Ah, good. Time to trot out my HP theory...
When JK was touting the book around, the children's book scene was saturated by 'series' - Animal Ark, Goosebumps, Horrid Histories - books on bookshop shelves were sorted according to series, not authors.
Then along comes HP - this old fashioned school story -and Bloomsbury took a punt.
It worked!
Parents were fed up with 'made up' series. They wanted good old fashioned authors again - this was the CS Lewis, Noel Streatfield, Phillipa Pearce, generation. JK Rowling tapped into this nostalgia; this yearning for stand alone tales.
And then she had to go and ruin it by penning aeons more of the bloody thing. She should have stuck with the one. Much classier. But ho hum. Cash cows were ever thus milked.
However, thanks to HP, publishers backed the author-led book again and children's publishing became much more adventurous again.
And now, just when there seems a tremendously exciting climax to my theory and The Big Truth is about to be revealed......
...everything's gone black. And lo. I have woken up in the hospital wing....
Again.