J.K. Rowling

#1In June 1997, a children's book called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" appeared in Britain.

#2Its first print run was 500 copies. Around 300 of them went to libraries.

#3Even the publisher that finally said yes wasn't expecting a fortune. Rowling's editor advised her to get a day job. Children's books, he warned, probably weren't going to pay the bills.

#4Ten years later, that sounded almost impossible.

#5When the final Harry Potter book arrived, readers lined up outside bookstores at midnight. Keeping the ending secret became a security problem. Moving enough copies into stores became a huge logistical operation.

#6So how does a children's book that starts at 500 copies get there?

#7Not with a publisher spotting a guaranteed hit.

#8It starts on a delayed train, with a writer who doesn't even have a working pen.

#9In 1990, 25-year-old J.K. Rowling was traveling from Manchester to London when a boy appeared in her imagination.

#10Messy dark hair. Glasses. A boy who had no idea he was a wizard.

#11Then came the school he would attend. Other characters followed. The world started building itself in her head.

#12There was one small problem.

#13She couldn't write any of it down.

#14Rowling didn't have a working pen, and she was too shy to ask another passenger for one. So for roughly four hours, she sat there thinking through the story instead.

#15Once she reached London, she started writing.

#16The idea had arrived quickly. The book wouldn't.

#17It took about five years to finish the first one, and Rowling had already begun imagining the story across seven books.

#18During those five years, almost everything around the manuscript changed.

#19The same year Rowling began Harry Potter, her mother Anne died at 45.

#20Rowling had never told her mother she was writing it.

#21Harry's dead parents were already part of the story before Anne died. But losing her own mother changed the way Rowling understood Harry's grief. She later said his feelings about his parents became deeper and more real after that loss.

#22Then Rowling moved to Portugal.

#23She taught English and kept writing. She married. Her daughter Jessica was born.

#24The marriage fell apart.

#25Rowling returned to Britain with Jessica and settled in Edinburgh. And among the things that came with her was an unfinished Harry Potter manuscript.

#26The country had changed. Her family had changed. Her life had changed.

#27The manuscript was still there.

#28And it still wasn't finished.

#29Life in Edinburgh was tight. Rowling was raising a young child alone and, for a time, living on state benefits.

#30But she still wanted to finish the book.

#31She'd take Jessica out in the stroller. When her daughter fell asleep, Rowling would go into a nearby café and write.

#32Jessica slept.

#33Rowling wrote.

#34When the window closed, she stopped. When she got another one, she started again.

#35There's no need to turn that period into a romantic story about poverty producing great art. Rowling herself later talked about what poverty actually brings: fear, stress, and petty humiliations.

#36What mattered was simpler.

#37The circumstances kept changing, and she kept finishing the manuscript.

#38Eventually, she did.

#39Then a new problem appeared.

#40Writing the book was over.

#41Now she had to get someone to read it.

#42The first literary agent Rowling tried rejected it.

#43Even sending manuscripts wasn't trivial when money was that tight. Copying pages, buying folders, paying postage—it all cost something.

#44Still, she tried again.

#45One name caught her eye: Christopher Little.

#46She didn't choose him because of some sophisticated analysis of the publishing business. She liked the name. It sounded, to her, like someone who might belong in a children's story.

#47So she sent him the first three chapters.

#48He wrote back.

#49He wanted the rest.

#50Nothing had been published. There was no contract. No bookstore was waiting for Harry Potter.

#51But something important had happened for the first time.

#52A reader had reached the end of what he'd been given and wanted the next part.

#53Little became Rowling's agent and started sending the manuscript to publishers.

#54They said no.

#55He sent it somewhere else.

#56Another no.

#57One publisher kept it for months before rejecting it.

#58Little kept going.

#59Eventually, the manuscript reached Bloomsbury.

#60Bloomsbury chairman Nigel Newton took the manuscript home and handed it to his eight-year-old daughter, Alice.

#61She read it.

#62And she wanted more.

#63Alice wasn't single-handedly responsible for getting Harry Potter published. Adults inside Bloomsbury liked the manuscript too, including children's editor Barry Cunningham.

#64But notice what was happening.

#65Christopher Little had read three chapters and asked for the rest.

#66Now a child—the actual audience for the book—had read it and wanted the rest too.

#67Bloomsbury offered Rowling a contract.

#68When Little called with the news, Rowling had to make sure she understood him correctly.

#69Was he actually saying her book was going to be published?

#70Yes.

#71Even then, nobody involved could see what was coming. Cunningham advised Rowling to keep another career in mind because there wasn't much money in children's books.

