Independent Online Edition > Business News:
Harry Potter and the half-baked print run: 2.5 million books unsold in the USNow, Scholastic’s chairman, Richard Robinson, whose father Robbie founded the firm in 1920, admits bookshops have been left with 2.5 million unsold copies….
…However, unlike franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, where the film sparked a boom in sales of Tolkien, the opposite appears to be the case for Harry Potter. It seems Potter films mostly attract those who have already read the book.
Last year, when Warner Brothers released the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, reaping $761m (£428m) at the box office, a mere 60,000 copies of the book were sold.
… far from guaranteeing high profitability, Scholastic’s performance since the first Potter in 1998 has been woeful, even though it has netted $600m in revenue from the franchise.Over the past three years, Scholastic’s share price has halved, losing 10 per cent this month, and operating margins have dropped from 9 per cent to 6.4 per cent. …
Wow, that’s embarrassing for Scholastic.
Returns are the Avada Kevadra of the book business.
Related posts:
Recent Comments