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What Was the Original Intended Audience for the Harry Potter Books?


I recall reading a comment by J. K. Rowling that she didn't think of her books as fantasy until after she had written several and realized that she had ghosts and goblins and other fantasy creatures and fantasy settings as well, and it hit her that they were fantasy.


I also think, but am not sure, that I read another comment of hers that she was not specifically writing them as children's books, that she was writing the story and it just turned out that it appealed to children.


While the author, while writing a book, may not always try to classify it as a particular genre or in a particular demographic, the publishers will do that for marketing purposes.



So this question could have multiple answers. What was JKR's intended audience with the first few books? Did she have a genre and age group in mind? And when the first publishers started marketing the first book, what markets were they targeting?


I'm more interesting in whether the books were written for a particular group, such as us in SF&F, than in the publishing end (since that doesn't effect as much of the content), but I wouldn't want to exclude that info if there have been public comments or discussions about it.



Answer




Rowling, having delivered the third Harry Potter book to Bloomsbury and now working on the fourth, says she didn't consider her possible audience when she conceived the series. "What excited me was how much I would enjoy writing [Harry Potter]. I never thought about writing for children -- children's books chose me."



Source: "Flying Starts: Seven first-time children's authors and illustrators talk about their fall debuts: J.K. ROWLING (excerpt)," Publisher's Weekly, December 21, 1998


Just to be clear - this doesn't apply to when she was shopping the book around to publishers - by that time, it was already intended to be a children's book (from the same article):



When J.K. Rowling first met her agent, Christopher Little, over a lunch in London in 1995, he felt it only right to sound a cautionary note: "Now, you do realize, you will never make a fortune out of writing children's books?




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