why was the first harry potter title change
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Scholastic Corporation bought the U.S. rights at the Bologna Book Fair in April 1997 for US$105,000, an unusually high sum for a children's book.[15] They thought that a child would not want to read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title and,[32][not in citation given] after some discussion, the American edition was published in September 1998[33] under the title Rowling suggested, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.[15] Rowling later claimed that she regretted this change and would have fought it if she had been in a stronger position at the time.[11] Philip Nel has pointed out that the change lost the connection with alchemy, and the meaning of some other terms changed in translation, for example from "crumpet" to "muffin". While Rowling accepted the change from both the British English "mum" and Seamus Finnigan's Irish variant "mam" to "mom" in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, she vetoed this change in the later books, which was then reversed in later editions of Philosopher's Stone. However, Nel considered that Scholastic's translations were considerably more sensitive than most of those imposed on British English books of the time, and that some other changes could be regarded as useful copyedits.[30] Since the British editions of early titles in the series were published months prior to the American versions, some American readers became familiar with the British English versions due to buying them from online retailers.[34]