Books

For me a big part was that it was a book series that other people would talk about in depth. You don't get that with most books, and I can talk about books for days. I wouldn't put it in my top 10, but I know it back and forth because people will actually talk about it.

It makes more sense than most other trendy pop culture fads.

My daughter (9 at the time) was invited to a Harry Potter party and I was invited to stay. The moms all told me about the books (I hadn't heard of them before then). This was a year before the 4th one came out. I bought the first three and we were both immediately hooked. I loved the books, liked the movie. Now I am hooked on her Strike series. She really knows how to weave a story and the more you read, the more you learn.

It happened to be the right place, at the right time. It was a fine book that happened to be at a time when the internet where it could speak like wildfire but before any real literary critique. Then it got a lot of media attention.

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Honestly, it just happened to be Johnny on the spot. Because if you critique the books, they're just a standard Children's to Young Adults Fantasy Series, they're probably a little poorly written compared to a lot of others in that space. But they just gained so much momentum.

The amount of time I spent online on forums chatting about theories, reading fan fics, etc, man those were the days of the internet. There is no where I feel like that online anymore. I used to on Reddit but it's different now too.

Demographics played a huge part, a massive bubble of readers with a book they could be interested in. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings books came out in time for the Baby Boomers to read them at just the right time. Mega rock 'n roll bands created songs around LOTR (such as Led Zeppelin). So all these Boomers had all their kids at just the right age for Harry Potter.

And then the clever message about getting kids to read 'wholesome' stories of a poor kid doing well in a fantastic world appealed to parents and kids alike.

Publishers kept the train rolling by getting these kids into other books as they got older, like the teenage vampires and dystopian games.

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I remember when book 4 came out the wait list at my school library was massive. So that was around late ‘00

I was in high school and all of my friends were telling me to read it. The books did nothing for me personally but the word-of-mouth was pretty strong.

I remember reading the first two books on a 3 week long holiday when I was 12, right before the start of secondary school. I think I even read the first book a second time during those weeks. The books weren't that well known yet, at least not among the general public. The lady at the bookstore had recommended them to my mom.

The world JKR creates just sucks you in. The rest of the books came out during the rest of my secondary school years and it almost felt like I was growing up alongside the characters, since I always was around the same age as them. That made it extra special, I think. That, and the anticipation of waiting for the new book to come out.

My twin brother and I would fight over who could read it first. I remember reading through the night, into to the morning, finishing the book in one go. The last ones we just read in English instead of waiting for the translation in our mother language.

Londoner here, and it was nuts. Stories about the book, leaks about the story, stories about leaks about the story... these were in mainstream newspapers, often on the front page. It was a near-universal fandom.

It wasn't just 'stay up all night at bookshops' or 'every kid in costume' things - it was super mainstream. Everyone was into it. You'd see people on the underground, everyone carrying copies of the books, etc.

When Goblet of Fire came out, there were queues around the local Sainsburys to get copies. A lot of my - also adult - workmates would also bring their books into work, and we would sneak away for 'meetings' where we'd speed-read as rapidly as possible for an hour. It was amazing.

Sadly, I don't see that every happening again. Amongst other things: Amazon kind of killed it. The queues to get copies, the piles of books: these were not only 'bonding' activities, but they reinforced how BIG the phenom was. If anything ever happened like this again, it would involve a lot of cardboard boxes in the post, people privately reading, and then sharing on TikTok. Which obviously works, but even the upper limits of BookTok are still a long, long way from Pottermania.

There are other factors as well. Not to be an old dude, but the world is a lot more cynical now, and we're much crankier and more fragmented about our culture. It would be hard for any media property to achieve what Potter did when it came to being a breakthrough, universal obsession - much less another book.

Even, say, the heights of Game of Thrones or the MCU didn't quite do it - and those have the advantage of much more money behind them. Or look at, say, the infinite wealth and retail power of Amazon, and how much they spaffed on Rings of Power. That achieved maybe 1/1000th of a Pottermania. (It also wasn't as good, but still, it shows how hard it is manufacture this kind of fandom, even with platforms that big.)

It is sad, as - again, with rose-tinted glasses - I liked how Potter connected so many people. It felt like we were all enjoying the same thing, and you could talk about it with anyone. The world could use that again. (He says, sounding a lot like a shit Hallmark card.)

An overabundance of people aged 6-18 in the late 1990's into the 2000's who actually liked reading.q

It got kids reading again. It rose because of that vaccuum. Also it used the world of the boarding school that most young readers had no idea about.

