In the mid-1990s, J.K. Rowling was divorced, unemployed, and a new single mother living on welfare benefits in Edinburgh. She wrote much of the first Harry Potter manuscript by hand in cafés, partly because walking her infant daughter to sleep there let her write without running up the heating bill at home.
The finished manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was turned down by roughly a dozen publishers. Bloomsbury only agreed to publish it, the story goes, after the chairman's eight-year-old daughter read the first chapter and immediately demanded to know what happened next. They paid a modest advance — commonly cited as around £1,500 — and printed just 500 hardback copies.
The Harry Potter series went on to sell more than 600 million copies worldwide, was translated into over 80 languages, and became one of the highest-grossing film franchises in history. Rowling became one of the best-selling authors ever, and for a time, the world's first billionaire author.
Ad space