From Publishers Weekly:
Wands. Witches. Wizards. Platform 9 and ¾. Diagon Alley. Dumbledore and Voldemort. We know this world well. In late September, even the Empire State building lit up in Ravenclaw blue, Gryffindor red, Hufflepuff yellow, and Slytherin green to celebrate 25 years of Harry Potter in the U.S. The shadow of Hogwarts looms like the eye of Sauron, eclipsing (and burning) anyone who came before and after Harry. J.K. Rowling and her world have become the ultimate measuring stick for fantasy writers in the middle grade space—and even beyond. Reviews are often littered with comparisons. Readers make conclusions and connections between your work and hers (even *gasp* when they aren’t there). The media loves to anoint new, debut authors as the “next J.K. Rowling” to position their work in the market and try to siphon some of her publicity magic. Shorthands develop to sell the book using hers as the benchmark—“if you like Harry Potter, then you’ll love this book”—often reinforcing the parallels.
I’ve tried hard to not mention her books and her world. I want to be able to speak about The Marvellers and The Memory Thieves, the first two books in my new series about a global magic school in the sky, the Arcanum Training Institute for Marvelous and Uncanny Endeavors, without having to be interrogated about her work at every turn. I want to discuss all that my magical universe has to offer—the future of magic school where every kid gets an invitation. But Harry, Hogwarts, and Rowling always seem to find me no matter what I do or don’t do. Every time I talk about my own books and the Conjureverse, nice, well-meaning people ask me if I wrote this series to be in conversation with her or as some sort of Potterhead nod to her work or as some sort of love letter. The not-so-nice people believe I’m ripping her off or trying to make a “woke” Hogwarts or worse… that I’m challenging her legacy and stealing her ideas. It is difficult to make peace with my work being swallowed by the black hole of Hogwarts. All of these challenges would be enough to grapple with, but the author’s recent commitment to transphobia and harm adds a new dimension.
Nothing is original, however, J.K. Rowling’s fandom believes that the series is the first of its kind. The Hogwarts delusion is so strong many have forgotten several Hogwarts predecessors like Jill Murphy’s Worst Witch from 1974, set at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches; Jane Yolen’s Wizard’s Hall from 1991; Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform Thirteen from 1994; and more. These are the magic school books I encountered as a young reader. These are the magic schools that lived in my imagination. These are the worlds I was searching for myself in and not finding what I was looking for.
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
Tradpub is weird. Magic schools are common as dirt, incl. middle grade post Potter. YA is bursting with them. I’m personally fond of Novik’s Scholomance series and chug through random MG series from the library if I’m having a laid up in bed sick day and want super light fare. I’ve never read Rowling and still manage to read recently pubbed magic school series, good and bad, short and long.
I suppose someone wrote about a raft trip before Huck and Jim set off.
Perhaps because the author didn’t encounter them as a young reader, the OP doesn’t mention Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), nor Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be a Wizard (1982), nor Diana Wynne Jone’s Chrestomanci books (1977), nor non-English works (I can’t find the reference, but there was a top-selling knockoff of the Le Guin Earthsea books in German in the early 1970s).
And this is not to call the OP’s author ignorant or ill-informed. It is to point out that the OP is a considerable understatement as to the novelty (pun intended) of the “big idea”: Success in pre-adult-oriented trade publishing is at least as much about other factors.
Of, for that matter, Neil Gaiman’s BOOKS OF MAGIC.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic
In short, it is the story of Tim Hunter, a boy with the potential to be the greatest magician ever, who knows nothing of magic. He could grow up to be good, evil, or both. (Just like any child.) And the battles that spring up to guide him, corrupt him, or just kill him while still possible.
(Amusingly, WB owns Tim Hunter and his extended story but has done nothing else with the character and his dark mythos. They also own the brighter, lighter girl-focused AMETHYST. They haven’t the faintest idea of the fantasies they own, of how to monetize them, to the extent it is NETFLIX reaping the rewards of adapting Gaiman’s SANDMAN.)
Of course, the OP wouldn’t know of even the best graphic narratives and collaborative works.
Probably never heard of Gaiman to start with.
Life in the literati bubble can be constraining.
Having read the entire OP, your guess that she’s never heard of Gaiman or other works may be true. She sounds rather narrow minded.
