Harry Potter and the art of making money

The whole JK Rowling thing long ago passed out of the realm of literature into accountancy, economics and, incredibly, hard news, reported with an utterly straight face. It is news, for instance, that proofs of her new novel were "found in a field" and offered to a national newspaper. What on earth was the newspaper going to do with it, one wondered? Print a report about goblins? It was news that a vanload of finished copies bound for Asda were stolen, though that seems to me the most stupid crime of the century, and I cannot imagine who would pay any significant premium for reading a book four days early.

Wildly, Ms Rowling is being treated to a lavish interview with the Great Paxman, who I hope managed to keep a straight face, despite being asked to treat an epic about adolescent wizards and their adventures among the pixies with the same gravitas he might bring to, say, the Government's proposals for constitutional reform.

The revelations she produced on this occasion included, among other gems, the information, of undoubtedly urgent public concern, that one of her principal characters is killed off in the course of this new novel, and when she killed him, she went into her kitchen and cried. My immediate thought on reading this fascinating vignette was "Please God, let it be Harry Potter, and, if remotely possible, Boring Hermione and that kid with the ginger hair. Let Ms Rowling please have come to the conclusion that she's made so much money, she might as well kill them all off and buy Guatemala for her retirement home."

It seems unlikely, though. I seem to remember, too, that she told everyone this before one of the previous books came out, and the kid she'd knocked on the head turned out to be someone you'd never noticed before, despite all fervent hope. I think we have to face the horrible truth that Ms Rowling is as devoted to her art as VS Naipaul, and will continue writing these books in a state of trance-like sincerity.

The glimpse of Ms Rowling, crying in her kitchen, however, did give me a moment's pause, because it is on the whole very unlike the experience of most novelists on these occasions. I'm absolutely certain that the day Dickens wrote the death of Little Nell, he ate an unusually good dinner; when Hardy got Old Father Time to hang himself and his siblings with the note "Done Because We Are Too Menny," he almost certainly came out of his study with a very broad smile on his face.

But on the whole it is not surprising that Ms Rowling did actually cry at this juncture. She strikes me as a writer who is at the mercy of her material, and not obviously in control of it. Her indebtedness to other writers; the unthinking conventionality of the world; the disorganised and vague nature of the fantasy element; she isn't a bold writer, or a really authoritative one. You always have a feeling that you've read this somewhere before.

In short, it is difficult to make a case for JK Rowling on literary grounds. Her sincerity and commitment are no guarantee of that; every writer is sincere, even the worst. The other factor is harder to deal with: the scale of her popularity. It does no good to separate popularity from literary merit; to a large extent, you could say that all literary merit means is the assent of a large number of readers. Shakespeare is great because enough readers have thought him so. If so many millions of readers feel so passionately about Harry Potter, then surely that is enough?

There is a flip answer to this, and a serious one. The flip answer says that tens of millions of people eat in McDonald's every day, but the food is still better at the Tour d'Argent. The serious one says that, in the case of books, what counts is not just numbers of readers, but the longevity of a book. There are many cases of now entirely forgotten writers who, in their lifetimes, sold in comparably vast quantities. The evidence for the value of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is not how many copies it will sell next weekend, but how many copies it will be selling in a hundred years' time.

To publishers now, understandably, that hardly seems worth thinking about. But it does raise a bigger concern about publishing today. The increasing authority of accountancy has altered the atmosphere. To an accountant, the desirable book is one which recoups the initial investment as rapidly as possible, and a book without solid merit which sells strongly for two years and then disappears entirely is to be preferred to one that sells steadily over 20 or 30 years.

Of course, there are many admirable things about Harry Potter; whatever I think about its prose style, it is quite something to persuade children to read a book of a quarter of a million words, and ultimately to develop a habit of reading. That will be a literate generation. Moreover, it has undoubtedly provided a substantial support for the whole industry, and the benefits are felt everywhere.

Nevertheless, the astounding phenomenon of Harry Potter has created a false idea of what publishing should be doing. Although many publishers retain a sense of responsibility, there is an increasing pressure to concentrate on books that make a huge amount of money very quickly, and to regard anything else as a slight disappointment. It isn't helpful, and it isn't sensible. In the end, the books worth valuing are the books that aren't going to drop out of fashion, and that readers won't grow out of.