Harry Potter isn’t dead yet. That should happen when Harry Potter and the Ineluctably Awful Title is published next month. Some rumours suggest that Harry’s author will then quietly disappear. Whether or not, given that each Potter book has been worse than its predecessor, that is a good thing, from now on we will have to suffer through the search for the next big thing. We will be told that whichever book is being hyped has the same thrill etc etc, and it might. Potter sold for all sorts of reasons, very few of which are actually well-understood by anybody. But the search will be horrible, and it will fail. One day lightning struck a decent book and it’s apparently quiet pleasant author made a bundle of money. You can’t predict that happening. You can’t plan it.  I rather wish they wouldn’t try.