Skip to content  Posts tagged ‘Charles Darwin’  The Illusion of
Understanding Success  In December of 1993, J.K. Rowling was
living in poverty, depressed, and at times, contemplating
suicide. She resided in a small apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland
with her only daughter. A recent divorce made her a single mom.
Reflecting on the situation many years later, Rowling described
herself as, “the biggest failure I knew.”  By 1995 she finished
the first manuscript of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s
Stone, a story about a young wizard she began writing years
before. The Christopher Little Literary Agency, a small firm of
literary agents based in Fulham, agreed to represent Rowling.
The manuscript found its way to the chairman of Bloomsbury, who
handed it down to his eight-year-old daughter Alice Newton. She
read it and immediately demanded more; like so many children and
adults after her, she was hooked. Scholastic Inc., bought the
rights to Harry Potter in the United States in the spring of
1997 for $105,000. The