Scholastic's long-term plan for success

[Dogman15]

Of varying levels of completeness:
1. Publish a children's book series with more than sixty books over the course of five years and let it become popular.
2. Okay a mediocre television series inspired by/half-based on the books.
3. Finish book series (still aimed at middle schoolers) and move on to other things.
4. Wait ten years and re-release books with new covers and corrected errors.
5. Reach an even wider audience: the old readers and the new readers.
6. Use the new demographic along with the one you planted 15 years ago to securely launch a new TV and/or film series that more closely matches the books.
7. ???
8. PROFIT! (over a really long time)

That's kind of what they did with the Harry Potter series:
1. Publish the American edition of a British children's book series.
2. Within a few short years, okay a film to be made on the first one.
3. Allow the book and film series to grow in popularity as the fanbase grows larger and older.
4. Finish the series with a darker, mature, young adult book and a dark film.
5. Possibly merchandise.
6. ???
7. PROFIT! (even more $ and faster)

[Kitulean]

It's more like...

1: Okay a book series with an interesting concept and see what happens.
2: Profit.
3: Realize you have a hit on your hands and change the schedule to release a new book every month while adding extra special books to flesh out the series.
4: Profit.
5: Add some merchandising like cheap little toys that cost you little to nothing to make and that kids will buy up despite them being the equivalent of Happy Meal toys just because it's the closest thing to real action figures for their favorite series they can get.
6: Profit.
7: License a tv show that costs next to nothing to make because its budget is whatever the three writers you hired for it made in their previous job of washing windshields on the freeway.
8: Profit.
9: Wait long enough for previous readers to be nostalgic and just starting to maybe start some families of their own, then re-release the series with a few updates that cost you little to do.
10: Profit!

[NateSean]

7: License a tv show that costs next to nothing to make because its budget is whatever the three writers you hired for it made in their previous job of washing windshields on the freeway

Funny, but ouch. And ouch because it's true.

But honestly, how else would you do it. The literary world isn't the most financially savvy market and in the end, you either have the next Harry Potter or you have a book that will collect dust in my fourth grade teacher's book shelves, and may or may not be read by future audiences years from now.