Harry Potter in the News (surprise surprise!)...

Today I discovered a couple of interesting Potter pieces in the media. First The New York Times ran a piece saying the claim that reading the Harry Potter books helps turn kids into book lovers is overblown (which, if it's true, is unfortunate).

A Publishers Weekly article reveals that the Nielsen people have come up with a report offering all sorts of Potter-related statistics on books sales and movie sales, what they call The Potter Effect. Here are a few choice stats:

• Scholastic has spent from $300,000-plus to $900,000-plus on promotion for the various Harry Potter titles with a total of $3.6 million spent on U.S. promotion for all Potter-related books.
• 27.7 million copies of Harry Potter books have been sold in the U.S. since 2001.
  
• 51% of people in the U.S. are aware there's a new Harry Potter book coming out. (Do the the other 49% live under rocks or in biospheres or something? How do they not know?)
• 28% of people in the U.S. over the age of 12 have read at least one of the books. I am not among them--I've not read any of them.
  

And Emma Watson of the Harry Potter movie franchise is rocking some Chanel during the many appearances the cast is making promoting the upcoming movie. She's been all over the fashion blogs I read while I eat breakfast.