SOURCE: “The Race for Harry Potter,” in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 246, No. 7, February 15, 1999, p. 33.

In the following review, Maughan declares that the success of Rowling's “Harry Potter” series is not simply beginner's luck. Maughan also discusses the issue of territorial rights, concerning the books' publication history in the U.K. and the United States.

Rarely has there been a success story as sweet as that of Scottish author J. K. Rowling. Her book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was first published in Britain in 1997. The attendant praise and accolades (winner of the 1997 British Book Award and Smarties Prize, among others) brought Rowling from a strained existence on public assistance to life as a celebrated author. On this side of the Atlantic, Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books published the book in September 1998 (bought at auction for just over ＄100,000) as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and the title has...