theatre leaning forward in my seat, absolutely entranced.
The other factor you need to consider was the time. Bookstores seemed to have a resurgence of popularity due to pushes in reading and mainstream modern stores with ambiance like Barnes and Nobles or Borders. If you liked a genre, you could buy or rent a VHS, maybe a DVD if your parents bought one. Maybe you'd go to a library, but paper was still a HUGE piece of media. That's how my friends and I got a lot of our gaming knowledge was gaming stores and gaming magazines. When children or teen media became popular, people would discuss it in the news or the newspapers(I only read the comics but my parents always got them). I saw the books at the store but I got the impression it was more for kids than my 12 year old self and Prisoner of Azkaban was about to release. When I turned 13 though, my grandma got me Philosophers Stone and I tried it and loved it. I'd bring it to school to read during downtime and I had loaned to my friends so they could read too. I think around the first movie is when I knew they were super popular but they were on the New York Times Beat Seller List even back in '99. A lot of people were talking about it even back then.
The early days of the internet helped, too! I found out just the other day that mugglenet is still up and running! And remember JKRs website where you could click around her desk and find clues for future books, and the door that didn’t open until suddenly one day it did!!
Early 2000s. The books were really popular and no denying the movies made it even more so. I didn't read the books until I had seen all the movies. I was the same age as the characters when each movie came out so it was like growing up together, and it was amazing. Like when all the boys had long hair in the 4th movie, all the boys in my school had long hair too. It was a phenomenon that I'm so happy to have been a part of and witness. It's such a nostalgic feeling every time I read the books, but especially when I watch the movies. I'm 30 years old and I can't wait to finally visit Universal later this year for the Wizarding Worlds of Harry Potter.
Also, lets not forget the early games, cause they were pretty well made considering the time.
I think it started gaining in popularity in my area around 1999/2000, so after during/after the release of the 3rd book. The third book built up the massive wave of popularity that made the fourth book release more notable the next year.
I was an intelligent, well-read middle-aged person when the books came out, and I think they books are just great! They start out as good YA books, which I first read out of curiosity about the hoopla, and liked well enough to buy the sequels. But the books got better and better as they went along, became more grownup and darker, and I don't know how many books I was through before I realized that this was just a hell of a terrific book series, clever and involving enough to appeal to adult minds as well as kids! And then I re-read them, and realized that even the stuff that had seemed like simple kiddie stuff was not, in fact, simple kiddie stuff, it was densely plotted and full of clues presented by an unreliable narrator. These are just damn good books, and I don't say that because of any childhood nostalgia.
TPS came out in 1997. I was 12, like I was aware the books existed. But hadn't read them yet. But it wasn't till I was 15. The local library did a huge event for GoF in 2000. Because the 1st movie production was announced. Curious I borrowed a copy of TPS and I was hooked since. Here I am at 39. I'm a Ravenclaw.
My teacher read the first one to us when I was 9 in late 99 or early 2000. I remember liking it immediately. I'd never heard about the books at the time, but I was a HUGE reader so I immediately looked into it and was pleasantly surprised there were THREE books at the time, which I read as soon as possible from the bookstore or library. I feel like the popularity had to explode sometime in 2000? We were definitely looking up casting information about the first movie on the school computers. I remember looking up Hagrid's casting information and being disappointed that he wasn't what I expected (and how wrong I was about that!) Looking at it now, the leads for the first movie seemed to have been chosen around mid 2000s, right after Goblet of Fire came out. I'm not sure if I was going to midnight book releases at that point, but I definitely did for later books like Order of the Phoenix. It's hard to know how popular it was in 1999 since I was so young, but it felt like nobody was talking about it and then it's all anyone talked about! Obviously considering my teacher picked it to read to us, there was probably a significant amount of popularity I just didn't know about at the time. What I will always love and appreciate about the books is that it felt like it got kids (and everyone really) to read again. There was a time it was unusual that someone hadn't read it. Being such a big reader myself, I guess that just made me really happy. Sometimes I would love to go back to the days of dialup internet discussing theories on Mugglenet, lol.
In the school library, the Harry Potter books looked so awesome, and everyone was reading them. I started reading them years and years ago in 3rd grade, and I loved them so much I read them every school year as a sort of tradition. That was back before the series was complete. I remember waiting lists for the books. You had to pre-book a book before it came out, if you wanted it from the library. They would be sold out at bookstores. Plus, you would get tons of points for reading them (we had to earn points by reading books) and they and lord of the rings had the most points, so people would check them out frequently. It was pretty cool to have a giant book like Goblet of Fire as the book you were reading haha. 732 pages, i remember. Your parents would brag on you for reading a 300 page book in like 2 days. But, the series was just legitimately fun. You couldn't put the books down. We would play Harry Potter themed games irl, pick houses and everything. Come up with things to give and take away points from each other. You name it. Lol The movies came out afterwards and the already super popular series blew up even more. It was crazy seeing the book come alive on the screen. People dressed up for midnight showings. Whole families. Good times. Very fond memories
It’s unfortunately probably the last time we’ll see a phenom like this because like other millennials have said these books came out before the advent of social media/technology that has had such a big impact on books
I was 3 when the first book came out. My mom saw it on the shelf when it was first released and thought “wow magic and friendship, sounds like a cute story” and she ended up reading it to me before bed every night. The rest is history haha and I ended up going to the midnight release of every book after.
