Jk Rowling - Will JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy Storm 2012’s Bestseller Charts?

Jk Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy looks set to continue her literary success with one million pre-orders already having been made.

Following the massive success she had with her Harry Potter franchise which continues to reach out to fans with the new interactive website Pottermore.com even after the release of the last book and film, this modest author’s new ventures definitely look just as promising. It is expected to become the UK’s best seller of 2012 with The Bookseller charts editor Philip Stone telling AFP ‘It’s one of the biggest releases of the 21st century’ and predicting an immediate place at number one. It certainly has the credentials to become the next big hit in literature with it being the most pre-ordered book at Waterstones this year and with Rowling’s last book, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, selling 2.5 million copies in the UK just in the first 24 hours.

However, she has some serious competition. She is yet to break the record for the most hardback sales of an adult book in the first week (given that ‘Harry Potter’ was a children’s franchise) which currently stands at a massive 550,000 for Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ sequel ‘The Lost Symbol’. She is also to match the global phenomenon that is ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ by EL James which has so far sold 5.3 million. One Waterstones spokesperson has expressed doubt that Rowling will even match her own success records with ‘A Casual Vacancy’ and admitted, ‘It is not in the league of ‘Harry Potter’.’

The book approaches a variety of adult themes including politics, class, drugs, sex, prostitution and being a single parent, which Rowling has been dying to explore in her writing. ‘There are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy’, she told New Yorker magazine. ‘You don’t have sex near unicorns. It’s an iron-clad rule. It’s tacky.’ Hear that, EL James? You can’t mix sex and fantasy – it’s tacky!