| abstract
| - According to every twihard, Stephenie Meyer is the next JK Rowling, implying that Twishit better then Harry Potter, despite the Potter series having a good 10 years over the comparatively infantile "Twilight Saga." This is generally supported (in the loosest sense of the term) by one of two things: either a "OMG HOW CAN U SAY NYTHING IS BETTER THAN TWILIGHT" or a "but Stephie's sold so many books!!! she's so popular!!!" (sometimes heard as "BUT ECLPSE KNOCKED DH OFF THE BESTSELLER LIST!!!!131" or "DEY HAD TO POSTPONE HBP MOVIE BCUZ OF TWILITE!!!"). Since the first "argument" hardly requires debunking, let us deal with the second. Unfortunately for Smeyer, quantity IS NOT a measure of quality. Even more unfortunately for her is that even if it did, she would be losing. Rowling has sold over 400 million in 11 years, whereas Meyer? Not so much at 85 million since 2005. Even old-school sci-fi, (which are usually condemned to low sales figures) have outsold Breaking Dawn, with Dune selling 12 million copies. And that's excluding the 20 other books that the Dune series has. Or how about this: The Tales of Beedle the Bard has surpassed the total sales of Breaking Dawn (11 million books total), in only its pre-orders. Deathly Hallows did 11 million in a single day. Math. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. Or maybe not even doing it. The Harry Potter movie was moved to the summer, because it was planned to be a big event- it was not shoved out of the spotlight by Twilight. Because of the writer's strike WB didn't have any sure summer blockbusters; in 2008 it made nearly a billion dollars from The Dark Knight alone. However, in summer 2009 it didn't have the same guarantee of a blockbuster movie, and thus making significantly less money wouldn't appeal much to its shareholders. Since the Half Blood Prince is guaranteed to make good money, they made a (pretty smart) financial decision to release it next year. Update: As of July 15, 2009 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince hit a world record in midnight sales. It made 21 million just from the first midnight showing. That is a feat never before seen in the history of films.
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