Blah Blah Harry Potter Blah Blah; or, How Movies and Books Are Different

To get caught up, see my previous post about the Harry Potter books.

I figure now is a good time to talk about the movies, why they're not the same, and in in what ways they're not. The perception among the general public is, well, there's the books which are real popular and make lots of money, and there's the movies which are real popular and make lots of money. It comes as no surprise to you all, I'm sure, that it doesn't quite work that way, that the movies and the books are in fact quite different, because, well, movies and books are different.

The biggest difference is that the movies are super-lucrative, mainly because they don't have to contend with the discount wars that the books do. But why is that? Look at the other post and you'll remember that the books' discount wars and loss leaders come mainly from Harry Potter's unusual cycle of demand, enormous for about a day and then virtually nothing. However, this alone isn't enough to explain the difference; indeed, it's something the movies and the books have in common. There's huge demand for movie tickets the day of release. The last movie made eight figures on its midnight screening alone (on a Wednesday for cryin' out loud).

No, there are other differences involved. The cycle of money on the Harry Potter franchise comes from more than just demand; venue, medium, and other factors play large roles as well. Some examples:

1. You can't see the Harry Potter movies at Wal-Mart, Safeway, or those gift shops they have in airports, all places that sell the books. Put it this way: between where I live and the 2 closest movie theaters, there are about 15 places to buy the books (3 grocery stores, 2 CVS pharmacies, 2 Barnes & Nobles, 4 university bookstores, 1 Target, and 3 used bookstores). Not only are there far fewer movie theaters competing (most people just go to the closest one to them), there are fewer companies that need to compete. Of the 7 theaters within close driving distance from where I live, 4 are Drexel theaters, 2 are AMC, and 1 is a Marcus. And I live in the 15th largest city in America; many smaller communities have only a single theater or company running the show. Recruiting customer loyalty, a major motivating factor behind discount wars, is just less of an issue.

2. Harry Potter DVD sales are more sustainable. Even though most of the places I've mentioned to buy the books are also places to buy the DVD's, the same rules of demand don't apply. Because just about everyone who wants to see the movie already has, there's no rush for Harry Potter DVD's and no need to make the first, cheapest sale.

3. There are just more interests involved with a movie. The film industry doesn't have the kind of internal logic that makes losing money on a bestseller ultimately beneficial. In the book world, the idea is that deep discounters increase their business by having the lowest price, allowing the publisher to keep its venues open (though deep discounting has driven a fair number of bookstores into the ground as well). But the process of bringing a film to theaters involves the work of too many salaried and commissioned professionals--far more than are involved in the production of a book--to make that logic compute.

4. There's much more franchising involved with a movie. No matter what, the release of a major motion picture will almost always be a more high-profile event than the release of a book, meaning more opportunities to make money from subsidiary rights like posters, clothing, actor publicity spots, action figures, happy meal toys, and so on. Most books never receive any subsidiary deals, and the ones that do usually only get one or two (and audiobook and a movie, for example).

This isn't to say that movies are necessarily more profitable than books. The film industry is also much more based on blockbuster successes and monumental failures; major films tend to either bang or bust (some people will tell you that the book industry is becoming more like this, and those people are LIARS). And there's a lot of other differences, too: instances like Harry Potter are really prime material for observing them.