Вот пишут, что она и придумала, с четвертой книгой:

Whatever Harry was, he wasn't just a book anymore. By the time the fourth volume hit the stores in July 2000, the initial print run had soared to 3.8 million and the embargo and simultaneous release date were being strictly enforced.

Rowling has said that was her doing. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was "the culmination of 10 years' work," she told an interviewer after its release, and it has a huge plot development at the end: "Had that got out, there's no way the book would have been as enjoyable to read."

Fair enough. But the embargo also made a wonderful marketing device.

Call it talent, marketing, luck -- by this time, Harry Potter had emerged as a prime example of what economists Robert Frank and Philip Cook have called the "winner-take-all society." Small differences in performance or talent, Frank and Cook argue, get magnified by our media culture to the point where the top-ranked performers receive wildly exaggerated economic rewards.

Is this not a bad thing? Are there not -- as booksellers passionately proclaim -- many other wonderful children's books that deserve our attention? Rowling herself, who is deeply proud of her creation, nonetheless seems embarrassed by the scale of her success.

No, it's a good thing, says economist Frank. And here's where Harry the Savior comes in again.

It is precisely his winner-take-all clout, Frank says, that makes it possible for Harry to compete for kids' attention. Without it, television and video games would sweep the field.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302251_pf.html

Воистину диавольская книга...