Remembering the Fire– Marking 15 Years Since the “Goblet of Fire” Release

There had never been anything like it before, for a book.  The New York Times called it a “frenzy.” BBC said we’d gone “Potty for Potter.”  By the end of the weekend, The New York Times reported that stores had sold out and publishers were rushing additional printings.

It was the release of the fourth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Just days before its publication, adults were complaining about the length of Goblet of Fire.  Gail Collins of The New York Times, called its 752 pages, “Moby Dick on a Broom.”

The first three Harry novels taught kids the joys of reading. The new one may teach them the important adult skill of carrying around large and trendy volumes of literature so you can say “I just started it” whenever the topic comes up in conversation.

Oh, really?  Fifteen years later, we know that it actually proved that children can read any length of book, as long as it is good.  (Thank you, J.K. Rowling, for breaking the children’s book length ceiling.)  Ms. Collins also bemoans the sale of the Harry Potter book rights to the film creators, which happened at about the same time… and we all know how that turned out!

While the Goblet of Fire release was the first time most of us had to wait for a particular day to come to get a book, one little girl in Virginia didn’t have to wait.  We reported here at Leaky that Laura Cantwell of Fairfax, Virginia got a mistakenly released copy one week early.  It’s hard to blame the bookstore, though.  The idea of keeping a book hidden away until an “official” publication date was outrageous at the time.

Finally, July 8, 2000 came.  The anticipation had been building for months.  For the first time in history, stores in the UK and the USA held midnight release parties and released the books simultaneously.  J.K. Rowling did a promotional tour for the book aboard the Hogwarts Express.  Sales the first weekend were so successful that most of the 3.8 million books in Scholastic’s first printing were already gone.   The New York Times reported that reprinting started just two days later.

According to BBC News, even Rowling was shocked by the pandemonium surrounding Goblet of Fire‘s release.

“I wrote the book for me, this is all a bit of a shock and I’m amazed – think of a stronger word and double it,” she said.

Little did we know what amazing things were still yet to come.

To read what the press had to say about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2000, see Gail Collins’ editorial here, the BBC News report here, and The New York Times articles here and here.