For comparison, the overall book market has gone up a mere 33 percent since The Harry Potter generation likes to read, for sure — millennials read more than any other generation — and it also created a cultural landscape in which books for children are major cultural forces, and a go-to well of ideas for Hollywood.
Harry Potter has a tremendously outsized cultural reach: One survey suggested that a third of all American adults ages 18 to 34 at the time had read at least one of the books.
But what really makes Harry Potter stand out is the way people loved and continue to love Harry Potter. First and foremost, the series helped make it cool to be a geek. As more Harry Potter fans became more active online, they made discussion of YA fiction, fantasy, and science fiction seem commonplace. This was still a pretty bold concept in the early s; geek culture was largely still underground, and fantasy was seen mainly as an immature hobby — for instance, in , critic A.
But between Harry Potter , the Lord of the Rings film adaptations, and the emerging visibility of online Harry Potter fandom, it was increasingly difficult to ignore fantasy and science fiction as a driving force of culture, and to write off fans of these genres as niche.
In the early s, Harry Potter fan forums, fanfiction and fan art archives, and email discussion groups exploded across the internet. Harry Potter conventions drew thousands of fans, and Harry Potter cosplay became a well-known sight at larger geek and comic cons.
It was later joined by another totally unique-to-Harry-Potter fan pursuit: Quidditch. A number of Harry Potter fans also went on to make significant marks on mainstream culture.
Other Harry Potter fans, like fan convention organizer Melissa Anelli and social activist Andrew Slack launched careers directly out of Harry Potter fandom. In general, the Harry Potter fandom was among the first to see a number of people actively leveraging their success through fandom toward their professional careers. Just as Harry Potter made it easier for fans to own their geeky habits, the Harry Potter fandom made it easier for fans to market those geeky habits as professional assets.
What made all of this possible — the industries transformed, the careers built — are the books themselves, and the expansive, wondrous world they created. The Harry Potter series is a phenomenon not just because it had a good publicity and marketing budget although that helped and not just because the curiosity and controversy surrounding it made it appealing to the press although that helped.
The Harry Potter series is a phenomenon because it tells a story that millions of people loved, and it introduced the world to an enormous and magical world that millions of people have dreamed of escaping into. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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