The publishing industry had a good June, but sales of J.K. Rowling’s books are lagging, Variety reports.
Books by the Harry Potter creator, who has recently been at the center of a controversy over her comments on transgender people, haven’t sold at the same rate as other titles. While sales of physical fiction books were up 31.4 percent in June, Rowling’s book sales only increased by 10.9 percent.
That’s a departure from last June, when the increase in sales of Rowling’s books mirrored sales of other print fiction books.
Kristen McLean, executive director of business development at the NPD Group, a market research company, said, “Looking at [Rowling’s] performance against the rest of the market, especially as benchmarked against her performance in 2019...I think she’s down. She’s certainly underperforming the rest of the market, comparatively, by two thirds.”
Rowling has recently made headlines for a series of comments about transgender issues, including tweets in which she suggested that people who support transgender rights believe that “sex isn’t real,” and a long essay in which she wrote, “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman... then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”
Last month, Rowling deleted a tweet praising Stephen King after the horror author commented that “Trans women are women.”
Variety says that Rowling’s U.S. publishers did not reply when asked about her recent book sales.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
