[ SECRET POST #2548 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2548 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

REMINDER: For people who needed extra time to finish for the FS Secret Santa - today's the last day to get in your gifts! Gifts go out tomorrow!

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 032 secrets from Secret Submission Post #363.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: It's a negative feedback loop

[nyxelestia]

Maybe, but what's the likelihood that the 8-12 demographic the book was originally targeted towards would have heard of it before?

To be quite blunt, I'm a college student borne of well-read, international parents who has been a part of the Harry Potter fandom for over a decade, and I had to look it up right now to see that holy shit, this thing is in the dictionary and is a phrase that has nothing to do with Harry Potter or JKR. (You learn something new every day).

I don't know about the UK and I won't speak for British children (or at least I will try not to). But I will say that I'm pretty sure most young children and preteens in America have never heard of a philosopher's stone before Harry Potter (or at all, even after the widespread popularity). On it's own, it is just not a part of American parlance. The fear of American publishers that they would interpret that title as "a rock of a person who thinks a lot" and not "a magical rock with powerful properties" is a very legitimate one, and while I can understand an author's attachment to a certain title or way of looking at the book, I can also understand why the editors/publishers changed it for a different audience.

Re: It's a negative feedback loop

[(Anonymous)]

British kids are no more likely to have heard of the philosopher's stone than American kids.

Don't take this the wrong way, you're certainly making sense with some of your other points, but this specific argument is absolutely stupid. Rowling didn't come up with the concept of the stone, and it's actual name is philosopher's stone, both in America and in Britain. Changing it is completely pointless. And it's not like the books expects its readers to know what the stone is as it explains it anyway.

You would have had a point if the title was Harry Potter and the Magic Pram, as that would be a word that American kids would be less familiar with than British children, but a mystical stone mostly associated with alchemy?

Re: It's a negative feedback loop

[nyxelestia]

If British kids are not likely to have heard it either, then picking that as a title in the first place wasn't a good publishing move. Though to be fair, I guess if they expect parents to pick the book, it would make more sense. (Do Brits have in-school kids' book sales/scholastic fairs? IIRC, that was a huge jump-start to the books' popularity in America, or at the very least a lot of the kids I knew picked it up from there).