It had a built in captive audience before it was ever published by scholastic. It was on required reading selection lists from the get go. Not to say HG isn’t good or worthwhile or whatever, but these kids books that go on to become multi-media juggernaut franchises usually have a tremendous step up simply from the children’s book publishing industry.
“To that end, librarians have perfected the art of the “booktalk,” a term that, in recent years, has morphed into a transitive verb: Horning describes “The Hunger Games” as “a really fun book to booktalk.” A booktalk is a pitch, several minutes long, delivered to fellow librarians, teachers, parents and young library patrons. Librarians are invited to speak at schools and bookstores, or they travel to branches to help fill in the gaps for overworked local librarians. They are, in effect, unofficial traveling salespersons for the books they love, supported by the apparatus of respected, publicly funded institutions. Parents and teachers who are too busy to keep up with new children’s books themselves treat their advice as gospel. Andrew Medlar of the Chicago Public Library not only orders books for 79 branches and booktalks his favorite titles to his staff, he compiles lists of recommendations that are posted to the library’s website and distributed in schools, bookstores and libraries. He also nominates for important prizes.”
“There were so many ways that high school teachers could use this in their curriculum that we felt that it was important for them to know about it,” said Heather Hebert of Children’s Book World in Haverford, Pa. A classroom assignment will result in multiple sales, which is why many booksellers make a point of sharing advance reader’s copies of promising books with local educators. “We’ll get a few extra ARCs and give them to the teachers,” says Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshop, which has two stores in Illinois. “They’ll start reading that book out loud in class to the kids, just to tease them with the first few chapters.” Then, “we send out a pre-sale form so all the kids can buy it.” It’s a strategy that’s worked like a charm for many a drug dealer.”
From here:
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/18/the_making_of_a_blockbuster/
More people reading is a great thing, especially kids, but man that is quite a machine to guarantee success and create a built-in audience for future movies/TV shows.
FReegards
some of the books they push are probably not very suitable for kids either