[smackay]

I remember in the USA when the Harry Potter books were starting to go mainstream (and the Christian Right were still trying to get the book banned because they promoted witchcraft). There was an short piece on an NPR program that talked about the phenomenon of kids lining up in droves outside bookshops for the launch of the books - this was way before Apple copied the idea :) I would say that the net gain to humanity in the long term, purely based in terms of kids literacy, was worth many, many times Rowling's personal fortune.