With the fall release of the penultimate film in the Harry Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, Harry Potter books have been, well, flying. At independents like the Bookcase in Wayzata, Minn., the series was one of the store’s bestsellers over Black Friday weekend. And book 7, which originally released in July 2007, has been on Amazon’s top 100 list for close to three months. But J.K. Rowling’s books aren’t the only ones benefitting from the magic of director David Yates or actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson. Adams Media has also seen strong sales for its first children’s hardcover, The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dinah Bucholz. It’s also the Avon, Mass.-based publisher’s first children’s cookbook outside of its Everything series.
More importantly, The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook is currently the “hands down” bestseller for parent company F+W Media, according to publisher Karen Cooper. “I feel like we have the right product at the right time, given the movie,” she adds. “We positioned it to hit for the fall holiday season.” It may be aimed at children ages 9 to 12, but Borders, for one, is shelving it in its adult Cooking section. At Barnes & Noble, the book is displayed up front on a Harry Potter table, while Amazon, where it’s been in the top 100 for the past two weeks, has been running editorial features.
Ironically, The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook almost didn’t have a chance for the ingredients to come together. As Bucholz notes on her Web site, her proposal was rejected by a number of agents worried about copyright infringement. At the suggestion of Muggles and Magic author George Beahm, who wrote the foreword to the book, she sent a letter to J.K. Rowling’s lawyer. With that in hand, she was able to sign with Mary Sue Seymour of the Seymour Agency, who connected her with Adams.
On the food front, Bucholz faced a different hurdle. A Kosher Jew, she couldn’t taste recipes that used shellfish or pork or that mixed milk and meat. So she enlisted chef Chris Koch to create 10 of the book’s 150 recipes, from Melton Mowbry Pork Pies to Queen Victoria’s Soup. Bucholz came up with all the other recipes, including those for Treacle Pudding, Molly’s Meat Pies, Cauldron Cakes, and Knickerbocker Glory. She was also forced to omit foods to which Rowling owns the copyright, like Butterbeer.
For the most part, Rowling’s lawyer asked for only a few tweaks, Cooper says. The word “unofficial” in the title had to have the same weight as the rest of the title, and the font couldn’t imitate that of the “official” Harry Potter books. There’s also a note on both the cover and copyright pages that the book is “unofficial and unauthorized.” And the word “muggles” doesn’t appear on the cover.
None of the changes seems to have hurt sales. The book has sold over 100,000 copies since August; a sixth printing is due next week, and a seventh the week after that. Adams is already planning another push when part 2 of the movie releases. They’re also working with Bucholz on another Harry Potter product.