Besides this, I think it’s a mistake for her to run so hard from the trailblazer. It’s basic marketing: “It’s like Die Hard, but on a boat!” The “If you love A, you’ll love B” approach. Because people often do say, “I like A, and I’m looking for something else that’s similar.”
Also, I note even in the full OP the writer spends little time explaining about the world, the story, or the characters, and just goes on about the protagonist’s identity and her own grievances***. I suspect this is how the series is marketed, which means it’s no wonder she’s not picking up readers. She’s just “I’m anti-Rowling,” rather than selling the story. People like to vote “for,” not “against.” Worse, she lives in such a bubble that she has no idea that normal people have zero issue with Rowling’s basic observation that men are men, and women are women. That the OP is angered by this observation means she’s yet another author I will not introduce to any kids in my sphere of influence.
***It’s funny that she throws shade on Hogwarts for allegedly losing the invites of kids who aren’t white: Does she not remember Dean, Katie, or the Patil sisters? Cho Chang, who is a huge focus in “The Order of the Phoenix”? Okey-doke, but if the OP is trying to entice a fan of Harry Potter, her false accusation is going to alienate any youngster who actually read the books.
Or watched the movies.
Rowling had final say on casting.
Finally,if the OP had at least watched the movies they’d know Hogwarts is but one magic school–for the UK–and that the stories are time-locked to the 1990’s. Presentism won’t work on Potter.
In partial defense of the author who wrote the OP — but partial, only — she was writing to the OP’s specification, which we don’t know. We don’t know if she was prompted at all; prompted with something insulting at which she rebelled (<sarcasm> Nobody has ever offered a column piece to an author and said “Make sure you mention how your work relates to this famous-and-possibly-ancestral author/work.” </sarcasm>); had just/recently gotten off the phone/’net/AMA session in which she was positively bombarded with faux-admiring comparisons of her work to Rowling’s (I consider this quite likely); or anything else. Too, we don’t know how much longer a piece she submitted, which was cut by the OP source (well known for doing this) to meet other… priorities than accurately representing what the author of the OP actually bloody said/meant.
All of that said, the author of the OP is going to have to stand at least a bit behind this… and, bluntly, what shows more than anything else is that the concept of “acceptable reading for preadults” as found in mainstream bookstores infected/limited available reading material when she was herself a preadult. Which is neither a criticism of her nor her sin.
If it’s got your name, you’re responsible, one way or another; for saying it or allowing it to bear your name.
There’s always Alan Smithee.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee
Too, we don’t know how much longer a piece she submitted, which was cut by the OP source (well known for doing this) to meet other… priorities than accurately representing what the author of the OP actually bloody said/meant.
Oh, you’ve triggered me! Now I’m having flashbacks to the senior managing editor I sat next to, who would scold, and scold, and scold desk editors and reporters for sending in stories too long.
“Space! Where do you think you’ll get the space for this story! And you know it will have to have art! Did you not think of that?!”
This daily — multiple times a day — complaint rant resulted in a literal nightmare for me. Which I resented, because I was on the digital team and therefore questions of space and word count did not apply.
Whew! 🙂
While the reporter or editor may have had other goals for this story, I note the author interviewed took plenty of time to repeatedly air her grievances and lob false accusations. But I mention this because if the author had rolled at least a 12 in WIS she would have thought to herself, “Rowling earned billions for her wizarding school series. Let me study her, that I might get 1% of those billions from the audience she created.”
After all, she herself noted that no one remembers the sources who inspired her, so she might have tried to figure out the difference between those stories and Rowling’s.
Therefore, she would have identified the elements of the Harry Potter that grabbed readers: “You liked the mystery and danger? I’ve got that! My character _____. You liked the Friendship is Magic element? In my story, my character relies on her best friends ______ and _____ in her adventures. You liked the action? Check out my magical fight scenes! And I even have a recurring evil villain the character will test herself against. Or at least a villain per book.”
She could have worked that in, “Yeah, people were always asking me if I was trying to be a new Hogwarts, so I tell them my story is it’s own thing, but I have XYZ that they should like if they liked Harry Potter.” With XYZ being one of the examples from above.
Wasted opportunity, which again, I attribute to her being overly focused on her grievances instead of what she ought to have focused on: winning readers by hyping up why they would like her story. You can’t deliver message fiction if you don’t even convince people to read your book. But I’ve noticed that creators focused on identity and “representation” keep making that exact mistake.