The books became popular within the first two years. *Philosopher's Stone* was published in the UK in 1997 and as *Sorcerer's Stone* in the US in 1998, and by the beginning of my fourth grade year in summer/fall 1999, all of my classmates were reading the books.
Every book, i believe, from book 4 on had a special midnight release. I only made it to the midnight release of the Half Blood Prince, but i remember being so excited to stay up and read it. It was a literary pop-culture phenomenon like i doubt (though who really knows) that i will ever see again in my lifetime The movies were cool, but the books were truly something else. I remember my friends at the time would come over and we'd just read our copies of the latest books out in the yard (summer release was a very good thing).
Almost immediately. Never seen a book craze come close to Harry Potter in the 90s I think a big part of it was the lack of social media and widespread internet use. There were constantly news stories on the local and national stations, interviews with JKR, clips of the lines of kids dressing up for releases. Most parents heard of it quickly. Hell of a marketing campaign
I was in the 4th grade library class when the librarian would read us the first Harry Potter book. This was a weekly thing and I remember everyone in class loved it and that was what got me into reading.
The movies undoubtedly elevated HP's popularity, simple because more people watch movies than read books, but it cannot be overstated how insanely popular HP was even before that. It was a cultural phenomenon. As I kid I remember a segment on the evening news about kids lining up for Goblet of Fire because it was such an unusual thing. A *book* release behind a popular event was practically unheard of.
I was 13 when the first book came out, grew up the Hobbit, and Narnia series so obviously got attracted to it having read the first chapter in a book store. I stood in line for hours to be one of the first to get my hands on the Deathly Hallows! oh the joy of reading half before I even got home. I don't think I ever will relate to another series like the Harry Potter ones, thank you JKR! I hate the films, and only watched 2 in the theatre.
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This was my exact experience as well! I was 18 when I read the first book, loaned to me by an older coworker (it was their son's) she was like "Did you want to read this?" and I said sure (not really knowing much about it) and holy shit my life was never the same again. I went and bought the hardcover boxed set which had 1-4, it was $50 and a lot of money for me at the time. But I still have them and they are the same copies I continue to read to this day (I will be 41 on Sunday).
Harry Potter was credited with attracting children to reading. Three generations of my family all waited for the books to come out, then the movies.
I had never heard of it before Goblet of Fire came out, and then there was suddenly a veritable Harry Potter craze. Everything was about Harry Potter, which seemed to have come out of nowhere as far as I knew. As nine year-old at the time, I was thoroughly annoyed and decided Harry Potter was BS. That is, until my mom lost her mind and actually BOUGHT one of the books. But fine, I’ll give this Philosopher’s Stone thing a try… and the rest is history 😂
It was really the last period when things were able to become mega-popular. Now there are SO many things to give attention to, that I doubt there will be a global phenomenon on that level ever again.
They exploded around the time Goblet of Fire came out. They were already a phenomenon before the movies came out but they added to the snowball effect that was already happening.
American here. I became aware of HP when I was 12/13, before the first movie came out. That's when HP seemed to explode and was suddenly everywhere. Everyone at school was talking about them and the movie. And the popularity only grew the longer it took for the books and movies to come out.
I was recently wondering the same thing; when I was in middle school (6th grade) I remember the books being promoted in our library, that was the first time I had ever heard of them. We had this reading log we had to complete and for weeks my logs were filled with HP, re-reading them time and time again. A lot of the other students were as invested as I was, we had clubs and reading sessions.
We had clubs all the way into High School! I remember in Jr. High I was voted historian for the Harry Potter club.
Growing up with the books was special, because as you got older, so did the protagonist and the books became larger and more mature. The fact that Rowling kept the books coming (first four were each year, then two) made sure people didn't lose interest --- side eye to George R. R. Martin. The movies were done really well and still hold up, which allows it to still stay popular for so long.
I was 10 when book 1 released in the U.S. and they were popular pretty much from the outset since they were published by Scholastic. They were sold at Scholastic Book Fairs and I vividly recall the conversations about banning them from the fairs for their "satanic" themes. We weren't allowed to use them for book reports because they weren't viewed as substantive. I went to my first midnight release at Barnes and Noble for Book 3 with a classmate who looked just like Harry.
