PAN MACMILLAN must be thanking its lucky owls that JK Rowling failed to deliver the next Harry Potter instalment this year, and the publisher's new star author, Lian Hearn, could consider thanking the world's richest children's writer in her acknowledgements next time around.
For the somewhat mysterious Hearn has written a historical fantasy trilogy, Tales Of The Otori, that will appeal to children and adults alike, and this month's first volume, Across The Nightingale Floor ($135), will fill the 2002 Potter gap nicely.
One Pan Macmillan insider acknowledges that publication would have been postponed to avoid a clash with the long-awaited Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. 'But we got a free run of the market,' he says.
The Otori trilogy, which has been described as a cross between Rowling's boy wizard chronicles and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is set in a mythical, feudal nation much like 13th-century Japan.
Hearn's agent has sold the publishing rights to the book in 22 countries, including Japan, where its publisher anticipates selling as many as a million copies.
To put this figure into perspective, that hugely successful mother of all chick lit, Bridget Jones's Diary, took 18 months to sell that many copies in paperback in English throughout the world (prior to the release of the Renee Zellweger film adaptation); and Japan has a population of around 180 million.
Pan Macmillan won a fierce bidding war for British and Commonwealth (excluding Australian) rights to Hearn's trilogy late last year, forking out about US$500,000 (HK$3.9 million), and United States' publisher Riverhead reportedly paid about US$750,000.