Publisher Rises With Harry Potter

N E W  Y O R K, July 7 -- Although he started as little more than a glimmering image in one woman’s imagination as she traveled from Manchester to London 10 years ago, young Harry Potter has become the biggest book publishing and e-commerce event ever.

The fourth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet Fire, due out Saturday, is the largest advance printing of any trade book in recorded history.

J.K. Rowling, the mysterious author who conceived of Harry on a train ride through the English countryside, stands to earn $10 million or more on the first printing of Goblet of Fire. Not bad compared with the $3,300 advance she received from her British publisher for the first Harry Potter book.

But apart from Rowling, perhaps no one has felt the success of Harry Potter more than the book’s American publisher, Scholastic Inc.

Scholastic is expected to report $100 million in revenue from the first three books for the fiscal year ended June 30. And that doesn’t include the company’s other well-known children’s titles. For the nine months ended last Feb. 29, revenues rose 22 percent to $1 billion, while net income jumped 37 percent to $19.7 million.

Harry’s Potion for Profits

Scholastic, an 80-year-old publisher of children’s literature and educational materials, anticipates Goblet of Fire and the previous three books combined will bring in another $75 million in the coming year.

“I think there’s a lot of things that aren’t recognized about Scholastic. It has a number of popular titles. But there’s no doubt Harry Potter has helped raise the company’s public profile and investor interest,” said Rudy Hokanson, an analyst at CIBC World Marketing in New York, who expects the stock price to reach a record high of $74 per share by the end of this year.

The stock is currently trading in the low $60s. And in the past four months, Scholastic’s shares have jumped about 40 percent, approaching a 52-week high.