Potter spin-off a hit for tiny Berkeley publisher
Prediction book capitalizes on Pottermania
Few would have expected that the name Ulysses Press — a small, independent Berkeley publisher — and the phrase “335,000 copies in print” would ever be used in the same sentence.
But it has happened: The publisher’s “What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7,” by authors from the No. 1 Harry Potter fan site, MuggleNet.com, has been on the New York Times Children’s Paperback best-sellers list for 20 consecutive weeks.
The book can be found around the world, thanks to unabated Pottermania, which is surging in anticipation of the seventh and final Harry Potter volume from author J.K. Rowling, due for release July 21.
Ulysses Press was founded in 1983 with the publication of “Hidden Hawaii.” It publishes 50 books a year, including a variety of titles on alternative health, fitness and spirituality, from a second-story office in South Berkeley.
For Ulysses, a successful book sells about 50,000 copies. “What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7,” with retail sales of five times that number, took in some $5 million, representing about a $2 million gross for the press.
“We were a $2 (million)- to $3 million-a-year publisher before it came out. But this book alone has brought in that kind of money,” said Ray Riegert, the 60-year-old publisher who founded Ulysses with his wife, Leslie Henriques.
A Harry Potter spin-off might seem like an odd fit for Ulysses. But the book’s runaway success reaffirms Ulysses’ practice, unusual in publishing, of developing its own ideas and finding authors to write them. No literary agents are involved and no authors show up at the door bearing manuscripts.
Early last year, Riegert, along with Bryce Willett, the company’s marketing manager, and Nick Denton-Brown, an editor, concluded in a brainstorming session that they would do a “prediction book” capitalizing on the Harry Potter phenomenon.
Denton-Brown had the task of finding an author. He found a chat room full of them at MuggleNet.com. The Web site is named for muggles, or people, as Rowling has reminded us time after time, who have no magical abilities.
The Web site, where all things pertaining to Harry Potter can be mined, was founded by Emerson Spartz, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Notre Dame, in the fall of 1999, when he was 12.
Spartz and Ben Schoen, a 17-year-old recent high school graduate from Moundridge, Kan., are the lead writers of “What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7,” which is an analysis of the first six books and a prediction of the series denouement in the seventh book.
Is Dumbledore really dead? Will Harry and Ginny get back together? Who is the mysterious R.A.B.? Whose side is Snape truly on? This is the stuff of the Ulysses Press book, which is being promoted largely through personal appearances by Spartz and Schoen.
“It’s a new Holiday Inn Express every night,” Spartz said from Los Angeles on Friday. A business major from LaPorte, Ind., he said his goal is to run businesses, not make a career out of Harry Potter. But he remains fascinated with the books — “a wonderful story with characters you fall in love with.”
Schoen this year applied to Notre Dame and was rejected. In his appeal he included a copy of the book, a copy of the New York Times review and a clipping of the newspaper’s best-seller list. Notre Dame reversed its decision and welcomed him with a letter congratulating him on his achievements at such a young age.
Riegert, who says other projects with MuggleNet.com are being discussed, is still marveling at Ulysses Press’s good fortune.
“We had no idea it was going to be like this,” he said.
For years, Ulysses mainly published travel guidebooks, but it has varied its titles in the past 10 years. Long a two-person operation, the staff has now grown to 12.
Another successful title for the company, “What Would Buddha Do,” has sold about 60,000 books since it was released in 2002. The MuggleNet.com book has shipped five times that in just eight months, Riegert said.
“There is phenomenal interest” in Rowling’s creation, “one of the biggest publishing phenomena of the last 25 years,” he said. “People are really keyed up, especially for book seven, because everything is going to be resolved.”
This article appeared on page C – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Recent Comments