I don't find it irksome, actually. It was a business decision Levine made about a book he had bet his career on. He was just hoping it would make a big enough splash that it would let him get his new imprint off the ground, and so he and his marketing staff did what they thought would make the book as marketable as possible. After the first HP book became such a huge hit, the world of children's literature changed. But before that, no one could have predicted it would become as big as it did. Children's literature wasn't even particularly lucrative then.
There's a sense in which it wouldn't have become as popular as it did if it weren't for Levine in the first place. After all, PS had been sold to a UK publisher for a modest amount, and it was the fact that Levine bid so much money for the US rights at auction that made people in the UK even notice the book. Without Levine, it's quite possible that the HP series would have been just another children's book.
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Date: 2007-03-29 09:44 pm (UTC)There's a sense in which it wouldn't have become as popular as it did if it weren't for Levine in the first place. After all, PS had been sold to a UK publisher for a modest amount, and it was the fact that Levine bid so much money for the US rights at auction that made people in the UK even notice the book. Without Levine, it's quite possible that the HP series would have been just another children's book.