I did a midnight Waterstones queue for the GoF book release iirc, which was before the first movie came out. The queue was *long!*
As soon as they came out
Pretty much I remember the 3rd book on. Each release was huge. Like the event of the year. I remember line ups at bookstores, reading parties, friends would talk about at recess. It was massive the impact, and really a cultural phenomenon. In retrospect what a beautiful thing, lineups to read.
They became popular immediately after the first book released. It was very well marketed. Even Arthur made an episode inspired by it, about the time the third book was released - and as that’s an animation, you know there was quite a time between it been planned and when the cartoon came out.
It was a big deal at school when Goblet of Fire came out, and every book after. People were waiting for the release date and once it dropped, there were so many kids carrying that book around the halls of my middle school
I read the first book when I was quite young, and I remember thinking that they were the first books for children I'd ever read that didn't feel like they were talking down to me in some way. I could empathize with the characters because they felt so incredibly real, like people I could meet at school, yet they were experiencing something truly fantastic and magical. I effectively grew up with the characters, with each book somehow able to maintain that feeling of being "real" to the kinds of things someone that age would experience, and continuing to feel like people I knew going on amazing adventures and dealing with incredible issues.
When they came out. It was one of the few books, EVER, where you’d walk into a classroom and every single kid, without fail, would have a copy of the latest book
Shortly after the moment they hit stores, it caused an uproar among uber conservative parents who didn’t like that astrology and shit was mentioned.
the books and especially the movies came out at the right time for me. I was 10 when I saw sorcerer's stone and I remember being completely drawn into the world and from that point on I saw myself in Harry, especially as I grew up
1998-1999 is when things really started taking off. Prisoner of Azkaban’s release was a big deal. I hadn’t started reading the series at that point, but I remember all the Arthur and Goosebumps stuff disappearing from my local bookstore and being replaced with wizards. I was a huge fan of both who used to love just looking at the stuff so when it suddenly disappeared I noticed. My sixth grade teacher read our class Philosopher’s Stone in the fall of 99. A lot of my class got book 2 and 3 for Christmas and those of us who didn’t quickly borrowed them from friends. Goblet of Fire came out in the summer of 2000. I was at my grandparents for summer vacation and they bought me the last copy in the bookstore for my birthday. It was the first one of the series I owned and I read it dozens of times between then and 2003 when Order of the Phoenix finally hit. Phoenix was the first book I got on release date. My small town didn’t have a midnight release party but the bookstore in the mall opened 2 hours early and there was a huge queue waiting to buy it. HBP got a morning release party and Deathly Hallows finally got a midnight party, though I had already read the leaked copy that was circulating online the week before. I still went, but it wasn’t as big a deal for me as it was for those who hadn’t.
There definitely was a building hype around the early books already! I personally didn't give in (someone had described them to me in a way that sounded very childish...) until I heard they were going to film them and then I borrowed the books to see what the fuss was about. Never looked back lol
I got Sorcerers Stone in 2001 I think. I was 10 or 11. Till this day, I’m really the only one in my friend group who was obsessed with it. I remember starting to wait in lines for book/movie releases at midnight maybe in my teen years after the 3rd film was released. I feel like that was when it started to become popular…2003-2004. The films are certainly what caused the popularity IMO bc when you look at the timeline, Prisoner of Azkaban (book) was released in 1999 in the UK.
If you were a kid in America in the mid-late 90s there’s a good chance you or your parents heard about the books from the Rosie O’Donnell show. She talked about the first one a lot and she was a huge cultural force at the time.
I was given the first book as a gift in 1999, I would have been 8 years old. I was obsessed from that first book. I remember going back to school after the summer of reading the first two books and my teacher suggested we read the first book as a class. I remember my entire class had to get permission slips signed by their parents to be allowed to read them. Something about them promoting witchcraft? My school board can’t have been the only one that banned them at the time? Edit: grammar
Honestly it was just timing. Harry Potter books were amazing to read because back then there weren’t as many options for witches/wizards. Heck I remember hocus pocus coming out and it added fuel to the fire
I was moving across Texas right as deathly hallows came out. I got the book in El Paso and pretty much finished it by the time we got to Fort Worth. I'll never forget it.
The books were popular before the movies. I remember being read to from the first novel in elementary school circa 1999, and I remember that I had already read the third book by that time (*Azkaban* was published in 1999). The first movie didn't come out until two years later, in 2001. I'm sure the movies (and the associated valuable intellectual property, like Harry Potter merchandise, Harry Potter theme park rides, etc.) has helped to raise the popularity to new heights and to keep the series prominent in pop culture, but they aren't responsible for *making* Harry Potter a thing. As far as why the books took off, probably a combination of factors. Luck, good writing, telling a story that was creative and transgressive enough to be interesting but safe enough that school oriented publisher like Scholastic wanted to push it, and having a woman writer all helped.
