Books That Almost Weren’ t Published( Cont’ d)
Author J. K. Rowling might be in the“ big bucks” now, but things certainly didn ' t start out that way. Back then, Rowling was living off of government assistance, retyping complete copies of the manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher ' s Stone to send out to publishers because she was too broke to have photocopies made. She kept sending off her precious typed copies of the manuscript to publishing houses, where they most likely went right into the trash.
Every one of the first several publishers she sent it to rejected it outright— all for the same reason: It was far too long for a children ' s book.
It must be noted here that the U. S. paperback edition of“ book that was too long for a children’ s book” was 320 pages and actually was the shortest of the series. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix topping is nearly three times that length. So apparently, judging by the success of the series, 320 pages certainly was not too much for the fragile brains of modern children After all, they read six other, longer episodes. Total pages in the Harry Potter series— 4,224 pages.
Not ready to give up, Rowling decided she needed an agent, thumbed through a directory and chose Christopher Little because the name sounded like a character in a children ' s book. She shipped her manuscript off to his office, where an assistant tossed it straight into the rejection pile because Little felt children ' s books didn ' t make any money. No one seemed to think it was worth putting this long, oddball children’ s book into print just to see what would happen.
Then one of those unexplainable things happened. Rowling ' s illustrations caught the eye of Little ' s assistant while she was sending out the rejection letters. At that point publishers were still rejecting Harry Potter but the assistant convinced Little to give it a try. He who signed Rowling on and shipped it off to Bloomsbury Publishing, where chairman Nigel Newton agreed to look at it as a personal favor.
Newton showed it to an actual child, something none of the others had probably done. He offhandedly tossed the manuscript to his 8-year-old daughter, and she devoured it in hours, then came back to him wanting more. He took a chance and published it. Need we say more?
HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE PUBLISHED IN THE U. S. AS HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERERS STONE
J. K. ROWLING
WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE
PAGE
27
MAY- JUNE 2016