The latest installment in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) sold some 9 million copies in the first twenty-four hours — most books never sell that many in their entire print run. Truly the world is “wild about Harry.” But what does that mean for the rest of the science fiction and fantasy genre?

For a long time, science fiction and fantasy was considered a “geeky” genre of unicorns, elves and spaceships, to be read only by the unsociable fringes of society. Now, everyone reads Harry Potter. This is an unprecedented opportunity to bring the science fiction and fantasy genre into the mainstream’s eye and thus gain it the recognition it deserves. Can those readers, who may never have picked up a speculative fiction book before, be convinced to read other fantasy novels while they’re waiting for the Harry Potter number 7?

My answer: yes. It could mean a whole new resurgence of science fiction and fantasy, possibly another Golden Age, if only we can lure in all those new readers.

Think back to a time before you ever heard of a boy wizard. What was your favorite book? More importantly, why was it your favorite book? What was it about the book that made you fall in love? Was it the first science fiction book you ever read? There was a certain wonderfulness about that book that drew you back to read it again and again.

Now, did you share that feeling with others?

One of the single biggest marketing tools for books is word-of-mouth. If you read a good book, do you tell others about it? If you enjoyed the book, you should.

This is how Harry Potter got started. Harry Potter’s first print run of 500 copies by Bloomsbury wasn’t any different from any other children’s book they published. So, how did it become so popular? By word-of-mouth and a few good reviews. That word-of-mouth reached — and impressed — a few people at Scholastic who bid for The Philosopher’s Stone at an auction, paying US$100,000. After paying such an amount for a book, naturally, they launched an impressive publicity campaign, and the rest is history.