#72Then, in 1997, Bloomsbury printed the book.

#73All 500 copies of it.

#74There was no movie yet. No giant franchise. The words "Harry Potter" didn't mean anything to most people.

#75And still, the book began to move.

#76A child read it. Told a friend. That friend read it. Then someone else did.

#77Rowling later said she realized something unusual was happening when sales kept rising without major publicity. Children, she believed, were talking about the book to one another.

#78Then other forces joined in.

#79Reviews helped. Booksellers paid attention. Awards followed, including a gold Smarties Book Prize.

#80Word of mouth didn't do everything by itself. Reviews, prizes, booksellers, and publishers amplified what was already happening.

#81But the pattern was becoming familiar.

#82Someone read Harry Potter.

#83Then they wanted someone else to read it.

#84Next, the book crossed the Atlantic.

#85Arthur A. Levine, an American children's book editor, got hold of Harry Potter galleys around the Bologna Children's Book Fair.

#86He read them on a flight home.

#87He loved the book.

#88An auction began for the U.S. publishing rights, and the price kept climbing. For a debut children's author, the number was startling.

#89Levine stayed in.

#90Scholastic eventually won the U.S. rights for about $105,000.

#91Not long before, Rowling had been told not to expect children's books to support her.

#92Now an American publisher had just made an unusually large bet on her first one.

#93The initial U.S. print run was 50,000 copies.

#94Britain had started with 500.

#95America was starting with 50,000.

#96And then the readers created another problem.

#97They didn't want to wait.

#98The second Harry Potter book was already available in Britain before its U.S. edition arrived.

#99American readers knew that.

#100So some of them simply ordered the British edition.

#101They wanted to know what happened next.

#102Usually, a publisher sets the date, releases the book, and waits for readers to show up.

#103Here, readers were already running ahead.

#104Scholastic moved the next U.S. publication earlier.

#105Think about how far the relationship had flipped.

#106At first, Rowling was trying to persuade someone—anyone—to keep reading her manuscript.

#107Now a publisher was trying to keep pace with people who already wanted the next book.

#108By the third volume, Harry Potter was competing on bestseller lists with major adult fiction.

#109In Britain, stores were even asked to hold back sales until after school hours so children wouldn't skip class to buy the new book.

#110And the first Harry Potter movie still hadn't opened.

#111The films didn't turn an obscure book into a publishing phenomenon.

#112The phenomenon was already there.

#113Rowling's old problem had disappeared.

#114Nobody used to be waiting for the next book.

#115Now everyone was asking for it.

#116With every release, the waiting got bigger. New Harry Potter books became events of their own. Bookstores opened at midnight. Readers showed up in costume.

#117But Rowling had imagined a seven-book arc early on, following Harry's seven years at Hogwarts.

#118Success didn't make her stretch the main story forever.

#119There would be a seventh book.

#120Then it would end.

#121In early 2007, Rowling checked into Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel so she could concentrate on the final manuscript. What began as a place to get some uninterrupted writing done turned into a longer stay as the work went well.

#122On January 11, 2007, she finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" there.

#123Years earlier, she'd worked on the first book in Edinburgh cafés while Jessica slept.

#124Now she finished the last one in a hotel room.

#125But the room isn't the real reversal.

#126When Rowling was trying to finish the first book, nobody was waiting for her to finish it.

#127When she finished the last one, the world was.

#128She cried when it was done.

#129That July, the final Harry Potter book went on sale.

#130Ten years earlier, the first British printing had been 500 copies.

#131Now readers were lining up at midnight for the ending.

#132There wasn't one person who magically turned Harry Potter into a worldwide phenomenon.

#133Rowling kept the manuscript alive long enough to finish it.

#134Christopher Little read three chapters and asked for more.

#135People at Bloomsbury read it. Eight-year-old Alice wanted more too.

#136Children passed the book to other children.

#137Arthur Levine made a big bet in America.

#138Then American readers became so impatient for the next installment that they started importing the British edition.

#139The thing Rowling needed at the beginning wasn't millions of readers.

#140She needed one person to finish what she'd written and think:

#141I want the next part.

#142Then there was another person.

#143And another.

#144Ten years later, the world was waiting for the next page.

#145Years later, after becoming one of the most recognizable authors in the world, Rowling did something that reversed the problem all over again: she published a crime novel under the male pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

#146At the beginning, nobody knew her name and she struggled to get the manuscript read. So why, once everybody knew her name, did she want to become unknown again?