It’s no surprise to read that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is breaking sales records all by itself as well as stimulating increased sales for the previous six books. What is surprising is that the bestseller lists in the New York Times Book Review, one of the most important benchmarks for literary success, show no evidence that there is such a phenomenally successful book dominating national culture right at the moment.
In July 2000, with the first three Potter books locked into place on the fiction bestseller list and a fourth, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, about to come out, the Times rejiggered its listing to create a separate Children’s Books besteller list. Unlike Michael Giltz in HuffPo, I can endorse the rationale. As the book business continues its long decline, the number of copies one has to sell in order to tap the bestseller list declines as well — a fact the right-wing screed factory takes advantage of when it uses bulk orders of non-books by Ann Coulter and Michael Savage to win that coveted “New York Times Bestseller” ad line. With their continued popularity, the Harry Potter novels were on track eventually to claim seven spots on the Top Ten for the foreseeable future, denying recognition to successful books for adult readers. The Times is nothing if not aware of its irreplaceable role in the book industry, and it recognized that the sales of adult books would be hampered, maybe even crippled, if Harry Potter continued to dominate the Fiction list.
Unfortunately, the Times continued to categorize, and we have now arrived at a situation where the title of a book that is flying out of stores across the country and around the world appears nowhere on any of the Times bestseller lists. One has to go to the Children’s Books list and scroll all the way down to “Series Books,” where there is a listing for the entire Harry Potter lineup, not the individual book. That doesn’t make much sense either.
I don’t expect J.K. Rowling is losing much sleep over this situation — she and her fans know the title of the most successful fiction title in the universe right at this moment, and it sure ain’t A Thousand Splendid Suns. That’s fine by me. Khaled Hosseini deserves to have his success spotlighted, even if it isn’t up to the astronomical level of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But a few decades from now, researchers interested in cultural history are going to check out the bestseller lists of the number one go-to authority on book publishing and find no mention of the success story of the decade. Is that right?
Harry Potter has gotten so much press coverage outside of the NYT bestseller list that his legacy must be secure. Although his sales probably won’t manage to overtake the Bible (backlist longevity is the real measure of success), he has set so many records that the future will surely remember his name.