The Bookseller.com

4th July 2009

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Final Harry creates nightmare

11.06.07

A piece in the Independent suggests that the final Harry Potter will be a nightmare for small booksellers and--surprisingly--its publisher Bloomsbury. The bookshops will suffer because they cannot compete on price with the supermarkets and larger chains, while J K Rowling's publisher is already finding itself under pressure to retain the margins of Potter years after the final book has been published.

"Small bookshops, especially, will suffer as they struggle to keep up with the discounts offered by the industry's big players. Shop owners like Marilyn Brocklehurst of Norfolk Children's Book Centre in Alby, near Cromer, said she will have to stock the book, once again, against her will for the 21 July launch."

The flipside is that when Potter hangs up his wand he will also leave a big hole at the publisher. The marketing director of one rival publisher said: "I think Potter has put Bloomsbury under unrealistic pressure. Most publishers operate on a 5 per cent profit margin. So effectively in non-Harry Potter years, Bloomsbury is being asked to make four times that - 20 per cent. That is an unrealistic amount of money in publishing."

Independent

harry potter children's Bloombury