I read the first 3 (all that were out at the time, ~1999-2000) at about nineteen years old by the recommendation of my girlfriend at the time. I wasn't super-up on the craze otherwise, just vaguely familiar with the name. I continued through the three books (and eventually the rest) because I liked the books, and likewise, I think the primary reasons for the phenomenon are the books. Media attention and chance and other things certainly play a role, but people liked the stories, and that's what mattered most.

The prose isn't brilliant, but it's good enough to not annoy most people, and the characters, the world, and the plots are just better than average, occasionally way better. So my answer to "why the phenomenon," is a qualified, "the books are just really good." (Qualified because things can be really good even if not perfect, universally appealing, or even if they have bad qualities.)

Trans rights are human rights. JK sucks.

I tried reading it when I was 30 for the first time and didn’t get into them. I also have a hard time re reading the Chronicles of Narnia.

I think it hit kids at the right time were well written for their audience, but only ready the first 1.5, and I heard that they darken in tone.

Just one man’s opinion

I miss it. That was the best part of my summer any time a Harry Potter book came out.

Wish fulfillment is powerful, and I don’t think that has been tapped very much before with books for kids. It was also appearing right as things were capable of going viral as we know it today.

For me it was the world building. The thought of a secret magical world that exists along side with ours in modern time sounded amazing.

The books also came out when I was around the same age as the characters, going to school, worrying about exams, holidays, crushes, etc. As the books were released it felt like I was growing up along with the characters as well. The books really helped me get through times and the releases gave me something to look forward to.

I'm very introverted and usually avoid people, but during the book and movie releases, I felt quite connected to people however brief that was. I think it's the same for most fandoms.

One factor to consider is the state of the YA genre c. 2000. Nowadays, kids ages 13-17 have TONS of books they can read that are targeted to their demographic, especially in the fantasy and paranormal category. But when Harry Potter was popular, young adult wasn't established as it is now. In short, there were fewer options.

I think it was the idea of being a school you actually wanted to go to, rather than the boring place you were actually trapped in while reading it.

I’ve had this same question for a long time and put some thought into it.

Everything you mentioned of course, addicting writing, vivid places, good characters - but the big two for me are (imho) that it’s ‘believable fantasy’ and that she aged it up so well.

Unlike some other notable fantasy, Lord of the Rings, Redwall, Wheel of Time, etc - Harry Potter was set in our world, just hidden out of view. I think kids could much more easily believe that Hogwarts could be out there somewhere, that they could get a letter one day and go to magic school. For all the fantasy elements, it has some realism that feels truly authentic, which is why I think they pull off Harry Potter World in Universal so well too.. it feels magical but also like you’re really there.

Then, where kids normally grow out of a series, or are too young for it originally, HP captured them young and the books aged up in maturity to adulthood.. and many were doing at a similar age of Harry, Ron and Hermione, making them even more relatable. The grow-up aspect of them made them appealing to all age groups, which I think was the final piece needed to make it such a huge phenomenon.

Like others have said, I’ve seen better writing, better magic systems, better characters, across other books.. but I can still always go back and easily drop into the world of HP and Hogwarts.. it’s always been a mental break, cozy getaway. Just my humble opinion, but hope this perspective helps.

The first Harry Potter book got a ton of media coverage. A lot of it had to do with the surprise that literature was still capable of getting young people excited about reading. The Internet was relatively new, at that point, and cable TV was still a really big deal.

I think another part of it was that the first four books were released in four years, with the movies starting to come out shortly after. In all there were seven books released in 10 years and 8 films in 10 years with a few years of overlapping new books and movies being released. It was a huge hype train that kept picking up momentum.

In 3rd-ish grade one of my classmates said "My mom won't let me read Harry Potter because it's witchcraft!"

And my kid-self thought "...wait that's the point though? It's a story book. So the story is witchcraft. The book ITSSELF isn't witchcraft and it doesn't teach you witchcraft does it??"

So I checked it out from the library and wham-bam-thank-you-maam I loved the books.

Sorry.. but I don't think JKR's rag to riches story made one fucking difference to kids picking up the books.

I genuinely think it was the books themselves, the topic, setting, characters, writing quality, world building, etc.

It just hit the mark.

American kids especially not realising how much of the book was just British (or more specifically, British boarding school culture) rather than specifically magical.

Boarding school friendship books have always done well in the UK anyway (Enid Blyton, Tom Brown's School Days).

That plus the fact that there hadn't been a "fad" phenomenon that was easily marketed for a while in that space.