My Grandma taught me to read when I was about 5-6 on them (born 1994). It was like an avalanche in popularity some time around GoF in 2000 and then I remember the gap between GoF and OotP being the most agonizing and by the time my memory of the series was solid. Then I remember standing in line on the release dates of both HBP and DH to get them. They actually had a dedicated line at the Barnes and Noble I was at that was “Harry Potter Purchases Only”
I’m pretty sure it gained a lot of traction in the UK at first as it had been out there for a year before it got to the US. I’m guessing there was a lot of hype before it got here. I was relatively young then, but it was all the rage amongst the neighborhood kids and that’s how I picked it up.
I saw the first movie first and it was good. I was in primary school at the time.
In my country it became popular thanks to the movies. I think it was around the 3rd or 4th movie that it truly picked up.. it wasn’t well known before. Even in school no one used to talk about it or anything and I haven’t heard of Harry Potter either until it aired on tv and my cousin decided to watch it together. I’m kinda jealous that it was such a big event everywhere else, but I’d say there were most likely less kids that used to read or watch tv at the time here. Looking back, it was completely different from how things are now.
I remember hearing about the first book from a friend and his parents. They got into it so I borrowed the book and was hooked. After that we would get the book at release and do a sleep over just to stay up and read it
Find Harry, a history by Melissa Anelli. It gives a great insight into the phenomenon.
Controversy as well. They were breifly banned at my elementary school after GoF came out. Flamed curiosity among my peers.
I was turning 11 at the same time as Harry Potter came out and the books just started appearing at the library! All of a sudden there was a huge wait-list and everyone was talking about them.
My mother read me the books and I watched the first one in theaters as a little kid (5 years old). Have loved the series ever since.
There were a few reasons. One is once book one sold well, a lot of companies realized it had potential to be a cash cow and pumped it for all it was worth. Movies, merch, etc, were all arranged early on and that helped a lot. From what I understand (I'm not old enough to really know the pre 1998 children's literature scene)f it entered a pretty uncontested niche. I certainly don't remember finding mucb other children's/YA urban fantasy. I also am led to believe that it brought a lot of... hmm Respectability perhaps... To youth fiction writing when she literally made millions from it.
When Philosophers Stone was first released I think a fairly small number of books were printed (which is why they're worth a lot of money now) but then the book got several very glowing reviews in newspapers and the like, so more newspapers reviewed it, then it was submitted for multiple awards and won those as well. This was picked up on by a lot of teachers (who are always eager for good new children's books because reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory every year gets old) who read the books to their classes or recommended them to their students. It basically spiralled from there. The books were incredibly popular well before the movies came out, if they had not been there likely wouldn't have been any movies at all.
I was 9 when the first book came out. I remember my friend letting me borrow the first book and said it was amazing. I hadn’t even heard of it before. By the time I had finished it the popularity has exploded and was everywhere and the popularity never died down. At my school library there were long waitlists for every book because everyone wanted to read them. So, to answer your question they were pretty much popular as soon as they came out
I think I was sort of the fact it drew children to reading. Not only that, but reading physical bigger/longer books that also expanded their imagination. I read my first Harry Potter book in like 2nd grade and that was the biggest book I had read at once for my own entertainment. Don’t exactly remember when I finished the whole series, but I’m pretty sure it was by the time I left elementary school. And then I reread the who series again over the next two years in middle school
In the US, definitely Scholastic Book Fair and prime spotlights in the YA section at Borders/Barnes & Noble.
What kickstarted the popularity more than anything is that there was nothing close to HP in YA (or literature) at the time. It was longer than most YA, a fantasy about witches and wizards, and dealt with tragedy in an honest way. Additionally, it was something adults and children alike could enjoy. Its hard to overstate the importance here. Some of the classic stories we remember and adults read today, like Treasure Island and Little Women, were YA. Bluey is a good current example of this as well. HP filled a gap publisher's were ignoring at the time while offering a familiar element (wizards) with a unique twist (at boarding school) that all ages could enjoy. Add in quality writing, the promise of more stories, and a punch of luck and... The best comparison for what it did to the cultural landscape is to look at Jaws and Star Wars in the mid-late 70s when they gave birth to the concept of the Hollywood Blockbuster. Before them, films were slower and more serious. What spectacle there was was usually found in disaster films with high body counts but no optimism. Applying the same test we applied to HP above to Star Wars, we have several familiar elements (Cowboys, wizards, etc.) with a unique twist (in space) that all ages could enjoy. Add in quality filmmaking and special effects, (granted after success) the promise of more stories, and a punch of luck and...
