“Harry Potter” Profits Skyrocketing Despite J.K. Rowling Cancellation Attempts

“Harry Potter” Profits Skyrocketing Despite J.K. Rowling Cancellation Attempts

Though JK Rowling has continued speaking her mind on controversial political and cultural subjects, her profits from the “Harry Potter” universe have continued soaring, with the pre-tax profits of Pottermore publishing, the publisher of the “Harry Potter” books and related “Wizarding World” titles, jumping dramatically in 2023.

That huge leap in profits comes despite cancellation attempts on Rowling. Those attempts mainly stem from her stance on the transgender movement, which she, a “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” views as being “insidious.” Speaking about it at one point, for example, she said, “I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious misogynistic movement that I think has gained huge purchase in very influential areas of society. I do not see this particular movement as either benign or powerless.”

In any case, though the backlash against Rowling has been, at times, intense, Pottermore Publishing made out quite well in 2023. According to GB News, the publisher’s 2023 pre-tax profits leaped to £9.4 million, a substantial increase from 2022’s £5.7 million in pre-tax profits.

GB News also reported that Jennie McCann, the Managing Director of Pottermore, released a statement on the success of the catalogue and its growth in which she said, “We continue to look for ways to grow partnerships, build our language catalogue and reach new audiences with creative and promotional initiatives such as the annual Starting Harry Potter campaign for new readers.”

Explaining her stance in June of 2020, and giving the background to her taking a stand on the transgender movement, Rowling said, “This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity. For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”

Later in the piece, she described how the campaign against her began, saying, “All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.”

Continuing, she wrote, “I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them. What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.”

Rowling then went on to describe why she is opposed to the current transgender movement, though not many transgender individuals, saying primarily that she fears the effect it is having on impressionable young women and explaining that she thinks their health and safety should be put ahead of ideological goals.