My wife’s an art director.
Recently, her agency got J K Rowling’s publisher in to give a talk.
Cathy says it was fascinating.
He talked about how Rowling’s real name was Joanne.
But it was changed to J K. because publishing experts believed young boys wouldn’t buy a book written by a woman.
Rowling wrote the first book when she was living in near poverty in Edinburgh.
She was a single mother living on unemployment benefits and child support payments.
She would sit, in mid winter, in a warm café while her baby slept.

There she’d write in a notebook in pencil.
Later she’d go back to her tiny flat and use her manual typewriter.
During this time she was diagnosed with clinical depression.
She had failed at absolutely everything in life.
She had no job, and no prospect of getting one.
She had a baby daughter and no husband.
She had hardly any money to buy food.
She lived in a tiny flat that would get broken into.
She didn’t think she could fall any lower.
So she escaped by writing her book.
And she sent the first chapter to publisher after publisher.
One by one they all turned it down.
Twelve publishers had turned it down, by the time she sent it to the one who was giving the talk.
He said, every publisher turned it down because it was conventional publishing wisdom that children didn’t read long books.
Children had a short attention span.
So a children’s book needed to be a few pages long, and have pictures.
Neither of these was true of Rowling’s book.
It was several hundred pages long.
And it had no pictures.
She didn’t know anything about the rules of publishing successful children’s books.
So she’d done all the wrong things.
Silly woman.
Luckily, the publisher giving the talk hadn’t read the first chapter himself.
He’d given it to his 8 year old daughter.
She’d disappeared upstairs into her bedroom with it.
A few hours later she came down and demanded the second chapter.
The publisher said he didn’t have it.
His daughter was terribly disappointed.
She wanted to keep reading.
She wanted to find out what happened to all the characters.
She made him promise to get the book.
She didn’t know about conventional publishing wisdom.
She was only 8 years old.
Luckily for that publisher, his daughter was right and conventional publishing wisdom was wrong.
An auction was held and the rights to the first book were sold for $100 thousand.
Rowling said she nearly died.
She’d never dreamed of having that much money.
It meant she didn’t have to worry about paying the rent, or heating bill, or food or clothes for her daughter.
Now they were safe.
Five years later she was a millionaire.
Fifteen years later the Harry Potter books have sold over 400 million copies worldwide.
They’ve been translated into 65 languages.
They are the best-selling book series in history.
When the fourth Harry Potter book came out, it sold 3 million copies in 48 hours.
The sixth book sold 9 million copies in 24 hours.
The seventh book sold 11 million copies in the same period.
The Harry Potter empire is now worth $15 billion.
J K Rowling herself is a billionaire.
She earns over half a million dollars a day.
She’s given many, many millions to charities for children, the poor, and the sick.

And all because she, and an 8 year old girl, didn’t know as much as the experts.