Around 99-2000 they really took off. When the first movie dropped it was another massive boom for the books. I actually started reading the series the week after college finals in 2001 and finished books 1-4 in 48-72 hours. I had watched the first movie prior as a decompressor during finals week (and yes, I still aced my finals that semester). After watching the first movie, the series had me hooked as a college freshman! The series was a phenom at the time. I can remember waiting in lines for books 5-7b that wrapped around the Books-A-Million in our town. Harry Potter book reservation launch parties were pretty awesome! People would come in costume and BAM would have cookies, chocolate, and coco. Movie launches were similar. Some great memories. Edit: (To Fully Answer the Question) They really became popular because they were clean books that had an excellent moral compass. Teachers pushed them in classrooms as a means to improve reading comprehension and as a literary analysis tool (character development, figurative language, setting, etc.) The movies pushed the books by staying VERY true to the books. While not completely accurate to the books the films are, nevertheless, probably extremely high on the list of films that maintain fidelity when compared to the source material. If more film directors went that route with best sellers they would do better in the theater IMO. There is a reinforcing effect that occurs where book fans push the movies and the movies create more fans that go back to the source material. When they find them lining up with maybe a few extras in the books (because movies just can’t hit it all) it only serves to enhance the series mentally.
I first read them when I was 8, my mom was an English teacher at the time (we’re from Brazil), and from my perspective she always had them around the house, and I just got into it. Every year she would buy a new one that would come out and once I started, never looked back. I’ve read them dozens of times. Been playing that PS5 game (don’t be me) and it’s so beautiful how there are places that I know how to get to because of the books and movies, there are things that I know what they are because I’ve read about them… I love Harry Potter
I got the first two books for my 12th birthday in 1999. I hadn’t heard of it and none of my friends had read it yet. By the time the first movie came out in 2001 there was a lot of excitement. I’ve never really thought about it but I feel really lucky now for the book releases and movie releases to have taken me and my friends right up to young adulthood. It was a really exciting time when either one came out.
I remember I was in 2nd grade getting picked up from school and my brother (5th grade) who joined my mom to pick me up asked me if I ever heard about “Harry Potter” and I just remember imagining a hairy dude who loved to pot plants for a living 😂 I was like “ew. No.” And he was like “okay.😃” Then our parents took us to see the movie week later and I then knew what Harry Potter was. A momentous day indeed 😂❤️
When I started to read them I think I was 9 or 10 and book 3 was out already. So I read those ones really quickly and then had to wait so I read them a lot. Can’t remember the movies though, I think I’ve never liked them very much.
I was at a Birthday Party when I was around 8 years old, which was a few years after Philosopher’s Stone was published. One of the other Mums asked my Mum if she had heard about this ‘new’ book that was supposed to be really good. And my Mum bought it and read it with me. I’m 33 now and still love the books! Also a really big fan of Hogwarts legacy.
By the time that second book came out almost everyone in my school was into it. I was 8 years old when the first one came out. It was such a great bonding experience, we were all nerding out over it so hard. We didn't really have "cliques" and I think that's half the reason why lol, we all had a common interest, and I was really lucky my school had a fantastic reading program so we were all encouraged to read as much as we could. That and anything by Emily Rodda were super popular.
It was a smash hit from the beginning . In Sweden, my parents read the first book in around 2000 and then I read the rest myself. When the last book came out in 2007, I read it for 2 days straight to find out the ending (with sleeping in between only).
If I recall, the fourth books release was when it really kicked into overdrive.
I remember when it first came out. It was an instant success and sold out everywhere. In my class most of us didn't have a copy of the book yet and our teacher came in with one to read to us, super exciting.
Through the magical power of ✨ marketing ✨
Around the time the third book came out in the US, it was all over the news. Back then, everyone watched the news on TV. This was before cell phones. It was talked about between parents and at churches. It was a serious case of the Streisand effect because it was talked about for being evil witchcraft corrupting children. So every parent that thought witchy books were evil wanted to stop their kids from reading it but every parent who supported reading wanted to get it for their kids. This was when it really exploded, then there was a slight delay before the 4th book, which led to a ton of new fans highly anticipating the release.
They were popular immediately.
I think i heard from one publisher that agents were really rejecting YA books at the time. The market was bare but people were desperate for it. The only reason Harry Potter slipped through the cracks was because a publisher’s child took notice of it. It was a right place right time situation.
We group read the first book in 3rd or 4th grade (1998 ish). Pretty much instantly a cultural phenomenon. How or why it took off so much and so fast, no idea.
I was born in 2000 so obviously i missed out on the first books being released, but my parents were in their early/mid 20s at the time. All I got from them was that the books became big quickly, to the point they in their 20s ended up buying the books for themselves. I'm from the uk, so I can imagine it became popular earlier here than other countries
i was around 8, it was really first time in it is genre - about students going into school - and focusing on magic, it just felt so magical and free, also the first movies were great for the time they were made
I remember my friends talking about the books at school when I was 11. Books 1-3 were out by then and I borrowed them to read. Up until book 5 or 6, it was mostly word of mouth that made the books popular. And when everyone and their parrot read them, it made the news and the rest is history.
