I'm hammering my keyboard, spitting code out at a rather satisfying rate. But the TV is on, and something catches my eye. It's the Biography channel, featuring a bio of J.K. Rowling. They're talking about the launch of Harry Potter's final book. They show as millions of fans across the globe waited in line for the launch, one second after midnight GMT in July 21st 2007. Most are children and teenagers, many dressed at characters from the series. After the launch, they eagerly collect their books, some get them signed, and then scoot off to somewhere quiet where they can finally read the long awaited story.
I see images of fourteen year-olds clad in wizard threads, sitting on the street with their friends, each with a very thick book in hand, their eyes completely lost in the pages. The perfect image of how many many kids took the books and opened them as soon as a chance presented itself, anxious as they were to drink the words in.
When an author sells over 300 million copies of her books and statistics show most of the readers are children, you really have to question the wisdom of stating "children these days don't read". They do. They just need books that really catches their interest.
As a marketing professional, I find this extremely interesting. I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of novels out there that match or surpass the quality of the boy wizard's tale, and could easily appeal to the same audience. But they have no marketing to speak of, sitting all forgotten and alone in bookstore shelves.
Now, I know many governments have programs to boost readership (we do here in Portugal), but their message is usually just "read".
I remember being a young boy and hating receiving abstract advice. "Read" is not a compelling message. "Read < book name >, people like you find it < comments >." is much more appealing and actually stands a chance of working. It did for the Harry series.
Governments cannot favour individual publishers or authors, but there are ways they can avoid it and still make their message less abstract and more effective.
They just need to hire actual marketeers.
