In the run up to this weekend's release of the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I stand in awe at the product of J.K. Rowling's imagination. She didn't strike oil, or invent a new telephone, or learn to sink a corner jumper. She created an industry with only the vision in her mind. From the first pencil scratches of a penniless mother in 1996, her created world has grown to what Advertising Age estimates is now a $15 billion business. Even better, I see this as a business with a very long tail, as the millions of readers, many of them adolescents, will canonize the series and lovingly share it with their own children.
Advertising Age's guesstimate of the total economic impact of the series breaks down this way:
- Advertising -- $390 million
- Books – (Scholastic Books, NASDAQ: SCHL) - $9 billion
- DVD sales -- $1 billion plus
- Package-goods licensing -- $11.8 million
- Music -- $13 million
- Movies – Warner Brothers, (Time Warner, NYSE: TWX) $4.4 billion
- Theme parks -- $86 million (projected) from Universal's Harry Potter World, scheduled to open in Orlando in 2009
- Home Video Rentals -- $86 million
- TV time -- $248 million to $495 million
Looking ahead, the Harry Potter world would transfer delightfully to a virtual form. Imagine if this world were available in a Second Life-like version, a MMPG populated with wizards and muggles, where every child could attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, fly a broom in a Qudditch tournament, and form the kind of friendships that Harry, Ron and Hermione enjoy.
Who wouldn't want to live there? And how many of us adults might sneak in too to enjoy, if only in our imaginations, a world where honor and trust and magic rule?
More Harry Potter news
Tom Barlow: The Harry Potter Finance Quiz
Gary E. Sattler: New York Times bestseller list leaves Harry Potter out
Tom Barlow: Harry Potter ending: A water cooler cheat sheet
Zac Bissonnette: With Harry Potter done, is it time for Scholastic to sell itself?
Tom Barlow: Rowling safeguards Potter empire
Zac Bissonnette: Is the last book the end of Potter mania?
Barry Summerlin: Harry Potter doesn't even need Muggle marketing
Julie Tilsner: Not even Harry can save bookstores from their fate
Peter Cohan: Harry Potter and the Pot of Gold
Tom Barlow: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Will Rowling kill off Harry?
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