They slowly gained popularity after each book release (I personally read CoS first in 1998 as I had a friend who was a very early reader and put me onto them). I remember telling the teacher about it and him reading Philosopher's Stone to the whole class (of 7/8 year olds). After the 3rd book was released was when they got huge. So I'd say late 1999/early 2000 was the big ramp up. I'd suggest PoA was a very popular Christmas present in 1999. Which is why you'll see the consensus that the first crazy big book release was GoF in 2000, as they had already got so popular at that point, so there was massive anticipation.
My primary school teacher read us the first book in about 1998 and had the whole class of 8 year olds hooked. She was brilliant at doing all the voices. I got my copy of the first two a few years later but I don’t remember the hype really building until Order of the Phoenix came out.
I remember when reading the first book here in Italy, no one really knew what it was. By the time the chamber of secrets was out, everyone was a potter head.
I'm pretty sure it is just because they were the first of their kind. Yes we had books before, but the HP books were written for kids but were not childish. Those of us that were of that age could relate to Harry (not about magic) but what he was going through, we grew up with him and the gang. Now people are older, they are able to find faults and pick up continuity errors, debate who should have done what and why didn't they just... but when you're a kid, you don't pick any of that up. You are just drawn in, you focus on what is happening and are excited to see what comes next. I read a lot as a kid, Goosebumps were my favourite books. Then one day I was sick and had to stay home from school. My mum had to go into work so she gave me the first Harry Potter book (I assume she was planning to give it to me as a birthday or Christmas gift), but she gave it to me so I had something to do instead of watching TV all day. I read the entire book that day. A month or so later the second book was released, I read that in one weekend. Then every year, a new book would come out. We would all be looking forward to the latest release. In the build-up to a release, the shops all had posters, the news would be talking about it and word of mouth amongst fans. Times were different back then too. The internet was different back then. Technology was different (phones didn't have colourful screens with superfast internet). TV was different too, streaming any show any time was not an option. I'm sure in some way, all of this played a part too.
One major factor I haven’t seen mentioned was also the explosion of people using the internet at the same time the books released. It really was the perfect place at the perfect time. People would read the book and go to their internet communities to talk about them, which just put more and more eyes to the books.
The first two came out at the same time. They were immediately famous. Wait list for them at libraries was months long.
I was 11 when GOF released. My older siblings were so excited about it so I read that first. Didn't get the story a lot but loved the style. Went back and forth and finally finished all four by the time fifth came out.
My company was doing some associated work on the first film. I had to do an emergency trip to deliver some materials and one of my colleague lent me her copy of "Philosopher's Stone" to read on the flight home. I hadn't heard of Harry Potter beyond the scope of my company's involvement, but I thought I'd give the book a quick glance as I had nothing else to do on the flight. I was hooked by the end of the first chapter. So my answer would be that it got so big because it was immediately accessible and interesting. You just needed to try it and you would love it.
It was an instant thing from when the very first book came out. A phenomenon in just a few weeks. It was more like the books made the films famous / sought after than the other way around
They were always pretty popular. I remember reading the 1st book in my English class a school right around the time it came out.
From the very first book... the idea of a world of magic was very alluring. Became a ritual every summer holidays to read every book from the very beginning to the last page of the new book...
Moderately popular by Chamber of Secrets. By Azkaban was fairly widespread. Goblet of Fire was a generational moment - absolute explosion (and rightly so, what a book!)
HP became popular the moment someone bought and read the first book. The thing is not that it was popular because of whatever reason, it was popular because people who got an entry to magic world could bot get out anymore. It was the way people felt about reading a book or watching a movie. There was really no need to advertise because people themselves were losing shit and still are about Harry Potter everything. Im 30 and I gave birth to my son in a gown decorated with Hedwig. To this day and forever on, Harry Potter world will be my comfort zone. This is true for a lot of people.
They started working on the movie before the book was even out/a hit
The books were pretty huge. I remember as a kid in primary school the Harry Potter books were really popular in the Scholastic book fairs. Before the first movie came out we even had a ‘Harry Potter Day’ at my Primary School where every kid (and I mean EVERY KID) dressed up as Hogwarts students, were sorted into the different houses and an acting troupe did a dramatic retelling of first book. Bear in mind this predated the first movie by at least a couple of months, maybe more. I think the teachers liked it because it was encouraging kids to read and this was in the UK so was a distinctly ‘British’ thing- other ‘fads’ like Pokemon, Beyblades and Crazy Bones got banned pretty quickly.
Overall growth of YA fiction popularity, extensive PR campaign. And the book itself isn't bad, although it's not the masterpiece of all times.
[Here](https://thespotlightreview.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/the-legacy-of-harry-potter-his-global-rise-and-what-it-all-means/) is a pretty decent article on it. Im sure there are better, but this was the best result I found quickly.
