Modern fiction for children - Essay Example

The author gives the text to the publisher who, in turn, oversees its production and its shipment to the sellers. When the bookseller makes the book available to the public, this completes the life cycle or circuit since the reader can influence the author before and after the composition. This cycle, in the case of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is complicated because before the publisher, the literary agent affects the narrative produced. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’s two English language publishers in the UK and the US took the book’s text and made very different books, although the story remained as it was (Whited, 2009).

The text’s presentation, therefore, is able to alter the public’s perception of her narrative, although this may be very subtle. This essay seeks to discuss the way in which the book’s production, enhanced its contents and led to the universal success of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In the creation of all books, the beginning is the transformation of the book’s manuscript into a product that can be marketed. While J.K. Rowling claimed that the book was written for her consumption and not for children, she did eventually decide to have it published and sent her work to her agents (Whited, 2009).

The agency she used was renowned for choosing writers with good commercial value, such as writers like Anna Pasternak, Alistair MacLean, and A.J. Quenelle. The agent, Christopher Little, did not normally deal with children’s books as he did not believe in their commercial value. However, his contract with J.K. Rowling is probably his most profitable and accumulated at least 15% of gross earnings for the British home market and 20% in the US, film, and translational deals (Whited, 2009). What the emphasis of Little’s agency on profitable business practice indicates is how the agent influences the manuscripts.

Two of his assistants thought that the presented chapters were unusual to a sufficient degree to warrant his interest. However, they insisted that there should be two changes in enhancement of the narrative. One of them was that Neville Longbottom’s character needed extra development and that Quidditch, the wizard sport, needed to play a bigger role since it could appeal more to boys as a game with the rules included in the book (Rana, 2009). This alteration was significant as it indicates the manner in which the book’s agency saw the narrative.

In the majority of novels aimed at schoolchildren, sport plays a major part, and the focus of the sport and its necessity, for detail, suggests that the agency saw the book as a sure bet for the school-story model (Rana, 2009). There were also doubts as to how popular the book would be; whether it would generate high sales. This was not because of the book’s contents, but because while girls were accustomed to reading books authored by men, boys were less likely to read books written by a woman (Mullen, 2010).

As girls are avid readers compared to boys, there was a need to increase the popularity of the book for boys. This led to Rowling agreeing to publish Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and her other subsequent books as J.K. Rowling, rather than Joanne Rowling. These alterations show the agent’s concern for popularity among a diverse audience. This also indicates how the original text had to be altered with the aim of increasing its