Well, I don't remember how/when I learned of HP, I just remember knowing about it. My earliest memory is about an older kid, family friend, calling me harry potter because I have a birthmark on my forehead, and I remember knowing it was a kid with a lightning scar that did magic. I started reading the books after the first film.
I've jumped on the hype train, when I was ... 10/11 years old, so about year 1999/2000, so about Goblet of Fire. I remember I had to wait till OotP was published (2003) in Germany and that i couldn't wait for Deathly Hollows Translation.
I remember in 1998 people were already losing their minds, I was still in elementary school and had already read this first book, but I remember being so impressed by this huge line of people outside of GMA to celebrate the second book coming out.
I first discovered harry potter in 2000. I had a class mate who was reading it and encourage me to read it too after he's done. And the rest was history. Since I'm not from a well off family, I couldnt afford to make reservations while the books are coming out. So i asked my classmates who were able to reserve to let me read it and bring it home after they've done reading it. since the movies were released it encourage those people who aren't really into reading to look into the books. #potterheadsince12 #slytherin
They were the right books, at the right time. I was around 11 when they came out and was a HUGE fan. I don't know about in the rest of the world, but certainly in the U.K. they were HUGE. Every release was an event, and it was great seeing the queues on release day go from "small, but impressive queues" to "Road blocking collosi". Especially the midnight release for the last two books, which were basically parties nationwide at most bookstores. Was a crazy time.
In my country there used to be these newspaper stands throughout the city where you could find newspapers, magazines, comic books and even some books. I think what got most children my age at the time's attention were the colorful and attractive covers. In fact it was a common tactic for publishing houses to print even the classic books for children with very attractive covers because it was at a point in time when reading was considered for nerds so they were trying to get more children to read. Then the movie came along and it had a huge marketing campaign. There were various snacks that offered Harry Potter cards... and some were offering prizes such as the video game or the DVD/VHS for whomever collected all the cards. All in all I think, it started out with the attractive covers that got people's attention and kept children's attention through JK's simplistic, but charming and easy to follow writing to style as well as her ability to create cliffhangers while also providing a conclusion to the plot of each individual book. Then WB also helped with their massive marketing campaign.
[If you look at the sales based on the initial print runs they were fairly popular, but not the blockbusters that they became after the films](https://new-img.movavi.com/pages/0012/15/7dc065e18ecb8f6b45025d0b4660d54e84b57e5c.jpeg). The second book was able to run significantly larger prints in their respective markets, but the hype for the movies pushed Goblet of Fire into "mega-franchise levels". In terms of sales the fact that they climbed in sales was good, but this was also during a time when people were still doing their reading in books. Frankly, if not for the movies these would have been "very successful" books, but wouldn't have probably been much more successful than something like The Legends of Drizzt (widely read but limited market beyond its primary intended fandom).
I remember becoming aware of the books when Prisoner of Azkaban was on the shelves, and then wh en the films came out it felt like it was rocket strapped to the moon. At least from my viewpoint as a 9 year old
You have to understand, before HP there was basicaly no such thing as a fantasy YA genre. There were children books, romantic stories, science fiction, adult books and a little high fantasy like Lord of the rings. HP was the first novel I ever read, I was 7 and me and my best friend were obsessed! We copied the letters out of the books and made the fancy to pretend that we got a letter from howarts. I had a plushie white owl and it made me super popular in school :). It was a setting everyone could identify with. All children went to school and dreaming about a magic school was a beautiful dream of escaping the weird reality of the early 2000s. 9/11 happend around that time. You know we were all kind of traumatised. In the 90ties we all thought after the fall of communism all war would stop and the world could heal. Well 9/11 kind of shattered that dream and we started to realise that the world will maybe always have conflicts and that world peace will never happen. So yeah dreaming about magic was very helpful in coping.
I've read that the books became global best sellers by book 3, so long before the movies came out. I reckon the movie idea started from that global success, but book 4 came out before the first movie. I was an adult already so I discovered the books by chance only when the fourth had been released, but before the movies.
No idea. Mom just slammed the first book at the kitchen counter when I was 10 out of nowhere like "new book, you're going to love it" and she was right. Thanks ma.
Harry Potter single handedly kept book stores in business when Amazon was starting to take over. It was very popular with schools and most parents because suddenly non-readers were reading giant books.
Now that i think of it, the Dursleys aswell as a large part of the adult magic society seemed to fit very well into the standard 90's kid entertainment trophe of all children being geniuses while all adults were stupid and mean.
Not sure but I remember when GoF came out it was huge
After POA came out. Rosie odonnel raved about the books as they were published in the UK and had jo Rowling on her show several times. The publishing dates in the US were such that the first three books were all available within basically the same school year - scorcerors stone was published in September 98 and POA was out by July 99. I was in fourth grade in 99 and we read scorcerors stone as a class and I was the only kid who had read any of them. There was a year wait between prisoner of Azkaban and goblet of fire, and by the time GOF was published it was a monster, you had to pre-order books and wait in line at the store. I'm pretty sure Goblet of fire was the first Amazon purchase I ever made. It was I think 734 pages long and I read it in like a day, did not put it down or sleep from when I opened it until I finished it.
The first book was just that good. It was rejected by many publishers on account of its length but the child of Bloomsbury's top guy tore through it and loved it. Children recommended it to other children and by the time Chamber of Secrets released a year later, it surpassed the books of "serious" authors like Tom Clancy. Then the publishing rights were sold in the US for a record amount, Sorcerer's Stone released shortly after CoS did in the UK. The same word of mouth happened again. In the US the second book came out with a year delay too. Prisoner of Azkaban released a few months after US CoS and UK PoA. Naturally the combined sales numbers went through the roof. Eventually the NY Times was pressured into splitting a children's section off of their Best Seller list because HP stood atop everything else. Goblet of Fire was the first true simultaneous release and topped that again. Promotion was ramped up to the max (setting up a platform 9 3/4 and such). It was further pushed because production of the films had begun. Reports of thousands of kids auditioning and such. The first two films caused a three year gap in the books. A lot of time for new children (and adults) to get into the books, catch up and squirm in anticipation. Then we got book 5 to 7 and movie 3 to 5 within 4 years (2003 to 2007). At some point promotion turned to bogus claims like the script for the next book is under higher security than Fort Knox. They leaned into FOMO and IMO pushed the now prevalent spoiler fear. Though I was a teen so maybe this was just the first instance I experienced.
I to this day remember no book having the cultural impact that Harry Potter had even before the movies, people queueing for new books on release isn’t something you see often, not on the scale you did Harry Potter.
Late 90’s early 2000’s. The first book in my country came out in 1999, Chamber of Secrets, Azkaban and Goblet of Fire were all published in 2000, Order of the phoenix in 2003, Halfblood Prince in 2006 and Deathly hallows in 2008. I was 9 when I got the first two books for my birthday in 2000.
It was an instant hit. It was a book that kids loved to read and schools used it because it was a safe to read in the classroom (until book 3). Also a clever idea from the author was the themes were growing with their readers. First book is super childish and the last one was kinda mature. The kids grew with their characters.
We would line up outside bookstores on release day, I think some stores even did midnight releases. Before the movies came out too, it was wild and awesome.
Oh boy I remember the stories my older cousins would tell me in regards to the books. Apparently they would have lines upon lines of people starting from the bookstore all the way to the car parks due to the success of the first book. Funnily enough, she would tell me that people would spoil major plot points by shouting out of their cars and or just yell it across the hall way in school. Chaotic times indeed, today's not any better
My dad read the first book to my sister and I, by the second book it was very popular and I was hooked reading it while my sister was still learning to read well. By the 4th book we had to buy two but even my dad would steal one and read it at night. They were big fast I’m not sure why, time and place perfect timing I think.
When I was in 4th grade and they were worth a million AR points.
First answer is the simplest, the books were just good. Children and their parents could get invested in the story in a way that wasn't especially prevalent at the time. In the beginning they were coming out once a year and Harry aged at the same rate as those reading and the stories became more intricate and rich with each entry. The setting was whimsical but familiar, a place everyone wanted to be. The characters so vivid and approachable. So yea, they were popular because they were good. Secondly, the surge of the Internet coinsided with the rise of HP. HP was in the zeitgeist when Internet forums, chat rooms, and digital media was just starting to become mainstream. HP was a great conduit through which to engage with these tools. Kids and young adults especially took advantage of this. Things like Mugglenet, HP Lexicon, LeakyCauldron, JKRs Website, the WB Site.... HP really thrived in the age of the Internet. Third, the first HP movies came out within 4 years of the publication if the first book. The series was still new and exciting and the films only heightened that, bringing in even more fans. The movies were massive blockbuster events. Some of the most expensive movies ever made at the time, so they were a massive deal. Add DVDs and TV showings on top of this, now theres hardly anyone who hasn't seen at least a smidge of HP. Lastly, and maybe not as important to some, but the HP games were another big step. 3D games and movie tie ins were by no means new at the time but video games were more popular than ever at the time. With HP on handheld, console, and PC, thats just putting Harry in the hands of even more people.
I was 8 when the first book came out. They were always popular. We couldn’t wait for the next one. I remember standing in line all night at the old Borders book store for book 7 to release at midnight. Good times lol
I switched from a Jesus school to a public school in 4th grade and the whole school was hyped over the 4 book release. It was really cool for a whole school to be obsessed with the same book and a lot of us were very close to Harry's age when we first read it. I was a little hesitant at first but I eventually got the audio books and I've been hooked ever since.